Yesterday I began the next step in my evolution. My Digital Art course began yesterday and today my Art History I and Composition II courses begin. I’m looking forward to the art courses as well as the composition course. The composition course, aside from being a requirement, will definitely help hone my critical thinking skills as well as my writing. I have to admit that I’m a little ambivalent about Art History I. I suppose it will help give me a sense of where the collective art world has come from and where it can go, but frankly I found art history utterly boring in high school. Hopefully the instructor can find a way to make it exciting and challenging on a deeper level than just looking at ancient scultpures honoring the sacred feminine.
The digital art course is the one that piques my interest the most. For all of my post-processing work I use Adobe Lightroom 3, which I find gives better results and finer control than Apple Aperture. I tried using Photoshop CS2 to do RAW processing, but found it to be incredibly lacking in terms of control and output. It eventually got to the point where I used CS2 for 3 purposes: TWAIN capture, correction of scratches and dust spots from film scans, and as a vehicle for making prints with my Epson R2880. I pretty much taught myself how to do these things (and a few more), which I count as a small victory. Photoshop is a very large, very powerful, and not very user-friendly monolithic program that can be daunting when one is exposed to it for the first time. Tips and tricks from various websites have helped here and there, but I’m thinking that in order to unlock its true power I’m going to need a structured setting. Now that I have a copy of Photoshop CS5 (thank you, education discount!!) I can couple that with the course and truly create some good stuff. The fact that this is a requirment for a BFA Photography doesn’t bother me in the least.
In the next month or so I hope to sit down with an advisor and hammer out a plan of attack in order to apply for the BFA Photography program at the University of Houston. Entrance to the program is competitive but I still need these courses (along with a few others) in order to apply. Of course, between my dental issue and my current bout with kidney stones I hope I can find an opportunity soon. Also, this will give me plenty of time to really beef up my portfolio.
Well, I must get back to work… have fun everybody.
I’m still rockin’ CS2 for everything.
Should upgrade, but then that means upgrading the computer, since it wouldn’t handle CS4+.
Adobe has stopped putting out updates for CS2, which is the biggest reason I upgraded. I needed the camera raw support for the Canon 7D, but they only put out those updates for CS4+. It became a problem when I had to make contact sheets for my final project this past semester. I can’t complain about the price – the Adobe Premium Design Collection was only $450 for the educational price 🙂