MAX Tips and Tricks from Paul Trani

[Janet_L_Stoppee]

What's your level of Photoshop expertise? Adobe's Paul Trani presented important tricks and tips at MAX. In this video, Paul discusses how to optimize the interface for the most time efficient workflow. He covers time savers, techniques to make projects look better, creating popular effects, and 3D for the non-3D user. It’s a free hour and 12 minutes: https://max.adobe.com/sessions/max-online/#16636 It's worth a look to see if Paul can up your Photoshop IQ.

[Trevor.Dennis]

I saw this live at MAX, and it was excellent value.  No matter how well you think you know the product, someone like Paul is always going to have a trick or two that was new to you.  There is a pure gold moment right at the end of Paul's session that I am still not sure if it was planed or an accident, but it definitely had the room in fits of laughter.  Watch it all.  You won't regret it.  Or scroll on through to about 01:11:30.  I won't give it a NSFW rating, but it might make your granny roll her eyes.

And don't forget that Jim at ProDesignTools has done his usual thing and listed out the 235 hours of post MAX video.

Free! 235 Hours of Training and Tutorials from Adobe MAX 2016 | ProDesignTools

[Brian Stoppee]

Trevor.Dennis wrote:

I saw this live at MAX, and it was excellent value. No matter how well you think you know the product, someone like Paul is always going to have a trick or two that was new to you.

Thank you, Trevor. Janet showed me this. I was surprised it wasn't mentioned previously, but I'm glad she brought it to this forum's attention. This is when some people are doing some learning during Christmas week.

[Trevor.Dennis]

Hi Brian, and welcome to our forum — and I should say welcome to Janet as well.     I am afraid I don't have any of your books on my very full photography, Photoshop, and other digital art related book shelves, but I am tempted by The Photographer's Lighting Toolbox. Light Science & Magic is my go to tome for that sort of information, and Fill Hunter used to be a fairly regular poster to the flickr group devoted to the book.

I did a two day lighting workshop with Kiwi Bret Lucas several years ago — who I consider NZ's premiere studio photographer — and he told me a fascinating story about how he once stood transfixed in his home's hallway, wondering why the shadow edge transfer on a cast shadow was greater in one direction than another.  He finally realized it was because of a strip light that would be diffuse if viewed end on, but a non diffuse point light source when viewed perpendicular to its length.  It's that sort of obsession to detail that makes the difference.

[Brian Stoppee]

Trevor.Dennis wrote:

I am afraid I don't have any of your books on my very full photography, Photoshop, and other digital art related book shelves, but I am tempted by The Photographer's Lighting Toolbox. Light Science & Magic is my go to tome for that sort of information, and Fill Hunter used to be a fairly regular poster to the flickr group devoted to the book.

Fil has done a fabulous job with the LSM book. He's been active in getting out and doing the live learning events too. When "Photographers Guide to Using Light" was released, we did a bunch of seminars and trade shows. Of the 3 books, "Stoppees' Guide to Photography & Light" is our favorite. It needs plenty of updating and we have a feeling photographic lighting technology is about to move in new directions so doing a light and lighting deep dive is probably a 2018 project, 10 years after "Stoppees' Guide…" was released.

Why is that relevant to Photoshop? Light and lighting is very important to the core of Adobe's Bridge, Camera Raw, Lightroom, and Photoshop.

Janet & I make the core of our teaching about understanding light the manipulations of not just the mid tones but capturing the details in the specular highlight and preserving the information in the shadows.

We'll share more thoughts on those points as the industry moves forward.

[Janet_L_Stoppee]

Trevor.Dennis wrote:

I saw this live at MAX, and it was excellent value.

Thank you, Trevor, agreed on what a valuable resource for learning is available at no cost, with all the great Adobe MAX presentations. I do not have enough time in the day, for all that I want to view. Thank you also, for providing the link for Jim's listing of all of the topics and the presenter's name. That is a great help!