I will be appearing at Fotofusion 2007 at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre from January 16-21. It is an amazing Photo Festival with seminars in Photoshop, digital cameras, photo shoots and panel discussions as well as many social events where you can meet many of today's most important photographers, Photoshop gurus, and educators. Contact the Palm Beach Photographic Centre at the link below right for more information. Fotofusion includes: Photography Seminars & Panels, One-on-One Portfolio Reviews, Hands-on Photoshop® Workshops, World Class Photography Exhibitions, FOTOshoots, Book Signings & Gallery Walks, Technology Centre, Multimedia Presentations, and Fusion-Schmooze Parties. I will be teaching seminars in: Creative Photoshop, Fun with the History Palette, and The Top Ten Ways to Use Blending Modes. Hope to see you there!

With all of the excitement of the release of the Photoshop CS3 beta I too have been tempted to begin offering some tutorials on the new version. But rather than put up some quick me too tutorials I would rather wait and work with the program and complete some meaningful images for me before I want to offer opinions about CS3. Right off the bat it looks amazing and I thank the other podcasters who have offered some looks at the new features. I was inspired to make a tutorial on my first version of Photoshop. It was version 2.5, released in 1993. I had just switched from Aldus Photostyler and my first version was for Windows. My first computer was a cheap IBM clone, a 486 with 4 megs of ram and a 135 meg hard drive. So much focus then was on hardware resources or lack thereof and ways to work to maximize your system's resources. But Photoshop back then was still amazing and many of its core elements are still the basis for what I do with it today. I feel that looking back to the program in a somewhat simpler form is a great way to think about image selection fundamentals and working with channels, whether you use Photoshop as a digital darkroom or as a composite generator or both. So I hope you enjoy this look back and use it as a way to look forward with your Photoshop creative technique. Happy New Year!

I'm glad to be back after two weeks off for shoulder surgery. My right arm is still in an ultra sling for three more weeks so this podcast is a left hand creation. I'm not bad but not great with the mouse left handed so pardon the erratic movements at times. This episode’s topic is Smart Objects, an underused and rather misunderstood feature in Photoshop. They offer some real benefits now, particularly in layer transformations but I’m hoping I will encourage you to take a closer look at what they offer in PS CS2 because what I have seen only briefly in my look at PS CS3 will really make them part of your daily workflow. So take a look at Smart Objects.

They say necessity is the mother of invention..... I am recovering from shoulder reconstruction last Friday and am unable to create this week's videocast, a coherent one anyway. Photoshop's logic and menu commands take on a new reality under prescription painkillers. So this week's offering is an audiocast, which I am thinking of offering occassionally. Anyway, I thought I would take this opportunity to let you get to know me a little better and my approach to Photoshop. I would love to hear back from you with positive or negative comments (be kind, I am still medicated). Take care. John

I wish to express my sincerest gratitude to all of you who have downloaded my podcasts in the last few weeks. From the back of the pack we have risen at times to number 11 in the iTunes directory of Photoshop podcasts. I am not sure what exactly goes into these rankings but I am proud to be among such esteemed company. I have just undergone reconstructive surgery of my right shoulder and will be rather challenged to create new episodes in the immediate future. If you have any requests in the meantime I would love to hear them and thanks again for listening. John

Edge Effects Two continues our explorations of our previous episode in using a grayscale scan of a transfer image to create a border for another image. But we take it a step further in more closely replicating Image Transfer characteristics from color transitions in the edges themselves but also aspects of Image Transfers such as surface texture. We also explore replicating lift off or peeling away of dyes in the shadow areas of a transfer but in ways that offer control not possible in the original process.

Creative Edge Effects explores ways to add your own borders and edges to your digital and scanned images. From a simple blurred transition edge we progress through a filtered edge and finally to an edge created from a scanned image. This allows the artist to create original and personalized edge effects, even mimicking non-silver processes such as Van Dyke Brown and Cyanotype.

The History Palette has always been a great way to track your movements in Photoshop and return to previous versions of your image when you have taken a direction that is no longer working for you. It can also be a very practical and creative tool for retouching, emphasizing certain details in your image or altering your focus and apparent depth of field. In this podcast we explore using blurred and sharpened history snapshots to emphasize the eyes in a portrait and to change the focus in our image, mimicking a focus effect of a view camera.

Layer Styles Blending has been an integral technique in my workflow for many years. It is a great way to composite images and has many other practical uses as well. This podcast explores Layer Blend Modes as well as the "Blend If" sliders to blend image pixels.

Welcome to my new site for Creative Photoshop. I have been teaching Photoshop at workshops around the country since 1995. I have always wanted a way to bring information to prospective and current students. My existing website was able to list workshops and offer some PDF downloads but the new technology of video podcasts really makes it convenient to reach an audience with content quickly and efficiently. Creative Photoshop is a book in progress and much of the content I will offer in abbreviated form here will find its way in expanded form in the book. Suggestions are certainly welcome as I go forward. The idea for doing a site such as this came while I was teaching a one week Photoshop workshop for the Art Department faculty at Cornell University. It was an interesting experience for me as I have mostly taught Photoshop to photographers in my workshops. The Art Department faculty consisted of not only photographers but also printmakers and sculptors. It was refreshing to get their perspective on Photoshop and how they reacted to the various techniques presented. Near the end of the week I was reviewing resources and showing some of the Podcasts available in iTunes. One of the faculty said to me" why don't you make some podcasts?" And so here we are, my first one. I have chosen one of my favorite techniques, "Layer Styles Blending". My first effort can probably be improved but it gets to a point where it is time to put it out and see what happens. I am sure (at least I hope so) that my later tutorials will be more polished. I hope you enjoy this first effort. John Reuter