Past User Group Meetings

An archive of past meeting topics and handouts, in chronological order.

3/5/2008

Come down to participate in discussions on catalogs (using a mobile catalog and shooting on the road, then bringing that catalog into your master catalog), DNG (Digital Negative Format) and Lightroom in general.

Engineers from the Photoshop and Lightroom team will be on hand to help answer questions.

Q & A session and giveaways will follow. (Must be present to win)

2/13/2008

Paul Howlett, Full time Creative faculty at HTC (Hennepin Technical College) and corporate trainer at Easel Training, will do a discussion on reasons to Smart Objects, focusing on creative and production based ideas (Including using Illustrator Smart Objects).

Stuart Block (www.pro-photo.info) will be covering techniques for channel blending and mid-tone contrast adjustments for photographers.

Q & A session, and give aways at the end of the session, including a copy of the Web Creative Suite, and many other great items.

1/23/2008

Twin Cities Lightroom User Group

Jamie Thingelstad will demo managing workflow with keywords, and also touch on using programs like TextExpander to make lightroom metadata work easier.

Using Worklist Keywords

The Lightroom Journal

TextExpander

Andy Rahn will talk about two metadata workflows. First, he'll show off the location, city, state, country fields and how they are revealed in the metadata browser. Then he'll dig into the Text Token Presets. We'll explore the built-in text token presets, and then build one of our own. Then we'll use our new preset to add a photo's caption, copyright and title in Slideshow, Print and Web modules.

Ben Zibble will show off the available Export plug-ins, including plug-ins for Flickr, and other photo services. These plug-ins were created with the new Lightroom SDK, which Ben will point out links to resources for.

Lightroom Keyboard Shortcuts

10/12/2007

Come down for news, tips, discussions on Wacom tablets with Weston Maggio. Cedric Hohnstadt will be discussing some of his recent work and then will give a demonstration on how he uses Photoshop and a Cintiq to create illustrations and character designs. A Q&A session will follow. .

Cedric Hohnstadt is a local freelance character designer and illustrator. He has over ten years of experience creating characters for ad campaigns, animation, and toys and games. His past clients include Disney, Big Idea, Crayola, Scholastic, Exxon/Mobil, and General Mills. He has worked with licensed characters such as Goofy, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Curious George, VeggieTales, and Little Einstiens. Recently Cedric designed characters for several episodes of "3-2-1 Penguins!", a Saturday morning animated series on NBC.

Links for Tonight's Meeting:

8/8/2007

Color Management Slides

Cool Websites

Things to Try:

Dr. Brown’s Services 1.9

Contact Sheet X 1.2

7/11/2007

Come down and learn what's new in Lightroom 1.1. Discuss B&W conversion, and hierarchical keywording.

Engineers from the Photoshop and Lightroom team will be on hand to help answer questions.

Links for tonight's meeting:

Lightroom 1.1:

Lightroom Library Module:

3rd Party Web Galleries

Cool Websites

Photoshop Updates:

6/13/2007

News, announcements and Quick-tips for Photoshop:

Adobe Media Gallery

Adobe® Media Gallery (AMG) for Adobe Bridge adds quick, powerful Web gallery creation to Adobe Photoshop® CS3, Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended and the Adobe Creative Suite®. AMG makes it possible to create HTML or Flash-based galleries from any of the file formats supported by Bridge; adjust the galleries using the built-in preview; and export the results or upload them via FTP.

Photoshop CS3 Extended Plug-In for Google 3D Warehouse

A free plug-in that enables you to search and download 3D models from Google 3D Warehouse™ directly from Adobe® Photoshop CS3 Extended.

Cool Websites

Things to Try

Cory Shubert talked about the new stuff in ACR 4.1.

Robbie Halvorson showed off some of the cool features in Photoshop Extended.

Q & A session followed. Gave away a copy of the creative suite, a Photoshop Elements 4 bundle, and many Photoshop books and shirts.

9/14/2006 Twin Cities Photoshop User Group

News, announcements and Quick-tips for Photoshop

Ken Friberg talked about his digital workflow and favorite Photoshop tools for wedding photography.

We'll also get an update of the upcoming Beta 4 Adobe Lightroom. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

Q & A session followed. Gave away a copy of Photoshop Elements 4 and Premiere Elements 2 bundle, and many Photoshop books and shirts.

Links to check out:

7/6/2006 Twin Cities Photoshop User Group

Quick-tips for automating Photoshop, using both scripts and actions.

Cory Shubert will talk about image interpolation and infrared photography.

We'll also get an update of the recently released Beta 3 Adobe Lightroom.

Q & A session and giveaways will follow. Stick around for your chance to win a copy of Photoshop CS2, or a Photoshop Elements 4 and Premiere Elements 2 bundle, or one of many Photoshop books and shirts. (Must be present to win)

6/8/2006 Twin Cities Photoshop User Group

Ben Willmore schooled us all on using Curves. He also laid some impressive power tips for color replacement and the Extract Plug-in.

Check out Ben's websites, books and training here:

Digital Mastery

Where is Ben?

Joint Maya/Twincities Photoshop User Group Session

On April 24th, Sandra Voelker of EA Games shared with us her use of Photoshop and MEL scripting to help produce textures for games. She also shared with us what it's like at EA.

3/9/2006 Twin Cities Photoshop User Group

3/2/2006

First, we got an update on "Adobe Lightroom" Beta 2 from Adobe engineer Jon Steinmetz. Adobe Lightroom is now available as a Universal Binary for compatibility with Intel-based Apple hardware and has a host of other improvements and great new features.

Second, we'talked about displaying photographs on the web using Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and third party web photo galleries. Presented by Kurt Adolfson of Kurt Adolfson Photography, and Jeff Tranberry and Andy Rahn of Adobe Systems.

Web Photo Galleries

Third, we discussed the new HDR (High Dynamic Range images) functionality in Photoshop CS2. Presented by Maya User Group leader Robbie Halvorson.

HDR

Session Planning Notes

3/1/2005

I posted the notes from our January 12th, small group, brainstorming sessions.

The DAM Book (Reviewed by Ken Friberg)

2/28/2006

Peter Krogh brings us along on a detailed journey though his digital asset management process in "The DAM Book" (2005 O'Reilly Media Inc.) Amateurs and Pros trust me that you have reason to read on even though it is true, the title is the most engaging part of the whole book. Amateurs, because your images are worth more than you may give them credit, and pros, we all know optimizing our processes frees time for the fun stuff, but Peter Krogh reminds us of the professional advantages it can provide as well. Peter does a thorough enough job that you are sure to pick up something worth the read time which was much quicker than I had anticipated. But I want to get the amateurs interested in this book because as I find myself mentoring more people about digital asset management (DAM) processes I realize that the more you adopt pro DAM processes the more you will enjoy your hobby. Let's face it, when you switched to digital you started shooting a heck of a lot more. Getting a process down which speeds up editing, organizing and secures all those files, Peter argues, will pay off in many ways. Keep in mind your reading the words of a photographer who likes to speed through the grunge work to get to the fun stuff. I'm not someone who thrives on a good organizational task.

So what's it going to take. The good news is you don't need to buy more software. The fundamentals can be done with the software that came with your Mac. PC, I don't know, but you get my point. However (of course there had to be a however) I have this disclaimer. I'm writing this review for my friends at Adobe and I've had a love affair with Photoshop since version 1, well really since "Fast Eddy" version 2. Peter Krogh focuses on CS2 and this is a major part of his solution. The title subtext of this book is after all "Sorting and archiving your photography collection using Photoshop CS2 Bridge and digital asset management software". Now the plug. Photographers who are still at CS must seriously consider CS2, but this book will help you define the reasons for that before you spend the money.

The truth is all photographer digital or film, amateur or professional follow some form of asset management. The real question is how tight is your ship and can you stand to make gains in efficiency, security and revenue. I give Peter Krogh 4 stars for this enlightening yet somewhat brief tour. CS2 photographers put it on your list.

- Ken Friberg is a photographer and graphic designer in Saint Paul Minnesota. He has been working with digital imagery professionally for 17 years.

1/12/2006 Twin Cities Photoshop User Group

Notes from the Twin Cities Photoshop User Group meeting held January 12th, 2005, at MCAD, Auditorium 150

Guest Speakers

First, Introducing "Adobe Lightroom" - A new application announced today from Adobe which offers an efficient new way for professional photographers to import, select, develop, and showcase large volumes of digital images. Presented by Craig Marble of Adobe Systems.

Second, we broke down into small groups to discuss the future: What discussions would you like to see at the Twin Cities Photoshop User Group in 2006? We also discussed Photoshop and Lightroom.

Tonight's Topic Resources

Tonight's Quick Tips Resources

11/10/2005 Twin Cities Photoshop User Group

Notes from the Twin Cities Photoshop User Group meeting held November 10th, 2005, at MCAD, Auditorium 150.

Guest Speakers

We had two main discussions for this meeting:

Tonight's Topic Resources

For Professional Photographers

White Papers and Primers

9/15/2005 Twin Cities Photoshop User Group

Notes from the Twin Cities Photoshop User Group meeting held September 15th, 2005, at MCAD, Auditorium 150.

Guest Speakers

We had two main discussions for this meeting:

Tonight's Topic Resources

Color Management Handouts

Keyboard Shortcuts Handouts

Featured Books

Featured Training

Featured Products

7/14/2005 Twin Cities Photoshop User Group

Notes from the Twin Cities Photoshop User Group meeting held July 14th, 2005, at MCAD, Auditorium 150.

Guest Speakers

We had one main discussion for this meeting:

Tonight's Topic Resources

5/12/2005 Twin Cities Photoshop User Group

Notes from the Twin Cities Photoshop User Group meeting held May 12th, 2005, at MCAD, Auditorium 150.

Guest Speakers

We had one main discussion for this meeting:

Tonight's Topic Resources