Class Exercise 4: On Photoshop

Shane taught a good crash course on photoshop, teaching some things which I never knew existed in CS5:

1. I heard about the “Refine Edge” feature, but I’ve never actually used it before. I was only familiar with the “Extract Edges” feature in CS3 which is now phased out in CS4 and CS5. Together with “Refine Edges”, I learnt how to use the “Quick Selection Tool” to select edges of a face/body/anything easily, and the Refine Edges make it more accurate than before! Before this, I used to use the magic wand or the pen tool and select manually. Now this is a time-saver.
2. The “Quick Mask” mode by pressing “Q” on the keyboard to toggle in and out of the modes is something totally new to me. I only knew how to use basic masks, but now I know the in-and-outs of how to create better and more accurate masks by painting/using the brush in the Quick Mask mode.
3. “In the spirit of non-destructive editing” is another term which I learnt in class. I always thought SmartObjects were useless and irritating, and usually I rasterize the layer whenever I encounter them. Now I know what they are used for! They are like assets within an assets, a PSD file within a PSD file. Like a template. Very cool!

Looking forward to use all these new features I learnt in future.