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PhotoshopWorld 2001

By Gary Coyne

The third annual PhotoshopWorld 2001 moved from its previous Tampa Bay Florida location to the Los Angeles Convention Center on April 27-29.

More specifically, the PhotoshopWorld events have been so successful that NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) created PhotoshopWorld 2001 West and on September 6-8 there will be PhotoshopWorld East. A quick review: if you use Photoshop, and you can get to Florida for this event, go.

NAPP had a somewhat circuitous origin originally beginning in the throws as Mac Today Magazine in 1993 by Scott Kelbe and Jim Workman, among others. This monthly magazine started just at the end of the Mac's great time before the great plunge. In October 1993, Scott Kelbe started running one-day Photoshop seminars collecting about 200 attendees. The number of participants quickly grew and soon a minimum of 350 attendees per meeting were showing up in small cities while upwards of 600 attended when the show was held in San Francisco or New York.

To date, Scott has held 170 one-day Photoshop seminars in 36 states, 47 cities and three countries (US, Canada, and UK). Also to date, NAPP has 27,000 members and is growing.

PhotoshopWorld, a three-day extravaganza of Photoshop demonstrations and classes by the leading experts of Photoshop, started three years ago in January 1998 as was NAPP, and simultaneously, the journal, Mac Today became Mac Design Magazine. The first two PhotoshopWorlds had 800 then 2000 people, and for 2001 there was a respective 2100 attendees.

This year the attendees had lots to do. There were a total of 60 hour-long seminars: five seminars an hour held in 6 different rooms over two days. They ranged from the main session held in a room with 1200 seats, three breakout sessions each with about 650 seats, Wacom (of the Wacom tablet) held a hand-on class for about 20 people at a time, and finally Adobe had an open-session session where attendees could focus each class by the attendee's questions based on the product of the hour (Photoshop, Illustrator, GoLive, InDesign, etc.).

The show started 6 pm Friday night with hors d'oevres. Actually, it started hours earlier with people getting checked in. The people in line were very patient considering that some were in line long after all the sushi had been eaten. The food and a great band were sponsored by Adobe. Russel Brown, a Photoshop expert from Adobe, was stationed by a Ti Powerbook giving Photoshop tips left and right and handing out a CD of QuickTime movies of these tips along with light-up superballs which added to the educational fun.

The crowd then went into a large auditorium where we were presented with the session presenters. Not to do things casually, the teachers were presented as basketball stars, "Here is Robb Kerr at 7 feet 2 inches..." (I don't think Robb Kerr is over 6 feet, but hey, it was showtime!!). Then we were treated to the Laker Girls for a bit of real showtime as they danced for us for several minutes. [The LA Convention Center is on the same block as the Staples Center, home of the LA Lakers--there really is a connection here.]

NAPP then presented the Photoshop Guru Awards, NAPP's own take on the Academy Awards. This gave the audience a chance to see what can be done with Photoshop in the hands of true masters. The results of each award can be found at this link. (My only regret with the page showing the winners is that only a thumbnail of each entry is shown. As such, you cannot see the detail we had a chance to observe when it was blown up on a giant screen.

Lastly, there was the "jam competition." Here, various Photoshop greats such as Scott Kelby, Ben Willmore, Robb Kerr, Helene DeLillo, Felix Nelson, and others each had ten minutes to wow and teach the audience something about/with Photoshop. Watching these folks cranking out trick after trick after neat effect without breaking a sweat was amazing.

Saturday at 8:30 in the morning saw 2000 people crowded into the same room for a keynote by a representative from Adobe's Photoshop division. After the keynote we had a few minutes to see the 47 exhibitors before running off to the sessions. If there is anything the show could use it is more exhibitors. The exhibitors at the show were crowded by the number of attendees and were obviously overwhelmed.

All the sessions I went to (with one exception) were varying degrees of great to fantastic. At one point, Scott Kelby pointed out that no one was teaching more classes than Robb Kerr and having attended his last class on both Saturday and Sunday, I should warn him that although he was very very good, he was obviously worn out by the end of both days. For his own good, he should teach a few less classes. My only complaint for the teachers was Peter Bauer. His class on Actions should have been good, but wasn't. He does write well, but he needs to work on his teaching. It seemed that he felt he needed to be "on," and was busy trying to be funny. He wasn't. The class ended having very little focus and not much there. Although not near as bad as Peter Bauer, a class on scanners taught by Dave Huss was hampered in that Dave is (or at least has been) a stand-up comedian. Although he occasionally was funny, I came to the class to be entertained with education, not comedy. I was not alone as I heard the same comments from others while leaving the class. All that notwithstanding, I learned so much from Ben Willmore, Scott Kelby, and Robb Kerr that I don't feel that anything was missed.

But wait, there's more. As opposed to training sessions that provide a handout for each class within the class, the handouts for all the classes were presented to each attendee for both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday's workbook had 370 pages while Sunday's workbook had 252 pages. The text on the pages are laid providing room to take notes so during a given session one can follow along with the demonstration and take additional notes as needed.

These workbooks allow a variety of options. For one, the workbooks provide materials for you to fall back on later when you try to remember how various techniques were performed. Additionally, it is impossible to attend all classes unless one develops powers of bilocality. So, if you do not have the opportunity to attend a given class, you do have the notes from the class. Although the notes are not as good as watching the presentation live, they are surprisingly good. The write-ups are mostly excellent, and typically guide the reader through the process of any given technique just as was presented in class. When you consider that all the people providing sessions are writers for either magazines and/or books, the quality of these session notes are typically superb.

What I also found interesting was the range of people attending PhotoshopWorld: of course there were the design/graphic professionals, those working in the print and/or photographic field. There were also the web designers learning how to customize their workflow around Photoshop. But, what I found fascinating were the number of people who wanted to learn greater control of Photoshop for no economic gain, no commercial advantage, only because they wanted to improve their ability to tweak their digital photographs, alter their scans, and/or just have fun with Photoshop.

In short, PhotoshopWorld is not only for the professional, but for anyone at any level who wants to improve their knowledge and expertise of Adobe Photoshop. Yes, some of the technical experts are better teachers than others, but such is life. Everyone who went to this event got their money's worth and then some. And that is what it's all about.

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