Photoshop World Overview

Photoshop World 2008 in Orlando is officially over. The last few classes and the large 'wrap up' gathering took place yesterday afternoon. My overall opinion of the conference is extremely positive with a few sore spots; namely my feet, back, shoulders, brain, and wallet.

The first three sore spots came about from the excessive walking over the last three days, two of which I was dump enough to carry my laptop, work book, and all my camera gear around with me. There was no time to use my camera equipment and no free internet service to make having my laptop worth it. My brain is sore from trying to soak up so much information in such a little amount of time. This is where I say how thankful I am that they give you a work book that contains the instructors lesson for every class at the conference. So I can actually review all the classes I took to pick up on the things I forgot and also go through the classes I didn't take and still get the knowledge out of it. My wallet is sore from the convention center rip off prices that we endured... $10 a day for parking with NO re-entry, $10 for a flat tasteless cheeseburger, $4 for a bottle of water, etc. Anyone who has been to a conference before knows what I am talking about.

So this brings about my "Attending Photoshop World Tips & Tricks" lesson for this morning...

• Wear comfortable shoes!
• Don't bring lots of stuff with you; you won't have time to use it.
• Bring your own snacks and carry a water bottle that you can refill at water coolers.
• Prepare your body to run on little to no sleep during the length of the conference.
• Bring a notebook and a few pens; the work book has limited room for notes and people will beg you to borrow a pen.
• Be ready to meet cool people and be amazed at what the pro's are teaching.

I was smart enough to wear comfortable shoes and bring snacks along with me. I was dumb enough to carry too much stuff on the first two days and at times all my snacks were in my wifes bag in a different classroom... OOPS! I also forgot to take a pen on the first day so I went around the trade show floor and picked up a few from various vendors. So everything worked out quite well.

After the conference was over and my wife and I were in the car heading home telling each other various things we each learned in the classes we took. Once we got home and settled in I couldn't help but fire up Photoshop and test out a few of the things I learned. I took one of the photos in my portfolio that I had processed just under a year ago and re-processed it from scratch using things I learned in Scott Kelby's 7 Point System class. The differences are amazing especially in the color and the image details.