PHO5552 Recap

I started taking the Photoshop: Beyond the Basics course at Algonquin in January and actually finished it in April. As i expected the course was not as great as it could have been. Don’t get me wrong, I learnt things and have been able to put them to use in my photography, but I was rarely wowed by anything and the things I did learn were few and far between. I missed a couple courses due to my vacation to Florida and a really bad cold that hit somewhere in the middle, and was never behind in anything. It would only take about 5 minutes for me to catch up upon my return. The instructor was the same guy as the previous course and anyone who has heard me talk about him knows that he is not my preferred teacher. He just doesn’t go about things the same way as I do and I do not enjoy his style as much as the other instructors in the night-time program. That being said, some of the other students absolutely love him so obviously he isn’t an outright bad instructor. Plus, as difficult as he seems during the course, he is apparently a pretty reasonable guy when it comes to the end of the course.
The first assignment we had was to take two images and insert the background of one (photo taken at Versailles) into the foreground of the other (the alps photo). There were a few stipulations, like removing the figure of Neptune and the village in front of the mountains.
                       
When all was said and done, the below composite photo got me a B+, which I wasn’t very happy with. I realize I had missed some of the smaller details like the reflection of the mountains in the water, but other than that is was technically accurate and had all the other features he wanted (like channels, layers, etc). I also used Curves, Levels and other adjustments layers to alter the colour and saturationI figured the next assignment would be better marked. You see in the first Photoshop course I took with this instructor, he marked very unreasonably in the first assignment and then was better in the next ones. However, there turned out to be only one assignment in this course which upset me a great deal.
We had a theory test on which I was the only student to get perfect and then later a practical test on which I got an A-. Somehow I got an A in the course – I don’t understand it, but I am not going to complain because I think I deserved it.