NAPP Sponsored Adobe Photoshop Seminar

I had the opportunity yesterday to attend the NAPP/Kelby Training Maximum Photoshop Seminar with Dave Cross. This was my 4th Photoshop seminar I attended since joining NAPP in 2004 early in my career as a graphic designer. In one day, they Dave crammed in enough information to make my head spin. I have a strong background in Photoshop, I've been using it professionally as a designer since 2000 and as a photographer for the last 3 years. But the one thing about Photoshop is that no matter how you get to the end result, there are at least 3 if not 10 ways to do it and typically my way isn't the quickest, fastest or easiest!!

I attended the seminar with two fellow graphic designers and we all walked away with some new ideas and ways to accomplish things. We all agreeded that no matter if you're a photographer, graphic designer or web designer there was something in this class for everyone. And for $99 ($79 for NAPP members) it is a great deal. Currently I'm working on CS3 and the class was aimed towards CS4 users, but a lot of what Dave covered also works in CS3, which is nice that Adobe typically builds each newer version based on the previous. One of the great things is that they give you a workbook and disk with all the info that was covered that day, so if 2 months later you want to try something you learned it's easy to just reference the materials from the seminar.

Yesterday was Adobe's "official" release of CS5, so as a great bonus, Dave shared some of the new features of CS5 after the lunch break. I am completely in awe and without a doubt will be upgrading!

Of the 4 seminars I've attended I have to say that only one of them didn't do it for me. And not because the seminar was bad, it was just targeted more towards people who paint with Photoshop and that personally isn't something that I do. If you have the chance to check out one of these one day seminars, I highly suggest it. And if you're not a NAPP member yet, I also highly suggest joining! If you want to learn more about NAPP, check out my blog post here. Although in my original post, I believe there was a bonus for joining that isn't currently avilable since the post is from '08. But no matter what the offer is, it's $99 well spent for the membership or a seminar!