I’ve got a smidge of time right now so I’m going to throw up a couple of entries about Photoshop World. This first one is about the conference itself. In short, it was Awesome. Exhausting yes. At times, kinda frustrating, but on the whole AWESOME.

I say frustrating because simply put, there is no possible way you can retain all that you learn in that short a time. 13 classes over four days is quite a load, especially when you don’t really have the time to try things out in-between and really retain what you just learned before you move onto the next class. And let’s face it, it’s Vegas baby and you’re a fool if you sit in your hotel room every night tinkering with your laptop when you can be out seeing the sights and exploring the city. Which is exactly what I did.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the theming is all Star Trek. They must have worked a license with Paramount or something, because EVERYTHING was Star Trek. Including the opening movie which was a riot. The intro to the keynote address with Scott Kelby was a short film shot on the bridge set (new movie I’d guess or an old set that was put back together) with everyone in trek uniform. It was pretty funny. After that Adobe gave a presentation about CS4 (which they called “CSNext” thinking we wouldn’t guess the number? They don’t officially announce it until my birthday). Let me just say three worlds about Photoshop CS4: THREE D GLASSES. To be honest hearing them announce the upcoming version made my stomach sink, I haven’t fully learned how to use all the cool stuff in CS3 yet. The integration of Macromedia products is vastly improved. CS3 was halfway through their development cycle when Adobe acquired Macromedia. Now they’ve had a full cycle to totally integrate Dreamweaver, Flash, et al.

Here is my workbooks from the conference:

One of the biggest perks about the show. You pay about $500 for the conference. Unless you’ve got a Time Turner, you can only attend 12 sessions, but you get the training materials for every session, even the one’s you don’t go to so you can go through them and learn EVEN MORE COOL STUFF. It’s not all Photoshop either. I attended several sessions on Illustrator, I learned about Corel Painter, After Effects, general photography & typography stuff. There were sessions on stuff I’m not interested like Light Room, Web focused stuff, Print focused stuff, Green Screen effects - you name it. Including my extra pre conference class (which was 4 hours) here are the sessions I attended:

1. 1.Impressions of Nature. Landscape and Seascape photo painting class. This was my 4 hour class which dealt with using Photoshop and Corel Painter to create paintings from photographs. Sort of the opposite of Bert Monroy who does photorealistic stuff from scratch, this takes actual photos and turns them into paintings. This classes focused on the impressionist period (which is one of my least favorites) but technique wise was really cool. I was thinking about many of the photos that I’d taken of Joshua Trees on my way to Vegas that would have made great pantings (more on this sad tale later).
   

2. 2.Painting With Photoshop: This was my man Bert Monroy discussing his new painting and techniques of making reality from pixels.
   

3. 3.Typography Essentials: Eh, it was a refresher course for me and not bad, but in hindsight I already knew all this stuff and should have gone to Jaw Dropping Photoshop Tips instead. Live and Learn
   

4. 4.Earth Wind & Fire: Straightforward Photoshop techniques to create realistic stuff from nothing. I was impressed with Corey Barker the instructor and wanted to make sure to catch more of his stuff.
   

5. 5.The Art of Animal Photo Painting: More with Painter and Photoshop. Cool techniques that can be used in a variety of ways
   

6. 6.Photoshop CS3 Extended Video Primer: Interesting insight into all the motion stuff Photoshop can do. If you’re thinking why not use After Effects? Well not everyone has that. Also I do simple stuff to my photos in iPhoto even though I use Photoshop. It’s the same theory here.
   

7. 7.Portrait Retouching Techniques: I admit I could only stomach half of this seminar. Not that there is anything wrong with the instructor or the class. It is just a very sad reminder of how people can’t look like real people in advertising. It’s all about creating the unrealistic expectations which has children entering therapy by the time their 10. Instead I popped into a session about color correcting techniques and felt much better.
   

8. 8.Illustrator Classic Effects: Totally stuff I would incorporate into an Illustrator class. Very cool, fun and useful. Corey Barker again and I was really impressed with the guy.
   

9. 9.From Photoshop CS3 Extended to After Effects. Not much discussion of After Effects but again, good info on using Photoshops animation capabilities.
   

10. 10.Photoshop in Motion: The last of the Corey Barker sessions I attended. He had a really solid approach and sever simple yet impressive ways to use motion in Photoshop to do amazing things.
    

11. 11.Dynamic Effects in Illustrator: I admit by this time (on Saturday) I was begging to show signs of Education Fatigue. By brain was just about full and beginning to rebel. I had a hard time focusing here.
    

12. 12.The Illusion of the 3rd Dimension. Bert Monroy again and it’s easy to listen to him. Impossible to be distracted when he’s talking about the amazing stuff he creates in Photoshop. Check him at at www.bertmonroy.com
    

13. 13.I decided to end the conference with something enjoyable that didn’t even mention computers or software or anything techie like that. I saw Moose Peterson’s Smooch A Moose: Getting Close To Wildlife. It was a great way to end the conference.
    

14. 14.Oh yeah, and on the tech expo floor I sat in on a one hour class on Underwater Photography. So for my $500 I actually got 14 classes.
    

On the tech expo floor I had a chat with the guy from Canon and decided what kind of Digital SLR I’m going to get (EOS 50D) and there were many other cool booths to see. I bought a copy of Painter since they took $350 off the price since I’m an educator (and had the foresight to bring my id badge with me) so I paid $99. Not bad. I also picked up some tools from Graphic Authority.

Here are some additional shots of the convention floor, with the Star Trek theming: