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ITLS 5230 - 6230 - Instructional Graphics Production 1
  • Begin exploring the features of the immensely powerful Adobe Photoshop program. Prepare to create informative graphics to industry-standard specifications. 

  • Master basic "toolbox" skills of Photoshop. Create graphic projects related to your own field.  Apply basic design and graphic communication principles. 


  • Experience real world projects and assignments related to using Photoshop and applying graphic design principles. You will have opportunities to have your work published.​
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  • Create a portfolio of work that can be shown to potential employers. Many of my former students have found employment using skills learned in this course.

Course Description for ITLS 5230/6230 - Instructional Graphics Production I

No previous Photoshop experience is necessary.  We'll start at the beginning.  However, you should be comfortable in the basics of computer use, saving files, etc.  In this course you will learn and use...
  • Graphic design basics such as contrast, repetition, alignments and grids, proximity, typography, color theory, and more!
  • Photoshop and its helper applications: the Bridge and Camera Raw (along with their tools, interface, panels, and dialogs)
  • Photoshop's powerful layers, blending modes, and layer effects
  • Photoshop's vector tools - the shape tool, and the pen tool
  • Photoshop's powerful adjustment layers and healing tools
  • Photoshop's type tools
  • Photoshop's many filters, effects, and styles
  • How to prepare images for print and web
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Learn graphic design principles and put them into practice
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Learn to use filters and brushes to create art from photos.
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Learn how to bring out the best in your photos!
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Learn how to use blending modes and layer effects!
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Do real world projects for clients!
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Learn how to manipulate objects such as text in Photoshop!
Required Software
Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud (Currently CC2019)
You need to have access to Photoshop CC to take this course.   A monthly subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud is available at $19.99 per month for the entire design suite or $9.99 per month for the Creative Cloud Photography plan (Photoshop, Lightroom, and Adobe Spark, which also includes Bridge). The lessons and tutorials on this site have been prepared using Photoshop Creative Cloud.  

You can click on the image at the right to go to the student and teacher subscription plans for Adobe Creative Cloud.

​Course Materials
All lessons, tutorials, resources, and reading materials are accessible through this site. Grades, scoring rubrics, readings, exercise files, messages, assignments, announcements, etc., for students in the course will be handled through Canvas @ Utah State University.

Digital Storage Backup
Keeping a backup of your files somewhere other than your computer is a good habit to get into. It is recommended that you keep a copy of your files on an external drive, flash drive, and/or online file storage "clouds" such as Google Drive or Dropbox.com. Both provide free storage as well as higher quantities of storage space available to purchase.  USU students who have set up an aggiemail.usu.edu account have unlimited storage provided through Google Drive.  USU also offers students 50GB of free storage through Box.USU.edu.  Just log in with your A-Number and strong password.
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Required Book for this course...

The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams (4th Edition)
A tried and true, easy-to-read guide to design terms and techniques from a "level 0" perspective. If your attitude is "I can't even draw a stick figure, how can I possibly design" then this is the book for you. This author's philosophy, introduced in the first few pages of the book, is that learning design can be simplified to 3 main steps: 
  1. Learn the principles (contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity)
  2. Recognize when you're not using them
  3. Apply the principles
​You can get this inexpensive, but awesome book in the USU Campus Store, or online at Amazon.com, Barns & Noble, Google Books, Find More Books, and many other sites. Be sure to buy the 4th edition.
About This Class
This course was developed specifically for a 15 week college semester and is currently being conducted as a blended face-to-face & online course for Utah State University students. I have made the course an open education resource (OER), so anyone may freely access this course online and learn from it. If you have questions, feel free to contact me, the course author and instructor.

Nathan Smith
nathan.smith@usu.edu
Subject: Beginning Photoshop and Graphic Design
Page last updated
​August 8, 2019
Creative Commons License
Beginning Photoshop & Graphic Design by Nathan Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
See what students learn to do in this course! Here are a few projects from previous students... (click any thumbnail to begin the gallery show)