Luminous Works

Steve’s presenting a live 2-hour online masterclass and Q&A "Beyond Lightroom: Ten Photoshop Features That Photographers Need to Know“! He will demo on the Photoshop public beta so you can have an up-to-the-minute look at what’s on offer and what’s just around the corner!

When?

• Wednesday May 24th, 2023
• 10.00am-12.00pm Pacific Time
• 2-Hour online masterclass and Q&A

What will be covered?

• Top features in Photoshop that will take your photographs to the next level
• Retouching, recomposing, compositing, focus effects and creative color & toning effects
• How to integrate Photoshop into your photo editing workflow
• How to round trip between Lightroom and Photoshop

$75. Full details registration at: https://events.zoom.us/ev/AooAyUV1PUhUu1wIpV2ckBZ6ZE7_Ri3dlay7cdEyEUKCS8QugsZU~AggLXsr32QYFjq8BlYLZ5I06Dg

Many thanks to Steve's publisher Rocky Nook, and especially Damon H, for choreographing this event!

Prefer an in-person class? Steve’s teaching our Level 1, two-day Photoshop Essentials on June 22 and 23, 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM in our lovely classroom in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood. $595. Learn more at: https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/photoshop-essentials

From to Zoom, for beginning to veteran Photoshop users, Steve’s newest book, Adobe Photoshop: A Complete Course and Compendium of Features, Second Edition, has gone to press! Completely updated to include the newest features (and even those just around the corner🤩), this book is an effective way to Photoshop and a thorough, easy-to-use , more details linked below.
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Steve’s teaching our 2 day Photoshop Essentials in-person May 2 + 3, $595. Taught in our beautiful, eight individual seats classroom. Details at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/photoshop-essentials
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Prefer online learning? His Level 1 Photoshop Foundations class is live online via zoom on April 14, 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM Pacific Time, $299. https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/illustrator-foundations-live-via-zoom
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If you don't know us already, Luminous Works is and Carla Fraga; we're educators as well as aficionados of art and design. Our Adobe Authorized Training Center's classroom has been since 2006, offering in-person classes. Recently we’ve expanded to include online live via zoom classes. Full details on our site.

Preorder Steve's book@ https://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Photoshop-2nd-Complete-Compendium-dp-B0BLYBGD5G/dp/B0BLYBGD5G/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
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St. Patrick’s Day is coming up, so Steve’s created a new and improved method to create a Celtic knot in Illustrator, using like Repeat and Intertwine to make weave and knot patterns more easily than ever! Check out his tutorial on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCob2E4wUMs

Steve’s also teaching our 2 day Illustrator Essentials in-person March 30+ 31, $595. Taught in our beautiful, eight individual seats classroom. Details at ohttps://www.luminousworks.com/classes/illustrator-essentials

Prefer online learning? His Level 1 Illustrator Foundations class is live online via zoom March 16 or April 19, 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM Pacific Time for $299. More at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/illustrator-foundations-live-via-zoom

Adobe Lightroom has evolved and grown tremendously over the years. 📸 Photography workflows have had to evolve with it. Photoshop still has a place in those workflows and we’ve been tracking and teaching what its place is. What a difference even a year makes! Find out what Photoshop can do that Lightroom cannot annnnnd how to do it in Steve's Photoshop Level 2 for Photographers, February 20 or April 26. Full details at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/photoshop-level-2-for-photography

Our mascot Peachy is dispersing hearts to all on this February 14!

Steve created this cute graphic using . Note the subtle woven texture on the basket’s side. Join Steve for an in-person beginning Illustrator class February 23+24 or March 30+31, details at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/illustrator-essentials . Prefer to learn online? His one day Foundations of Illustrator class runs on Zoom March 16 or April 19; https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/illustrator-foundations-live-via-zoom

Wow, a big year coming up for us... 2023 marks our 20th year in business, our 17th in our Ballard classroom and a two digit birthday that ends in zero for our mascot, Peachy*! We wish you all the best of the best and a year of joy and renewal.

*If you had a photography class with Carla in the mid 90s, you can guess accurately what that number is...😆

Inspired by backyard birds and the lovely bird photos of a former student, Steve created this little cutie. Using Adobe Illustrator to draw simple shapes (circles and other ellipses, triangles, and rectangles), some halved or quartered, and voilá! A little brown bird, AKA “LBB" in birder jargon.😆 A touch of Pathfinder Unite for the cloud and bird note + a bit of Width Tool to taper the twig was as fancy as it got.

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Learn Illustrator live on zoom in Steve's Illustrator Foundations class on October 12, $299. Limited to 8 students, we will run with just one. More at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/illustrator-foundations-live-via-zoom
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Steve’s also teaching our 2 day Illustrator Essentials in-person September 19 & 20, $595. Taught in our beautiful, eight individual seats classroom. Details at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/illustrator-essentials
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Luminous Works is Steve and Carla; educators, authors and aficionados of art and design. Offering in-person classes since 2006 and now separate, online via zoom classes! We’re a small, independent business and an Adobe Authorized Training Center.

Cherished human connections are the theme of this birthday card Steve created for a friend. His graphic idea: use an aperiodic tiling pattern discovered by mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, due to its endless but non-repeating nature and, of course, its beauty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling

Steve started with a “grid” from the book "Grid Index” (Carsten Nicolai, editor), which includes a CD with digital files of its hundreds of examples. It’s very difficult to find this 2009 book new these days, but it is a great resource. https://www.powells.com/book/grid-index-9783899552416

He used to “clean up” the vector file. The original had many duplicate lines on top of one another, making editing difficult. Steve hit on a fast way to remove the redundancy and simplify the file (using a method we’ll highlight in a forthcoming tip). He made the lines a touch thicker and a nice greenish-blue/cyan color. (2nd Image)

Steve backed the grid with a warm green rectangle sized for the 5 in. x 7 in. birthday card he planned on printing (so, 10.25 in x 7.25 in. for bleed). (3rd Image) Blue and green, such harmonious shades!

Text was added in white on the card’s front (right side of 1st Image) and a heart-shaped knockout of the Penrose tile on the back (left side of 1st Image).

Typeface is by Alexandra Korolkova (distributed by Paratype and Adobe Fonts). He used two of the font's stylistic sets to access the single-storey “a” and more curly “y”. ? You bet!
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Learn Illustrator live online in Steve's Illustrator Foundations class on August 9, $299. Limited to 8 students, we will run with as few as one. Full details at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/illustrator-foundations-live-via-zoom
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Steve’s also teaching our 2 day illustrator Essentials in-person August 10 +11, $595. Taught in our beautiful 8 individual seats classroom in Seattle. Learn more at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/illustrator-essentials

No joke, 16 years ago our in-person classroom opened in Ballard! 🎉 A big thank you to all our students and fans for your support as we weathered the pandemic years. We still love teaching and sharing our knowledge of Adobe software, photography and design with you!

Since 2006 we’ve expanded our training offerings to include video-on-demand as well as live via Zoom classes. We’re looking forward to developing new classes, if you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Steve’s teaching our 2 day InDesign Essentials in-person April 11+12 or May 2+3, $595. Taught in Luminous Works’ beautiful 8 seat classroom in Seattle. Learn more at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/InDesign-essentials
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Learn InDesign online via Zoom in Steve's InDesign Foundations class on April 15 or May 6, $299. Class is limited to 9 students and will run with just one student. Full details at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/InDesign-foundations-live-via-zoom

What a fantastic exhibit of artist’s books at Bainbridge Island’s Art Museum. Especially impressed with the Nansen Passport by Anneli Skaar. What a beautiful blending of materials to create a cohesive whole.

The Nansen Passport was a document for stateless people that allowed legal migration for those without papers. Humanitarian and former Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen advocated for such a passport in the early 20th Century. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Skaar’s created her own version of the passport for climate refugees with materials including orange life jacket material, bronze casting for the replica of a melted Nobel Peace Prize, and intaglio and cyanotype etching. The passport’s stamps each reference a country that has or will be effected by climate change. Be sure to watch the short film because this is an artwork with layers of meaning and the more you learn, the more you will appreciate the peice.

Also loved Collete Fu ’s “Wa Hair Swinging Dance”, book which brings pop-up books to a new level with its kinetic swooshes of flowing hair. Fu's large format books bring you into the action. Was very hard to obey the signage 😆

The "Boundless" exhibit contains many more intriguing books and occupies the entire top floor, see more at https://www.biartmuseum.org/exhibitions/boundless/ It's well worth the visit! Admission is free/by donation.
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Who is Luminous Works? We're Steve and Carla; educators, authors and aficionados of art and design. Our Adobe Authorized Training Center's classroom has been since 2006, offering in-person classes and now online via zoom classes too! Full details on our site, linked in our profile page.

Another 😍 exhibit by Seattle's , this time at the Henry Gallery on UW campus. Highly recommended! Parking on campus is free Saturdays after 12 and all day on Sunday; admission is by suggested donation of $0 to $20.

If you go, watch how the Cinderella dress (pictured) is animated by changing airflow as people walk around it. Very cool!

We're offering live, online, in-person Zoom classes! Steve's teaching 1 day, Foundation Level sessions in InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator, with more to come. Full details at https://www.luminousworks.com/online-classes
Learn creative software from a master teacher and user, and be sure to ask him "What up?" with that dragon and knight backdrop of his.😆

We continue to offer in-person classes for those who can visit our Seattle class room.

Geek alert: Steve figured out a way to play a version of Wordle in InDesign, using GREP styles. You can also use GREP styles for very practical, automatic on-the-fly text formatting. His latest video tip shows you how to do both!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lXpmTKR81Q
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Join Steve online for his one day Foundations of InDesign class on zoom, on that date with lots of two’s in it, 02-22-2022. Details: https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/indesign-foundations-live-via-zoom
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Steve’s also teaching our 2 day InDesign Essentials in-person March 7 & 8, in Luminous Works’ beautiful classroom in Seattle. Learn more at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/indesign-essentials
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Luminous Works (AKA Carla, Steve and Peachy) send you all fond wishes for this New Year!

Happy last day of Autumn! While the leaves have departed the trees, some remain with us in art and design. This vintage wine glass features oak leaves and acorns, and was a lucky find by Carla at an estate sale. The trees and leaves in this paper cut art by Danish artist Karen Bit Vejle are currently on view at Ballard's own National Nordic Museum. Seasonal inspirations that remain after the season.🍂

Whimsical and wonderful; perfect descriptors for Henry's artwork and his new murals at our neighbor are exhibit A! Created in honor of Ballard’s new semipro soccer team, Ballard FC. Zoom in on the head of the octopus peeking out from the background to view the logo. 😎
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Carla and Steve are Luminous Works. We're Adobe and design educators, as well as aficionados of our Ballard neighborhood. Come to our Adobe Authorized Training Center's classroom in Seattle for an in-person class at https://www.luminousworks.com/calendar, or purchase a class video-on-demand (https://www.luminousworks.com/ondemand ) or try Steve’s InDesign and Photoshop books https://www.luminousworks.com/candc. We’re in Ballard's brewery district so plan to grab a beverage after class. See you there!
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for We’ve been part of the #98107 community since we opened out classroom in 2006.

Did you know psaligraphy is the art of cut paper silhouettes? One could meditate for hours on the intricate and surprising details in the pieces on display at the Nordic's " Paper Dialogues: The Dragon and Our Stories” exhibit. While most of the art features white paper as its medium, there’s a colorful dragon in their midst, cleverly situated to guard its 7 white eggs (3rd image).
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The 7 white dragons eggs are by Danish psaligraphist Bit Vejle and the guardian dragon is by Chineses psaligraphist Xiaoguang Qiao
Exhibit runs through January 31, 2022. Maybe we will see you there!

Yep, it's a bummer that tools are defunct, but Steve’s figured out ways to make a natural looking shadow. Using blends in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop’s Blur Gallery filter, he’s able to fade and spread a shadow so it looks lit from a nearby light source. Even if that shadow is a flying dragon...😆
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This is Tip number 3 in his shadow making series,
Enjoy this 1 min. teaser vid or view the entire 10 minute video on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd_GHvWMdKw
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in-person from Steve in our 2 day Essential classes: Illustrator Essentials on December 16+17, or Photoshop on December 20+21. Taught in Luminous Works’ beautiful classroom in Seattle’s neighborhood. Details and more dates at https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/photoshop-essentials and https://www.luminousworks.com/classes/illustrator-essentials

and Carla Fraga are Luminous Works. We're creatives and educators; come to our Adobe Authorized Training Center's classroom for an in-person class, purchase a class video-on-demand or try Steve’s Photoshop and InDesign books published by .

Throwing Shade part 3: Spreading Shadow in Photoshop & Illustrator Third in a series on making shadows in Photoshop and Illustrator, this tutorial shows how to use blends in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop’s Blur Gallery fil...