Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Windows or Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Macintosh (software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins); It can be part of the Creative Suite in Standard or Extended editions or it can be a standalone version of either Standard or Extended. No features from the Extended version will be taught, however. You may also use the 30-day free trial software provided by Adobe, but if you do, you must wait until week 3 of the course to install it and actually begin to work through the course. Otherwise your trial will end before the last four lessons are released. On the PC platform, either Windows XP or Vista is acceptable. You can also take this course with Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5 on either the PowerPC or Intel Mac platform.
Internet access, e-mail, the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser, and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader).
You need to have completed Introduction to Photoshop CS2, CS3, or CS4. If you have not taken one of these courses, you need to have a good working knowledge of the basic tools in Photoshop and be able to make selections, use the Clone Stamp tool and Healing brushes, and do elementary color correction.
In addition, you will need to have a program that extracts the example files from the Zip file provided with each lesson. You need to know how to create a new file folder and locate files on your hard drive.
If you wish to share your work with the instructor, you will need an online album in which to display your work. Instructions for this will provided in the first lesson.