# Digital Photography Certificate

Canonical URL: <https://www.nobledesktop.com/classes/photography>

## Overview

### Learn to Use a Camera for Professional Studio Photography, Manage Photos, & High-End Retouching

Learn the skills to develop images that are compelling, consistent, and modern, as well as the ability to enhance, correct, edit, and adjust photos, and create special effects. The certificate consists of the following components:

- **Digital Studio Photograph** y: Learn to use digital cameras in manual mode (shutter speed, aperture, ISO, etc.). You’ll learn how to achieve a correct exposure in various lighting situations.
- **Studio Lighting** : Work with a variety of studio lighting scenarios. Practice with one-, two-, and three-light setups using professional studio equipment and real-world photo shoot situations.
- **Photo Management with Adobe Lightroom** : Learn to import, manage, develop, add adjustments, effects, and manage image history/snapshots as you work. You’ll also export photos and save presets so you can work faster.
- **Retouch images with Adobe Photoshop** : Learn professional workflows with Photoshop. Retouch images for fashion (work with skin, hair, etc.), create special effects, make a photomontage, and more.

#### Equipment

- If you have an interchangeable lens camera (Mirrorless or DSLR), bring it to class so you can learn how to use it. If you don’t own a camera, we’ll have one available to share among students.
- In class, we’ll have lights, strobes/flashes, and a color calibration system for you to learn with.
- This course is a great fit for all photography enthusiasts, from beginners to those with knowledge in working with cameras.

## What you'll learn

- Learn about different camera types to select the camera that's best for you
- Control shutter speed, aperture, and ISO using manual settings
- Control lighting with exposure compensation, white balance, flash, and professional lighting equipment
- Maximize your studio workflow for photo shoots and post-shoot production
- Learn to organize, edit, and share your digital photos with Adobe Lightroom
- Learn to retouch photos with Adobe Photoshop
- Improve your images using color correction, masking techniques, contrast, and more
- Prepare your photos for print, slideshows, webpages, and more

## Curriculum

#### Digital Photography Essentials

- Get the most out of you camera on manual mode
- Exposure, shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance, depth of field, file formats, and a other topics

#### Studio Lighting

- Professional Photography work-flows
- Studio lighting concepts and terminology
- Qualities of light
- Modifiers for taking control
- Portrait lighting
- High and low key
- Beauty lighting
- Dramatic light
- Difference between high speed flash, continuous light source, and strobes equipment

#### Studio Practice 1

- Hands-on, practical experience of working with studio lighting equipment, backdrops and use and control the subjects.

#### Camera & Monitor Calibration

- Color Management System from the camera to the printer
- Working with color profiles
- Monitor, Printer and Camera Calibration
- Color Settings
- Color conversion
- Proof Setup
- Printing with color profiles
- Working with a calibrated and profiled monitor is essential for professional photographers and designers. This class offers the tools you need to attain high-end, accurate, on-screen color, whether in your own studio or in a collaborative production environment
- In Photoshop you can make best use of your custom color profiles by allowing Photoshop to handle color management. You can also choose to let your printer manage color.

#### Photo Management with Adobe Lightroom

- Importing pictures from a camera
- Tethered Capture
- Lightroom Workflow
- The catalog
- DNG, Camera Raw and other formats
- Metadata
- Keywords
- Lightroom interface
- Best practices
- Lightroom Classic vs. Others

#### Lightroom’s Develop Module

- Learn to develop images, adjust image color and tone, work in grayscale, adjust crop and rotation, retouch photos, apply local adjustments, sharpening, noise reduction, and process version, correct lens distortion and adjust perspective, vignette and grain effects, apply develop adjustments to other photos and manage image history and snapshots
- Preferences
- Develop Module
- Working with the Histogram
- White Balance
- Light Adjustments
- Color Adjustments
- Sharpening and Noise Reduction
- Lens Corrections

#### Studio Practice 2

- Hands-on, practical experience of working with studio lighting equipment, backdrops and use and control the subjects.

#### Photoshop Essentials

- Professional workflow in Photoshop
- Preferences
- Bit Depth
- Resolution
- Color Mode
- Tools and Adjustments
- Color Correction
- Retouching
- Photomontage
- Image analysis
- Layers and Mask

#### Photoshop Advanced

- Professional workflow in Photoshop
- Advanced channels and compositing
- How to work with advanced layers in Photoshop
- Work with filters and advanced blending modes
- Create actions and batch processing to shorten workflow processes
- Export for web
- Professional workflow for printing
- Tips and tricks

#### Skin Retouching in Photoshop

- Apply advanced skin retouching techniques for advertising and fashion-related industries.
- There are many ways to retouch skin in Photoshop, some more advanced than others. Each technique will give us different results. It’s important to know where the image will be published and which retouching style should be used. For example, if we retouch skin for a food ad, perhaps the client wants something natural with minimal retouching. If we retouch skin for the cosmetic industry, it is likely to require different techniques to create an appearance of porcelain like skin while keeping the texture as well.
- Professional workflow for skin in Photoshop
- Color Correction
- Retouching imperfections
- Smooth skin
- Dodge and Burn
- Texturing
- Frequency separation
- Skin styles for fashion and advertising
- Best practices
- Tips and Tricks

#### Styles for Fashion & Ads

- Learn the different styles that can be applied to an image.
- You will learn various blend modes, effects and processes to give us different styles and art direction on a project.
- Depending on the product or the end use of the image, you can apply different styles to a photo. If you retouch a model for the fashion industry, the retouching style may be very different from one project to another as referenced above.

#### Hair Retouching in Photoshop

- When you extract an object, Photoshop erases its background to transparency. Pixels on the edge of the object lose the color components derived from the background, so they can blend with a new background without producing a color halo. In this class you will learn how to make difficult selections and extract object from the background.
- Working with selection with tools and channels
- Refine edge
- Extract hair from the background
- Glowing effects
- Creating hair
- Color correction
- Hair brushes and library
- Tips and Tricks
- Working with tools for selections
- Modify, transform and save selections
- Extract an object from its background
- Refine selection edges
- Use anti-aliasing and feathering to soften the edges of selections
- How to make difficult selections
- Work with Channels for selections
- Color adjustments to improve selections
- Plugins and other options for selections

#### Photo Montage 1

- In this course students will learn to apply advanced techniques in photo-montage for the advertising industry. When creating a photo montage, there are many factors to take into consideration. Many details are involved to consider and blend clients’ requirements to help create professional looking projects.
- Advanced Photomontage workflow
- Working with light and shadows
- Light creation, shadow coherence
- Retouching and modeling
- Light effects and textures
- Ad creation workflow
- Styles and concepts

#### Photo Montage 2

- In the advertising industry, factors we must first consider are the communication and creative objectives of the company requesting the photo montage. Later come the requirements necessary to create and complete the project.
- Review the advanced techniques to create better composition.
- Look at one of the major defects in photo montage, the coherence of composition verses the style to be obtained.
- Learn techniques to avoid or minimize it by improving skills in lighting and shadows, sizes, proportions and perspectives, color correction and styles.

#### Special Effects

- Learn to design and apply effects on images to add creativity and different styles to create fantastic photo montages
- Photoshop filters and effects for photomontages
- Add liquid effects, rain, water, fire, smoke and many other special effects of illumination and lightning to create unique and interesting photo montages.
- Add drama to images
- Create illustrations
- Create High Dynamic Range (HDR) effects
- Special effects of illumination and lighting to create unique and interesting photo montages
- Fantastic scenes
- Plugins
- Tips and Tricks

#### 3D Integration

- Learn how to integrate 3D renders into Photoshop
- Photoshop and 3D
- Importing 3D models
- Workflow and formats
- Working with shapes
- Editing views
- Working with Light sources
- Materials
- 3D integration in photomontage
- Post production
- Photoshop 3D interface
- Working with OBJ format
- Working with models
- Working with lights
- Working with textures
- Render options

#### Project 1

- Students work on their own projects using knowledge and techniques acquired in the classroom to create high-end photomontages.

#### Project 2

- Students work on their own projects using knowledge and techniques acquired in the classroom to create high-end photomontages.

#### Project 3

- Students work on their own projects using knowledge and techniques acquired in the classroom to create high-end photomontages.

#### Presentation of Projects

- Projects presentation day

## Instructors

### Eugenio Solis de Ovando — Senior Instructor

Eugenio Solis de Ovando is a Senior Instructor at Noble Desktop in New York City, specializing in graphic design, web design, and visual communication. With over 20 years of experience in the creative industry, Eugenio is passionate about helping students develop strong technical skills and a solid design foundation across print, digital, and web platforms.

Eugenio teaches a wide range of courses, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Figma, WordPress, UI Design, and Artificial Intelligence for Graphic Design. His classes are known for their clear, hands-on approach, blending technical mastery with creative exploration to help students bring their ideas to life with confidence and precision.

He holds a Ph. D. in Artificial Intelligence with a specialization in Human Performance Technology, where his research focused on integrating emerging AI technologies into adult education and training. 

As an Adobe Certified Design Master and Licensed Private Career School Teacher in New York State, Eugenio is dedicated to delivering high-quality instruction and sharing best practices in digital design workflows. He brings real-world insights into the classroom, guiding students through professional techniques in layout design, typography, color theory, image editing, and responsive web design.

Learn more about [Eugenio Solis de Ovando's](/eugenio-solis-de-ovando) background and expertise.

### Dan Rodney — School Director, Instructor, & Senior Course Developer

Dan Rodney has been a designer and web developer for over 20 years, creating coursework and leading innovative training initiatives at Noble Desktop. He teaches courses covering Figma, HTML & CSS, Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and Power BI. Dan has also been at the forefront of integrating AI into design and business workflows, spearheading Noble Desktop’s latest AI course offerings. In addition to teaching and curriculum development, he writes custom scripts for InDesign (Make Book Jacket, Proper Fraction Pro, and more) and works with automation and AI-driven tools in his free time. You can find Dan on X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Facebook, and at danrodney.com.

Learn more about [Dan Rodney's](/dan-rodney) background and expertise.

## FAQ

### Do I need to bring anything to class such as camera?

- Bring an interchangeable lens camera (Mirrorless or DSLR) if you have one.
- If you don’t own a camera, we’ll have one camera to share between students.

### What equipment will you have for students to use during class?

- We’ll have lights, strobes/flash, and a color calibration system.
- If you don’t own a camera, we’ll have one camera to share between students. (So bring your own camera if you have one.)
- We have Macs and PCs with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom to use when learning the software.

## Pricing

**Tuition:** $2495