wish me luck.

[mopinko]

i take my photoshop ace exam today. if i pass, i am an adobe certified expert. i should be fine. there are a few things that i never use and therefore do not know, but i am fairly confident that i will pass. or at least i am confident enough to cough up $150 to take the test.
if i find it easy, i will take 2 more. i am also pretty confident that i can pass the indesign test. i could study up a little and pass an illustrator class. that would go a long way toward giving people confidence in me, even tho i am a grey haired beginner.

[MissHoneychurch]

1. Best of luck!!

Sending you "passing-the-test-with-flying-colors-vibes" over the ocean!!!

[blogslut]

2. Break a leg!

:hi:

[av8rdave]

3. All the best. You'll do great!

[mucifer]

4. Good Luck!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Best of luck, my dear mopinko!

:hi:

[mopinko]

6. blech!!! i flunked.

very annoying. i was right about at the pass mark on 3/4 of the subsections, but i blew the video and print production questions, things i have never really done.
if i had stuck to my study plan i probably would have been fine, but i lost track of how close it was. i was shocked to find it on today's calendar when i looked at it last night.

the good part is that if i had actually been taking the test inside the program interface, i would have been fine. a multiple choice, plain text test for something like photoshop is pretty stupid when you think about it.
oh well, i can take it as many times as i want. i will sign up to do it again, and i will be ready this time.

but shit!!!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

7. My dear mopinko!

I'm so sorry to hear this...

But now you know what you're up against...

Next time, and there will be a next time, you will be fine!

:hug:

[mopinko]

8. you are allowed to take it as many times as you want.

it is an extremely poor instrument for assessing knowledge of this type. it is, however, very well designed to foil guessers. guessing is my number one tool. most of what i know has been figured out by guessing.
oh, well. the game is the game. now i know the rules.

[csziggy]

9. OOOH! I hope you pass! Can we ask you Photoshop questions if you do?

Did you know there is a super easy way to straighten photos in PS? Use the little ruler tool along a line that should be horizontal or vertical. Then go to Rotate - Arbitrary and it will automatically read how far off horizontal or vertical that line is and if you OK it, it will rotate the image that amount.

It's been a life saver for when I am correcting old photos from scans. And since hubby cannot get a horizon line straight to save his life, I can correct his landscape shots for that. It make a big difference on sea shots.

[mopinko]

13. that was one i knew.

i always just use the crop tool for that, tho. once it is straight, you are gonna want to straighten the edges anyway. does is in one swoop. pull the bottom of the bounding box up to your horizon to set the rotation, then pull it back down and crop.

i did cram for about an hour before the test, and that ruler thing was in the objectives. yeah, it didn't ask a lot of questions that i know.
you can ask me questions, anyway, tho. if i don't know it, i will look it up for you.

[csziggy]

18. Thanks for the tip about the bounding box

That could save a bunch of time. I'm going to be editing a lot of old photos in the next few months - working on some family histories.

My problem is that I've been using PS since version 5 but have gotten in a rut, just using the things I know and not learning the new features. I'm only up to CS3 so I guess I should know more about it.

[mopinko]

19. yeah, i was upset that there seemed to be no evidence of

what everyone who uses it knows, that there are several ways to do nearly everything. one question in particular ticked me off that way. it was about a button to push to make a new layer when using the pen tool. well hell, i always make a new layer by hitting the new layer button in the layers palette. or with a jump. or by using the layers menu make new layer command, or.......

yeah, my advice is to go to adobe tv and see all the cool stuff the newer versions have. i always like to see what is new and cool.

[csziggy]

22. Yeah, there is never just one solution

I can't afford to upgrade this year (and probably not next) but I did see the video of the new "healing" features last year. I would love to have some of those since most of what I am doing is restoration of old photos and it is taking way, way too much time. I've got hundreds to work on - heck, I have over a hundred negatives yet to scan that date back as far as 1890!

One justification for upgrading is that the new tools should make restoration quicker and therefore less stress on my shoulders, wrists and hands. Since I am have issues with all my joints, I don't need to stress any of them.

I got off the Adobe email list, I guess I need to get back on so I'll get upgrade offers. I'll need to upgrade before my version is too old to qualify. Sigh...

[mopinko]

24. anyone in your family a student? or teacher?

get someone with an education discount to get it for you. all you have to do is fax/email the id to them.
yeah, the new tools will help you do them at least twice as fast and twice as good.

[csziggy]

26. No such luck - but the upgrade price is not bad

Around $150-200 usually, if all I get is Photoshop. I'd love to move to the Design package, but I can't justify the costs for just maintaining my own small web sites, though I could almost justify it for Acrobat. Right now I am using Word Perfect to create pages for some books and to publish individual pages to PDF. Hubby works at FedEx Office and is taking the completed books as the page PDF files and merging them together there.

These versions of the books are just reformatting of the originals but the next step will be to add a lot of new information. If I had Acrobat, I would have so much more control of the production process. The step after that will be to put the same information online - so having DreamWeaver would assist - I have the Macromedia version, but would need to update it.

See, I've almost talked myself into buying the new version - but then I look at the price - at least $1200 even from the most discounted place I can find. I really don't have that much right now to spend on it. I might spring for the Photoshop Extended CS5 soon for $350 - that will give me a better path to upgrade to one of the suites later via an upgrade.

[AsahinaKimi]

10. Ganbatte ne

Gokigen yo!

[Ellipsis]

11. Bummer... Here's an excellent resource for print and production for you

A friend of mine used to say Photoshop is a very deep forest.


I wouldn't have a clue.


But I think you'll find this site extremely helpful.
http://www.idealliance.org/industry_resources

For supporting Election Reform


Peace.

[mopinko]

14. i suspect it will be the hardest test.

there is so much to it, i am actually not surprised i flunked. i have taken a lot of little one day classes, because everyone knows and uses differently. your friend is absolutely correct.

[bigwillq]

12. Good Luck!

:bounce:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

15. Half the challenge in Photoshop is having the willingness to learn it...

...so I applaud you for that. It's like my right arm...I use it 365 days a year. There have been days when I've been burning up with a fever and flu symptoms and I'm still tinkering away.

I've known people who had the financial resources to purchase Photoshop and after a few half-hearted attempts at using it revert to Photoshop Elements, or even worse, one of the Paint Shop Pro "Stripped-down Photoshop with training wheels" variants.

InDesign, yeah...I'm sure you'll do OK with that.

Illustrator is still a challenge for me. My "toolkit" is basically the final Macromedia Studio release (version 8 w/ Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash) and the Adobe CS2 releases of Photoshop / Illustrator / InDesign. The last two years have pretty much killed my ability to stay current with the upgrades but I am fine with what I have.

Good vibes coming your way!

:toast:

[mopinko]

21. i have to say that most of the improvements lately are

in productivity. if you use it that much, you should upgrade. there are not that many things that you couldn't do at all before, there are just incredibly easier. it is a bitch to keep up, tho. sometimes you just have to have the book on your lap. but i think that is better than falling behind.
some cool bells and whistles, tho. especially illustrator. i am still a little shaky with it. like photoshop, i know it does a gazzillion things that i will never even see. but i do have fun with it, and the interface is very comfy. if only i could get great with the graphics pad. not adapting that one too quickly.

[Kali]

16. since I am trying to remember to read the thread first,

I will say good luck next time!

[Tuesday Afternoon]

17. keep us posted. let us know ahead of time so we can send sufficent good vibes

:hug:

[EFerrari]

20. You go!

ETA: ack, that's what I get for not reading the whole thread.

Well, shit.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

23. Blogslut said Break a Leg

but you can just post a picture of you with a cast on one leg. Should be a piece of cake for an old Photoshop ace like yourself!

:hi:

[mopinko]

25. i had to take a pledge to only use my tools for good,

not to make anyone, including myself, look stupid. really, it's in the fine print.

[riderinthestorm]

27. OK, I know you are genius material, next time you WILL ace this test.

Mopinko, I'm more writing this on a personal note....

You and I had a brief exchange whereby we discovered our mathematics genius fathers were also dysfunctional shits (my dad's a raging alcoholic). I think we also discovered our fathers worked at Bell Labs in the heady days... but I digress.....

I just had to update you - my dad is the guy who theorized that the CERN collider project will create a black hole when it goes fully operational in 2012. He has email exchanges with Rolf-Dieter Heuer that go back at least 10 years. It's wild that his brain cells aren't completely pickled.

So go forth and become the genius you are meant to be! If my addled, batshit father can still come up with batshit brilliant ideas, you can do this!! I have to believe in you because that means that perhaps there's hope for me.