Welcome to this essential imaging skills course! In this lesson I'll explain how this course will help anyone with an online presence become more credible and influential by learning how to create professional-looking images. I'll explain what is covered and what you need to get started.

Take a moment and learn the best way to use this course for maximum results.

Learn once and for all which images you are allowed to use on your blog, in your course, eBook, website, or anywhere else. No more excuses for not knowing! By following these simple rules you will be sure to have the best and most original content and also protect yourself from unnecessary legal troubles due to using other people's copyrighted material without their permission.

Now that you understand the importance of using your own original content or royalty-free content, please make sure not to fall into this potential trap when choosing which imagery to use. There are some exceptions to this rule but first we need to learn the rules before we can break them.

Here are more free resources you can use in your creative projects.

Learn how to make your life MUCH easier just by setting up your projects for print (larger files/higher quality) even if you only initially need images for the web or screen (lower quality/ lower file sizes). This lesson also covers important saving basics which will save you hours, days, or weeks of frustration if the unthinkable happens: you lose files due to file corruption or computer/device failure.

In this lesson I'll discuss that while software programs are cool and can fix a lot of things, it's ALWAYS better to get good lighting for your photos from the initial get-go.

This lecture (that comes from my Illustrating With Gimp Course) will give you a quick rundown and heads up on a very important concept and feature that you will find in almost all imaging programs: Layers. In a nutshell, they are like little transparent acetate sheets where you can draw and then stack over and/or under your main background layer. There are many benefits to using layers. Learn more in this lesson.

This quiz will test what you learned in Section 2.

This is a quick crash course lesson that will introduce you to 8 simple rules that can have a HUGE effect on the quality, look, and feel of your images. I've tried to mimic a lesson I give my own University students at The American University of Rome here by using Photoshop to draw visual examples for you as if using the classroom white board.

Topics I cover include aspect ratios, composition, odd versus even numbers of elements, size changes, moving objects around on the picture plane, letting objects get cropped off the canvas, the triangle principle, and ways to create the illusion of depth on a 2D surface. It's Art School 101 in under 9 minutes! Ready? Let's go.

Everyone makes mistakes. I'm here to stop you from at least making some common amateur imaging mistakes. Chances are, you ALREADY know what works and what doesn't intuitively. Have a look at some typical image faux pas so you can approach your next design tasks with more and more confidence.

I'm all for exploring and having fun with the special effects and filters available in your imaging program. Go ahead! Get them out of your system. (I'll wait for you...) You're back? OK. So in this lesson I'll explain that while filters and special effects can be fun to play with, they are NOT always your friends when you are trying to make professional looking images.

Here are THE top things to keep in mind when creating as well as evaluating design.

Let's test your knowledge of Section 3.

There is a reason that I put this lesson first in the Photoshop section. No matter which imaging program you are using, always make sure to adjust your levels. In some programs it's called adjusting the tone, value, or gain. It's the values in your image and it's crucial for ensuring your images are as crisp and vibrant as possible. Images that don't have levels adjusted often look muddy, blah, and amateurish.

Learn some essential features you can use to create multiple variations of the same image. Brightness, Contrast, Hue, and Saturation control the lightness and darkness of your image, whether it's black and white or trumped-up technicolor, as well as some cool tinting effects.

In this lesson I'll show you how to scale, rotate, flip, and transform individual layers as well as your entire image if it only has one layer. Please note that actual full image resizes (dimensions, resolution, as well as file size) is covered in the NEXT lesson.

Being able to resize, reformat, crop, and adjust file sizes for your images is a MUST HAVE skill that will free you from waiting around for others to do it for you for a fee. Many websites require images that are under a certain physical size, dimension, or file size. Learn once and for all how to do it yourself quickly, easily, and painlessly.

In a perfect world, people wouldn't care about a little blemish or demonic glowing eyes in a photo. But if you'd like to present your subjects in a professional, flawless way, here are a few essential tools that will help you out.

In this lesson, I'll show you how to whiten a smile and how to apply lipstick, makeup, or other enhancing painting techniques you may wish to add. You can also use these same techniques to tint your background, some clothing, skin tones, etc.

Secret agents, take note. If you need to blur your face out in a photo or the face of someone else, you need this lesson. You can also use these techniques for blurring out backgrounds or logos.

You have the PERFECT image... except for that one annoying thing in the background (a hand, a person, a sign, a fly on the wall, whatever...) Let me show you some tools you can use to make your image the masterpiece it deserves to be.

I'll discuss the importance and uses of the following tools: smudge, sharpen, blur, dodge, burn, and sponge. I show you how to use them in Photoshop, but the same tools are also available and are used in the same way in GIMP.

In this lesson I wanted to let you know about my experience level with GIMP and why it's important to be open to change, especially since software versions and types are constantly in flux. Learn how you can get the most out of these programs so you can apply what you learn to other programs down the road.

In this lesson I'll go over what you will learn in this section and show some student work where they make a cool color vs. black and white effect.

This lesson will review how to get a great public domain image to work with and also highlights one of my favorite websites, http://gratisography.com

Now we will duplicate the image so we have more than one layer.

Here we will take the top layer and make it into a black and white image.

Now it's time to create our effect by using an eraser to eat away at the top black and white layer to reveal the color underneath.

Here are some saving options and more techniques for desaturating and resaturating your image.

Here is a free, fast, and easy way to painlessly and professionally remove text or an object from a still image using a free online tool called Fotor. Check it out!

In this lesson I will show you a super easy and quick way to take an existing logo and put it on a transparent background. I normally do this task in Photoshop or Gimp, but after creating this lesson, I'm just going to use the free online tool Lunapic instead. It's a time saver! :-)

This lesson comes from my course, Make Easy But Powerful Social Media Graphics: Canva |Stencil

Don't stop at editing images. Have a look at some of my favorite FREE and intuitive tools that will have you making social media graphics, web sites, animations, and more. Get a taste of what is possible in under 10 minutes and be up and running ASAP. [This lecture comes from my full course, Skyrocket Your Creativity: 7 Easy Ways.]

In this lesson I'll walk you through a handy online resource I came across over the summer when I wanted to edit some snapshots but was away from my computer and usual programs. This is a great and powerful free tool that will help you fix your images even when you are on the go.

Here are some resources for adding more functionality to GIMP.

Use these new custom brush tools in Photoshop to really get the textures and look you are are going for. This is a case study on how I use hundreds of brushes when animating in Photoshop, where I get them, how to change their settings, and how to get started using them. (*See blog post under the resources tab for easy brush installation instructions.)

I like to practice what I preach. Here are all the Flickr Creative Commons images I used in this course along with titles, authors, and attribution licenses.

I'm so happy that you took this course. Thank you for visiting my online classroom. Please don't be a stranger and I hope to see you again soon.

Here is more information on how to connect with me, see my online portfolio, and where to find special offers.