I’m back from Adobe MAX 2019

Terry White presenting on the Adobe MAX keynote stage to 15,000 attendees.

For the past few months, I’ve been commuting back and forth to San Francisco. Rehearsing for the Adobe MAX keynote is a big deal and taken very seriously. Although my part was a mere 7-8 minutes long, every second of it is rehearsed and refined for months until it became muscle memory.

It’s an honor to be a part of the keynote and I couldn’t be happier being asked back this year. If you missed my demo you can see it here:

Continue reading “I’m back from Adobe MAX 2019”

What I’m Live Streaming About This Week – 8/20 thru 8/24

I’m in my home office this week and that means I get a chance to do some live streaming/tutorials.

Here’s what I’ve got going this week:

Monday, 8/20 – Creative Cloud Tips and Tricks on the Creative Cloud Facebook Page

Tuesday, 8/21 – How to Design a Flyer in Adobe InDesign CC on the Adobe InDesign Facebook Page

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What I’m Live Streaming About This Week – 3/12 thru 3/16

I’m back from my travels to WPPI Las Vegas and KelbyOne in Florida and that means it’s time to get back to my regular streaming schedule! I’m kicking off this week with part six of my Back to the Basics with Adobe Photoshop CC – Working with Text – Monday, 3/12/2018 at 1PM Pacific Time.

Terry White Live Streaming

 

Live Streaming For the rest of the week…

 

Tuesday, 3/13 – 1PM PT Continue reading “What I’m Live Streaming About This Week – 3/12 thru 3/16”

What I’m Live Streaming About This Week – 2/12 thru 2/16

As promised this is the first of hopefully many Monday morning posts outlining my Live Streaming Schedule for the week. This way my followers to can easily see where I’ll be live streaming and what the topic will be. This week starts off with:

Monday, February 12, 2018 – 1PM PT – Back to the Basics with Adobe Photoshop CC – Part 4 – How to Work With Layers.

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30 Days of Creative Cloud Tutorials – Recap Days 1-8

Adobe_Creative_Cloud

My 30 Days of Creative Cloud Tutorials is off to a great start! If you haven’t been following along, here are the videos you’ve missed:

Day 8 – How to Mask a Moving Object in Your Video with Premiere Pro CC

Day 7 – How to Change the Background in Photoshop CC

 

Day 6 – How to do an Image Map in Adobe Muse CC

 

Day 5 – How To Draw in Adobe Illustrator CC with the NEW Pencil Tool

 

Day 4 – How To Share Files and Folders in Adobe Creative Cloud

 

Day 3 – How To Place a Photo inside Text in Adobe InDesign CC

 

Day 2 – How To Rank, Rate and Mark your Photos in Lightroom

 

Day 1 – How to Do Masking in Adobe Photoshop

 

Ask Google

As you might imagine I get lots of questions every day. I get them via the comments section of my blogs, I get them via email, I get them on Twitter, I get them on Facebook and I get them on YouTube. As you might also imagine, while I don't mind answering people's questions, I simply don't have the bandwidth to get to them all. 

 

How do I decide which questions to answer and which ones not to?

It's not really a conscious decision. Like anything in life the easier something is to do the more often we'll do it. To that point if I see a question that I can answer off the top of my head and it's a short answer, chances are I'll answer it right there on the spot. If I know the answer, but the answer is long and drawn out (more than 3 steps), chances are I won't have time to answer it (even though I may want to). Also I tend to answer questions based on how they are asked. If a person is asking a question of clarification on something I wrote or said, then I'm more apt to want to respond immediately. If the person is asking for a 1:1 class via email (show me how to do ______), then chances are I'm not going to respond. It's nothing personal, I just don't have the time. My job here is not tech support or to train you via Q&A. If the question is Adobe related I'm also more likely to respond since I do work for Adobe. However, if I feel that you're just being lazy (see Can you do it for me? below), then I'll probably be less inclined to respond. 

 

What if I don't know the answer?

If I don't know the answer I'll probably just say "I don't know." However, if I don't know the answer and I want to know the answer then chances are I'll look it up because the question you've asked has me curious too. This is what brings me to today's topic! How do I find the answer?

 

I ask Google

Sometimes I feel like I'm on an episode of Star Trek. However, instead of saying "Computer" and asking my question verbally (wouldn't that be coo?), I pop up a browser window and key in my exact question. Long gone are the days of having to use specific keywords and operators between them to get the information you want from a search engine. Sure it still helps to do so today, but more often than not you can just pose your question in simple English. Just the other night I wanted to know if there was a way to convert the OLD Facebook Groups to the NEW Facebook Group format. While I could have searched through the Facebook Help Section, I always think Google first. I do this because 99.9% of the time someone else has already posed the same question online and someone has already answered it OR the very help system that I would have had to search has been indexed by Google and those tech documents show up in the Google results too. I fired up a browser window and keyed in "Can I convert an existing Facebook Group to the New Facebook Group format?" The answer was in the top 10 results that came back and sadly the answer was NO. However, that's just how easy it was to get the answer to my question. I do this multiple times a day and very rarely am I ever disappointed. Not only do I usually get the answer I was looking for IMMEDIATELY, but a lot of times even if the answer is NO, someone has developed some cool work around, setting, workflow or App to solve the issue.

 

Did you try it?

The other thing that kinda bugs me is when someone asks a simple question about something that would be easy enough for them to just try for themselves. This is what I meant above about being lazy. We're so used to relying on people to spoon feed us the answers that we would rather post a question, wait for a response (sometimes days) than just trying it ourselves. This is especially true when it comes to software. Much of the good software out there today is available in fully functional trial form. This means that you can download it, install it and bang on it all you want. Instead of asking is ________ feature better in the new version, why not see for yourself? That's what trials are for. For example, you can download a fully functional trial of Adobe Creative Suite 5. You can test each Application to see if it does what you need it to do and if it does it the way you want it done. If not, then you haven't lost anything other than the time to download and try it. However, at least you know with your own eyes whether or not it works. I love it when someone asks "how will that perform on my computer?" I have no idea. It depends on so many factors not to mention all the other stuff you're running on "your computer." The best way to be sure is to install it on YOUR computer and see for yourself.

 

Can you do it for me?

My favorite (the ones that make me laugh) questions come from YouTube and I swear sometimes that YouTube needs to implement an IQ test before allowing people to post comments or send questions. Granted I know that YouTube is full of kids and you have no way of really knowing if you're dealing with an adult or an 8 year old. However, on more than one occasion I've had someone ask me "I'm having a problem doing ___________ to this photo. Can I send it to you and have you do it?" I literally laugh out loud when I get one of those. I guess it would be pretty sweet if we could all just send our work to someone else and have them do it for us 🙂 I would have had slightly more respect if the person would have said "Hey, I'm having a problem with this photo can I send it to you and perhaps you could use it as an example in one of your upcoming tutorials?" At least then the person would be showing that they want help and to LEARN how to do it themselves and with such a file It could be used to help others. There's no guarantee that I would take anyone up on that kind of offer, but at least I would respect it more. Another favorite is "How much does _____ cost?" In the same amount of energy that it took you to type that in an email you could have typed it in Google and gotten your answer!

 

Someone has probably recorded a video

In this day and age if there is something that you want to learn how to do, chances are there is a YouTube video on the subject. For example, one of the most common questions that I get from new Photoshop users is "how do I remove a background in Photoshop?" When I searched YouTube for this topic 922 videos showed up. I could be wrong, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you'll probably find some good techniques in at least one or two of those videos and if nothing else you'll see lots of different ways to do it. Also you'll notice the titles of the videos are in plain English ie: "How to remove a background in Photoshop".

Speaking of YouTube, check out my YouTube Channel Here. With close to 3 Million Views I'm blown away with the response!

Oh yeah and YouTubers please stop sending me this one: "Where can I get a free download of CS5?" Really? 

 

The Bottom Line

Google is AMAZING and a resource that I would not want to be without. I get so much more done each day because I can easily look stuff up without having to rely on my friends and wait for responses. Give it a shot the next time you're thinking about posting a question somewhere else. You may be surprised at just how much easier it is.

Introducing the Photoshop CS5 “Knowledge Panel”

Photoshop CS5 Quietly Delivers the Knowledge Panel

That's right! If you have Photoshop CS5, you have a NEW Panel under Window->Extensions Called "Knowledge". This new panel pulls in industry experts to give you help and step-by-step instructions on completing various tasks in Photoshop. Best of all it's FREE and if you've been connected to the internet and have Photoshop CS5 open it's already there! Here are a few screen shots:

    

 

Speaking of Creating an HDR Image

Here's my Lightroom 3 to Photoshop CS5 HDR Pro workflow

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rab25UTe6HY

Thanks goes out to Scott Kelby and the Photoshop Guys for some GREAT HDR Pro settings.

Continue reading “Introducing the Photoshop CS5 “Knowledge Panel””

One Month Later and Over 500,000 Views!

It was exactly one month ago today that I officially launched my YouTube channel and I've been both amazed and a bit overwhelmed by the success. In less than a month's time I've seen over 500,000 views of my videos, over 1,400 subscribers and literally hundreds of comments. All I can say is THANK YOU!

 

How about a NEW Channel?

I currently work with two other full-time Adobe Creative Suite Evangelists (Jason Levine and Greg Rewis) and I'm happy to announce our NEW……wait for it……. YouTube Channel. It's cleverly named: Adobe Evangelist TV. Although we each have a presence on our blogs, twitter and Adobe TV, social media is about being EVERYWHERE and there's no denying the huge YouTube base. So look for regular videos  and tutorials on the Adobe Creative Suite there.