Why I’m thrilled to have a Total Training Online Subscription for Adobe Software
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
Studying Total Training Courses
Since January I’ve been learning how to use the Adobe software programs using the Total Training Online Courses. I’ve been learning how to use Photoshop, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver and in the future I’ll add studying Illustrator and probably Adobe Acrobat. The courses show through video how to use the programs. The instructors are great and make it much easier to learn these very complex programs. Whenever I leaf through instructional books on these programs my eyes glaze over and become completely blurred without focus. I take notes as I watch the videos and then later I have the information in a format I can quickly identify and relate to.
It’s great having access to all the Adobe software courses because it allows access to all the information. And if any new courses are added these are also available for as long as the subscription lasts. It’s much cheaper than buying the DVDs for the specific courses. A couple of years ago I bought a set of DVDs on InDesign and I discovered that after taking notes from them I no longer wanted to spend the time it takes to watch the videos a second time. Having the DVDs was really no extra benefit to me. The online subscription gives me access I otherwise could not hope to gain if I had to buy the DVDs.
This is taking rather a lot of time however. I had a structure in mind about which lessons I’d do first and what I needed in order to progress with the art. All those great ideas have flown to the wind. I started with Photoshop. Then I realized I wanted to add another gallery for Digital Art to my website. But I would need to redo my website in a format that is easy to edit and add to…I started the Dreamweaver lessons, which are really great. This weekend I had the idea to post an article about how I paint with egg tempera… and so… I started watching the Flash course videos with a view to preparing that blog post.
I’m having loads of fun with it, and as a result I’ve ended up making good progress in most of the programs I want to learn. My days of systematic, ordered approach appear to be over!
These courses are giving me more confidence to move forward with my plans for the art. I hope, in time, to produce digital art as well as the egg tempera paintings. I’d like to create short image-dominated books; for example, I want to paint many of the photos I took of Annecy, France, and include text next to the paintings and print this as a booklet. I’ll start by using the DweezelJazz blog posts about Annecy as a basis for that project. And as I hone my skills in writing and telling stories, I’d like to illustrate those. So there are many things I’m hoping to do, but it takes time to learn the tools required in order to create these things.
I think I’ve learned enough about Flash to create the slide show/movie to demonstrate how I approach painting with egg tempera. Stay tuned for the next DweezelJazz blog post to see how it turns out with the making of a Flash movie.
