About this course
This course has been created for designers and those with some experience with Photoshop or Illustrator who now wish to turn their hand to web graphics and user interface design.
Catalyst is a new program which fills a gap between the more sophisticated Flash Professional environment and that of conventional designer's tools like Photoshop or Illustrator.
This course reflects that positioning, assuming little in the way of technical knowledge but some prior understanding of graphics tools, particularly Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks (although exposure to those programs is not strictly necessary).
What you will learn
We'll begin with a brief discussion of Flash as a development environment, clarifying the different tools in the Flash suite and explaining the strength of each and their relationship with each other.
We'll then move on to a tour of Flash Catalyst demonstrating the various ways in which the program can be used, with particular reference to the tight integration with other Adobe CS applications.
The course will then look at the process of creating a Catalyst project, both natively, and within a workflow from other Adobe CS applications, explaining file conventions, saving and exporting your work.
We'll then move on to a discussion of user interface (UI) components, how they can be simply deployed and edited, looking at various examples of commonly used elements.
The course will then look at placing artwork of various types, layout issues, screen considerations, object alignment and ordering, as well as interactions and transitions.
Finally, we'll move onto publishing projects in various forms, understanding how work can be previewed locally and deployed to websites and public (or private) servers for practical use.
Assumed knowledge
This course will assume some exposure to graphics applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Fireworks but you need not be at any level of expertise to attend.
While little technical aptitude is required, we do recommend you have some understanding of HTML and web design. Indeed we would recommend our Dreamweaver Level 1 (HTML) course if you're a web newbie.
If in doubt,
contact our office to discuss your requirements.
Photoshop Level 1
