From basic to advanced, quick camera start to organizing and editing software, you’ve got many shots to take advantage of in the coming months. Here is complete listing of course offerings through May 2009.

Colorado Free University Courses

Note : All CFU classes will be held at the 1st & Quebec Campus
Registration information can obtained by calling (303) 399-0093 or directly at CFU’s website.

Migrating to Digital Photography

We have one offering of our popular “Migrating” class throughout the Winter :

1. Meets Three Tuesdays, 6:30-9 pm : 1/6
2. Meets Three Thursdays, 6:30-9 pm : 4/30
3. Meets Three Thursdays, 6:30-9 pm : 5/28

Beyond the Snapshot : The Digital Journey from Workflow to Masterpiece

Two offerings of our “Beyond” class :

1. Meets Two Thursdays, 6-9 pm : 1/22; Skips 1/29
2. Meets Two Wednesdays, 6-9 pm : 3/18; Skips 10/25
3. Meets Two Tuesdays, 6-9 pm : 5/19; Skips 5/26

NEW! Digital Camera Quick Start: Learn to Use Your Point and Shoot

Six offerings of our New “Digital Quick Start” class :

1. Meets One Wednesday, 6-9 pm : 1/21
2. Meets One Wednesday, 6-9 pm : 2/4
3. Meets One Thursday, 6-9 pm : 2/19
4. Meets One Tuesday, 6-9 pm : 3/3
5. Meets One Tuesday, 6-9 pm : 3/17
6. Meets One Thursday, 6-9 pm : 4/2

Front Range Community College Courses

Note : All classes will be held at the Westminster Campus
Call (303) 404-5465 to register.

Introduction to Photoshop Elements and the Digital Workflow

1. Meets Three Thursdays, 6:00-9:00pm : 1/8-1/29, skips 1/22 - Register Here
2. Meets Four Thursdays, 6:00-8:00pm : 3/5-3/26 - Register Here

UPDATED! Advanced Photoshop Elements for Digital Photography

1. Meets Four Tuesdays, 6:00-8:00pm : 2/3-2/24 - Register Here
2. Meets Four Tuesdays, 6:00-8:00pm : 4/7-4/28 - Register Here

Colorado Free University Courses

Note : All CFU classes will be held at the 1st & Quebec Campus
Registration information can be found directly at CFU’s website.

Migrating to Digital Photography

We have three offerings of our popular “Migrating” class throughout the Fall :

1. Meets Three Tuesdays, 6:30-9 pm : 8/5 - 8/19
2. Meets Three Thursdays, 6:30-9 pm : 9/25 - 10/9
3. Meets Three Tuesdays, 6.30-9pm : 11/4 - 11/18

Beyond the Snapshot : The Digital Journey from Workflow to Masterpiece

Two offerings of our “Beyond” class :

1. Meets Two Thursdays, 6-9 pm : 8/21; Skips 8/28
2. Meets Two Sundays, 1-4 pm :10/19; Skips 10/26

Front Range Community College Courses

Note : All classes will be held at the Westminster Campus
Call (303) 404-5465 to register.

Introduction to Photoshop Elements and the Digital Workflow

Meets Four Tuesdays, 6:30-8:30pm : 9/2-9/23

Advanced Photoshop Elements for Digital Photography

Meets Four Tuesdays, 6:30-8:30pm : 10/7-10/28

[ Flash Movie / 00:05:46 ]

[ Flash Movie / 00:06:36 ]

Sorry about the clicking audio … I’m working on finding and fixing the problem soon!

We’ll be covering the digital workflow, the nitty gritty details of the Photoshop Organizer and dive into some of the advanced management features as well. We’ll wrap up with a survey of editing techniques and end just short of high dive into full editing. We save the details of hard-core editing for the second, follow-on class to be offered sometime in the fall.

This will be an exciting introduction to some of the core features of Elements 6. We’re going to have a lot of fun, and this course should suit the needs of many folks who currently struggle to take control of their images!

Come join the fun, there are a few slots left!

Register now :
FRCC Course Description and Enrollment information
Phone Registration : 303-404-5465

This first workshop is designed to get Canon DSLR users more familiar with the powerful features of their camera. Unlike our other longer courses, this mini workshop is designed as a quick hit of hands-on instruction mixed in with actual shooting. Our objective is to make you more familiar with the camera in a short period of time. To do this, we’ve restricted the class size to 5 students, and we’re going to get it all done in ONE session.

Date/Location/Time:

Sunday, June 8
Panera Bread Restaurant Conference Room - 13th & Grant, Downtown Denver

Capitol Heights
1330 Grant Street
Denver, CO 80203
(303) 830-7101

1.30PM - 5.30PM

Cost:

$69 / payable on the day of class

Registration:

Use the contact form here.

Workshop Overview:

First half [90 minutes]:

• Introduction and quick review of basic controls
• Accessories (lenses, flashes, etc.)
• Indoor photography review and practice (focusing on ISO, practicing with the flash, practicing with the lenses at wider apertures, WB, etc.)

Lunch/Snack Time [30-45 minutes]:

• Bathroom break
• Grab some lunch
• Informal Q&A with the class about specific issues that they’ve seen in their work or even in the indoor section

Second half [90 minutes]:

• Outdoor review and practice (ISO, fill flash, focus point, etc) on-the-spot questions about specific shooting issues

Prerequisites:

You should already have a basic understanding of the controls of your camera and what they do, we will only review how to access them.

Cameras Covered:

Canon Rebel XT, XTi, Xsi
Canon 20D, 30D, 40D
Canon 5D

We will also be bringing in lenses for people to play with. We’ll talk about when to use certain lenses and the usefulness of some lenses over others.

Lenses/Accessories Covered:

Canon 50mm/1.8
Canon 100mm/2.8 MACRO
Canon 24-104L/2.8 USM IS
Canon 550EX Flash

* There will be other lenses we’ll cover based on availability and interest.

[ Flash Movie / 00:07:05 ]

We’re going to begin with some groundwork, then move into 2 screen casts showing you how to do these things.

Renaming Within The Operating System

When in comes to file renaming, we’re going to talk about 3 options available. The first option is renaming directly within the operating system. If you’re using Windows XP or even Windows Vista, you may not know it, but there are some file renaming tools built into the system that you can take advantage of.

Using A Renaming Tool

The second option is to use a renaming tool. There are a lot (repeat a lot) of tools out there, but there is a tool we’ll talk about here that really stands out. Not only is it free (though the creators would love to get donations if you find the tool useful), but it is one of the most useful, stable and robust renamers I’ve seen. While the options may be daunting at first, the tool does show you a preview of the final renamed file so you can make sure it looks the way you want it to before you commit.

Since there are so many options, we’ll give you a guided tour of the basic options available, then let you decide for yourself if the tool is for you or not.

Bulk Rename Utility by Jim Willsher
Windows XP/Vista
http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

Using PSEs Renaming Feature

File renaming in PSE is actually rather convenient, and there are two ways to do it. The first way is to actually rename files upon import. If you decide to follow the file renaming guidelines in the WW#3, you may have a little trouble keeping the original name of the file and instead may have to adopt a renaming scheme that includes the date as suggested, but then instead of retaining the unique name the camera gave the file, you will have to use a new random numeric name or some other value to your choosing. We will show you how to do this so that least your file names are numbered in order. Since the file renaming is occurring at import, you’ll have no problems following the suggested workflow step of backing your files up immediately, since from that point forward, all your edited files will have the new name.

The second way is to rename your files from within the editing tool of PSE. We’ll show how both of these methods can be used to achieve the same basic result.

Which is best?

Understanding which option to use is no simply choice. It will depend largely on how whether you want to use one or more tools outside of your primary editing and organizing tool (like Photoshop), or whether sticking with a single tool for everything is more important to you. Since I tend to have a more complex naming scheme, I am comfortable using additional tools that provide features not part of my editing and organizing tool. The choice will be largely dependent on your preferences and needs!

Look out soon for the two screencasts that explore the options available to you!

Check out our offerings and join the fun!

Colorado Free University Courses

Front Range Community College (Westminster Campus) Courses

Physical File Location

Knowing where your files live is a critical first step in organizing them.

Knowing where your images are is the first step in organizing them. First, if your images are not on a single hard drive, you may consider putting them there. Not because we’re suggesting you put all your images at risk of a single point of failure - we assume you have a backup of these images elsewhere, and that you may also consider a multitude of hard drive redudancy options not discussed in this Workflow Wednesday - but because when you’re trying to organize something, and it doesn’t matter what, having everything in one place makes working with it that much easier. Photos are no exception.

Strive for simplicity : Try to keep it to no more than 3 directory levels

1. Make a “Photos” top level directory

If there is one simple rule of file location, it’s make sure there is a root or top level directory, then work your way down. We tend to like “Photos” and if you’re on a Windows system, you can certainly use the “My Photos” folder under “My Documents”. If, however, you are using an external hard drive, “Photos” works just fine.


2. Make the next directory level by year

Over the years, we have realized that it is rare that important life events are filed in our brains without year information. We’re remarkably good at remembering the year we bought our first house, the year we first traveled overseas or the year we graduated high school or college. The next level under “Photos”, might then be year - 2008, for example.


3. Make a third directory level, but only if you must, and re-consider it twice

If you have a third level, organize it by something important to you : “Life”, “Kids”, “Other” - but keep it simple, since you may have a tendency to go overboard and have too many categories. You may want to keep it as simple as “Jan-Mar” or “Q1″ or “Winter” … this way you can keep your third level directories simple, yet effective. Your first goal should just be to relieve some of the load of the directory above, but not too much. In other words, you’re taking work away from the purpose of your cataloging software if you’ve got more than say 5 or 6 subdirectories at the third level. This third level should be large grained, simple, yet effective.

Once you’ve gone through step 1 and 2, and reconsidered step 3, you should have a structure that is simple, immediately recognizable and easy to stick with.

Here are some example structures :

Sample #1

Sample #2

Sample #3

Sample #4

Sample #5

You can decide what you like best. Remember too, that many software packages alphabetize your folders for you - so you might include a numeric value in front of a textual name if it will not alphabetize correctly. The goal is to be able to open the directory and immediately understand the contents quickly.

Now that we have the first step done, it’s time to get to the second step - file renaming.

File Renaming

Strive for completeness, but only include what’s necessary.

Many years ago, when we started taking digital photos, we never imagined how difficult it would be to come up with a lasting naming system. After talking with a number of people, both pro and amateur, it became obvious everyone does it their own way. Some photographers never rename their images. If you are diligent about putting your images in the proper physical location - this may be entirely fine. What’s not obvious is when the photo was taken - particularly if the image metadata is not immediately accessible. So coming up with some alternate file renaming scheme has value.

In the spirit of completeness and simplicity, you may want to keep the original filename as at least part of the filename. Some cameras do actually store the original date of the image as the filename. If this is the case, you may not need to do much else to rename the file. The only problem there is when you get a camera in the future that doesn’t name the files that way, you’ll have to adjust your scheme. To avoid this, you may want to make your own scheme up altogether.

We like a scheme that includes the original name of the file as it came out of the camera, as well as the date the photo was taken ( regardless of whether the camera named it that way originally ) as well as the camera model. It is amazing how much information, date and camera model alone can tell you about the image. We know of more elaborate schemes, that include unique text-based names with loads of words in the name of the photo - but this just takes too much time to do and long-term maintenance will be a nightmare. Your names will get long and sorting order will make no sense. Leave that kind of tagging for metadata and your cataloging tool! Here are some sample filenames you might consider as templates :

19990101_DCSN0003_CanonDC210
20040503_IMG_2000_Canon10D
20070108_IMG_0332_CanonA700

You can immediately tell from the filename the date the image was taken, the original file name and the camera make and model. This system is nice also because if you follow the basic workflow, you will burn an original copy of your image as soon as you move it to your computer - presumably before it has been renamed. That means that the disc will have filenames like DSCN0003.JPG or IMG_2000.JPG. Since you will label that original disc with at least the date and perhaps the camera make, you’ll be able to quickly and easily go back to the absolute original image using this simple naming scheme, since the three most important pieces of information - date image was taken, original filename and camera make are embedded in the filename! Of course, you may burn the renamed images first before editing them, and that would make life even easier.

You can revise the scheme here to your own liking - just remember to keep it simple and make sure it can endure the years!

Since there are a few tools to actually do the renaming, for example, Photoshop Elements allows you to rename your images upon import/acquisition, we’ll have another post that discusses some other options should PSE not adequately allow you to use the scheme you want. Unfortunately the scheme mentioned above is not possible in the latest version of PSE, but don’t fret, there is another very good, very robust and FREE tool that will provide you a very good renaming solution.

Metadata

Effective organization lives and dies with your metadata.

Metadata is photographic information embedded into the digital photo that can be retrieved (and revised) later by another program (and even your camera). Every time you click the shutter, the camera stores vital information automatically to the image in it’s metadata. This metadata contains useful information like the time the photo was taken, the shutter speed, aperture, ISO, focal length, flash power - even GPS location information for cameras with GPS built in. There is a wealth of important information stored within the image metadata, and it is therefore a critical final piece of the organization puzzle. The complete details of image metadata are part of a more detailed post to come, but what you will need to remember is now that all good cataloging tools will provide you the capability to store image tags and keywords directly into the metadata of the image itself. In fact, it’d be a good idea to make sure you have a cataloging program that definitely stores your catalog keywords and tags back into the file. That way, if at any moment you want to change programs all of your tags and keywords stay with your images and not with your catalog. Anything otherwise will render all the work of tagging your images useless!

With metadata keywords, you can start the fun work of classifying your images more precisely. You can store information such as the person or people in the photo, the location the photograph was taken. Important keywords of relevance to the photograph like “birthday” or “reunion”. We’re not yet ready to talk about the keyword schemes you can employ in your own catalog, but know that this is where the details of your image cataloging live (or die).

That’s probably enough today to fill your mind in one session! But we will be revisiting some aspects of this WW - especially and specifically the metadata section, where we will begin to understand keyword schemes necessary to actually help us tag and subsequently find our photos more easily and naturally.

Enjoy and happy clicking! (more…)