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Permalink Reply by A. Zevi Thomas on July 26, 2011 at 12:11pm

Hello!

Personally, If you're concern about the cost, I will suggest you forgo the class and explore the free or lower cost resources online, such as:

Adobe TV, YouTube, Cadeeze, Vimeo, Lynda.com/cs4

In a two-week course all you probably get are basic commands and tools.

Hope this helps...

Z-

 

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Permalink Reply by Ashish Trehan on July 28, 2011 at 8:14am

You are telling me I can teach people Photoshop and illustrator and there is a willing demand of people to pay me 1200 dollars. I am in.

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Permalink Reply by Grace Ng on July 28, 2011 at 8:19am

haha, i can send you my class email list - offer your services...$1200, such a ripoff! that's a city university for you - milking you for every penny.

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Permalink Reply by Ashish Trehan on July 28, 2011 at 8:23am

Look, I learned photoshop and illustrator and everything on my own. But when you start your program they will focus on hand skills first. But if you are creative and keep up to date with industry standards. You can really take off. But its not hard. I suggest picking up those photoshop or illustrator magazines that teach you simple tutorials. They exposure you to all those little buttons that eventually you will be able to combine them to your usage. Don't spend money on people who will waste your time. Its just a tool, not an end all. I combine hand and digital to help craft a great look.

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Permalink Reply by Lana Merrill on July 28, 2011 at 8:37am

I'm a good self-learner so my way of going about learning new things is www.lynda.com >it does have a monthly cost but the tutorials are AWESOME (versus free ones around the internet). I HIGHLY suggest this site. It additionally has a vast amount of tutorials for different programs.



For indesign - I would start out with putting a simple image board together of plants you like, places, etc. This can teach you pretty much how to make a kick-ass board that you'd show a client at an initial meeting. Just play around with layout and colors. Add a title block and you're set.

 

For photoshop - I would start out with the "Essentials" of any of the Adobe programs and move on to bigger things. To have something to work with, start by simply saving b/w landscape plans/planting plans and doing basic renders (filling in colors, playing with layers and layer options). Then go into sketchup and make a basic perspective of ..something like a streetscape - I think easiest to start to learn scale and perspective (import a building, throw in a few sidewalks in sketchup and export as jpeg) After that putting in grasses, trees, people, cars, play with shadow and lighting, etc.

 

Illustrator I would work with last - It's great for after you know AutoCAD and photoshop. You can import CAD documents into Illustrator and render plans (the basics like buildings) quicker because it picks up the linework.

 

Just play around - all the programs can be a lot of fun :)

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Permalink Reply by Lana Merrill on July 28, 2011 at 8:39am

You can easily add trees by clipping out backgrounds of images and such. Here's a great site that has the trees ready.

 

http://www.howardmodels.com/0-tree/DecidiousTreesFull-112103/index.htm

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Permalink Reply by Ashish Trehan on July 28, 2011 at 8:41am

I think its annoying they have that little plot of land apart of the tree in the clippings.

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Permalink Reply by Lana Merrill on July 28, 2011 at 8:48am

I agree - but it's quicker to use those and brush that out than it is to start from scratch... What do you usually use?

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Permalink Reply by Ashish Trehan on July 28, 2011 at 9:13am

I clipped so many in undergrad and exchanged with all my classmates...But yeah you can just brush them out. Good diversity of trees...but its whatever. I like going on deviantart and clipping trees from their. So much better quality and emotion in some of those photos.

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Permalink Reply by Lana Merrill on July 28, 2011 at 9:22am

I'm not familiar with the site, I'll have to check it out!

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Permalink Reply by Tosh K on July 29, 2011 at 1:17pm

I'd love to teach that course for half that cost...

 

In addition to the aforementioned resources many design schools have short how-to handouts available online - might be helpful to browse around through those as well.  Key to learning software is to have a project goal in mind and see how it operates and helps you get there.  InDesign will help a lot with presentation layouts, Illustrator can produce great line graphics and diagrams (It takes AutoCAD output to another level of clarity), Photoshop is good with photos and similar graphics.  Get to know folks in school and around you that know the software well - they can be immensely helpful with shortcuts and strategies.

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