Irecently had the opportunity to try out graphicauthority.com's "Photoshop Member Zone Tool Box". The first thing I did was check out www.graphicauthority.com by clicking on their link at DIC. I was hoping it wasn't going to be another program. I've gotten to the point where more programs are not necessarily a good thing. I have enough trouble mastering the ones I have already. When you get right down to it…Photoshop has so many functions and so many ways to achieve the same look (or similar) that other programs offer I often wonder why I don't just spend more time mastering the one program.

I happily discovered that the CD contains not a program but a set of tutorials for about a half dozen different kinds of effects you can apply with Photoshop as well as several custom shapes and edges that you can use with Photoshop. The tutorials are in Quicktime movies as well as print form. What's so cool about the movies is that each one is short enough to watch over and over until you get the hang of what the trainer is showing you. He goes step by step and you follow along on his Photoshop desktop as he's creating the effects.

What I found a little disconcerting is that he's using a Mac machine so some of the things he says (what shortcut keys to use, etc) are for Mac users and of course his desktop looks slightly different. I looked all over my keyboard and couldn't find the "OPTION" key. He does however translate some of the differences on occasion.

NOTICE: This is not a "how to learn the Photoshop basics" kind of program. The lessons are geared toward learning the specific effects included in the package. I think you should be at least somewhat comfortable with Photoshop before you start one of these lessons. I don't mean you need to be a master, but it helps if you understand the basics.

The normal price for the package I got was $69.95 and before actually reviewing the product I thought that sounded a little on the high side. After reviewing all the lessons and the content included I am happy to say that price seems to be in line for some quality Photoshop lessons. The folks at Graphicauthority have sweetened the deal for DIC members by allowing us to purchase their products at $7.99 less than their already reduced student rates of $30 off the normal price…an awesome deal in my book.

Now that I've covered the basic introduction I can talk a bit about the fun stuff the package includes. Making something called a sloppy edge effect around a picture….sounded like fun…anything sloppy usually is! This effect uses some of the "custom shapes" that came on the CD and you end up with a picture that would be great in a scrapbook.

I grabbed a picture from my picture folder that I thought went well with the "sloppy" theme and followed along, step by step. Often I had to play parts over several times, stopping, starting, looking, doing.

Not that there was something wrong, or lacking with the original "plain-Jane" (sorry all you Jane's reading this) non-framed image but sometimes it's fun to do something unique with an image and this is a really easy technique that allows lots of freedom to create many moods with the same set of tools. That edge could have been any size or any color. I had the ability to adjust the drop shadowing or the blurring from effect at the edge of the main image. You are really only limited by your imagination or the number of custom shapes you have loaded into PS.

While following the instructions given on the video I learned a couple of cool, easy things about PS that I had not discovered earlier…shortcuts to procedures that I had been doing the "hard way". I think that's one of the great values of a lesson like this…While watching a Master PS user who is good at explaining each step he takes, you soon see that you've missed some of the easy functionality that PS has built in.

How many times have you struggled to get an image to a certain "size ratio"? Well… maybe I'm slower than the average bear but cropping an image to a perfect 5x7 was a piece of cake…and the solution was right there in front of me all along. I just needed someone to point me to the right place.






Another fun technique on the CD is something called "collage" a way to combine two images in layer masks to layer one image over another while the bottom image can show through. This was more complicated and I think you'd have to have the right two images to combine or this just wouldn't be all that cool. I had just taken some family portraits for our neighbors and what I did was combine one of the portraits with a photograph I took of their fireplace mantel decorated for Christmas. I think the effect works in this image…but PLEASE… I probably didn't take as much time with this example as with the previous two so you might notice a few sloppy edges (unintended sloppy edges this time).

What this accomplished was that I replaced was able to project the decorations on the fireplace onto the fairly plain surface of my original background. It leaves you with a somewhat transparent view of the decorations behind the main subjects… There would be dozens of variations depending on what images you used and the adjustments you made while performing the effects. I really didn't even touch the surface of this effect…There are a lot of background photographs included in the CD that would make wonderful backdrops that could be applied in a similar manner.

You know those cool "filmstrip" digital art pieces you see from time to time…there are overlays for those included in the CD and I'm anxious to give some of those a try but since I promised Bob this work before Christmas I should probably just get on with my recommendations.

Lots of cool stuff here and the price is right. Having something like this allows you to work at your own speed, with your own images and like everything Photoshop the variations in all the effects they teach are limitless. I'd highly recommend this as a great stocking stuffer for any photographer on your Christmas list.