Typesetting and Reflection

This week in my online public relations publications course, I was asked to go through a sort of boot camp, teaching me the basics of Adobe Photoshop and InDesign.

First, I was asked to watch a series of tutorial videos on Lynda.com. These videos came with their own assignments, but they proved to be very informative and will surely help me in the long run. I learned how to do some pretty cool stuff on photoshop, like take people out of reflections and use shadowing to combine two images. I had already had a bit of experience on InDesign (high school newspaper/yearbook), so most of those basics were more like refreshers for me.

At first glance, I was overwhelmed with the amount of work it seemed I had to do this week. It did take a good chunk of time to complete, but the time glided by smoothly. It wasn’t work that I dreaded doing. Photoshop is pretty cool.

My reaction to what I was able to accomplish was more or less a pat on the back. It was easy to follow along with the videos, so I don’t feel like I actually did too much on my own. The challenges on Lynda aren’t challenging at all, either.

I think my reaction could have been a little more enthusiastic if I thought I could immediately go do this stuff on my own. There is no doubt in my mind that I’ll have to refer back to this week’s lesson a few times before I can remember how to do some of this stuff.

Overall, I think I gained a solid chunk of knowledge this week and, with practice, I will be able to put it to use effortlessly in the future.