Thinking Like an Art Director with PaintShop Pro

Jump into the deep end with the art director's bible, exploring layout, subject dominance, grabbing the eye, and communicating a message as you knuckle down.

Apply the L's principle to prepare and compose with transparent Elle's layers, adjusting position, cropping, and perspective for a cohesive, print-ready image.

Learn post-production art direction by amalgamating stock assets to craft a convincing composition, using feathered selections, scaling, perspective, and transparency to preserve pixel density.

Assess the credibility of composite images by judging perspective coherence, asset cohesion, and lighting, and begin making decisive art direction choices from the outset with PaintShop Pro.

Explore faux lighting and radiosity techniques in PaintShop Pro, creating subtle caustic reflections, translucent effects, and cohesive composition through layer blending and opacity adjustments.

Learn to create a new focal point in a composition by adjusting lighting and depth with PaintShop Pro tools, guiding the viewer's eye through selective focus and blur.

Think like an art director as a mode of working and communicating ideas, not just making pretty photos, and evoke thoughts and emotions through concepts.

Recap design principles like color, composition, divine proportion, and the rule of thirds as you prepare to think like an art director in PaintShop Pro.

Explore the golden ratio, divine proportion, and universal balance as mathematical templates for composing images and placing assets, guiding photograph framing and crafting harmonious art direction.

Learn the rule of thirds to frame photos using nine tiles, place subjects at intersections for balance, and refine composition through cropping and editing.

Explore basic colour theory using the color wheel, learn about primary colors red, yellow, and blue, and apply complementary colors with Paint Shop Pro for clear art direction and branding.

Master subject dominance by guiding the viewer’s eye through composition, depth of field, colorization, and visual rules like the rule of thirds, then practice with your own or stock images.

Recap the basic, formulaic rules that guide art direction and keep them in your toolkit as you move into the meat and bones of art direction.

Develop your inner barometer as an art director by exploring PaintShop Pro's typographic tools and paint effect filters, mastering only the options that enhance great work.

Apply the director's craft to create your first art director brief, working within publishing dimensions to compose a two-to-one billboard using assets like the NSPCC logo and a proportion template.

Set up your layout with divine principles, guides, and margins to balance the composition. Direct the eye from left to the call to action, using padding for solidity.

Align branding with relevance to ensure posters belong to the same campaign and resonate with the audience. Use logo colors, borders, and embellishments to convey corporate culture and testing insights.

Explore conceptual imagery as a means to balance form and function, unleash creativity, and craft posters and ads that capture attention and communicate a clear message.

Grab attention and communicate the message through visual form. Translate corporate speak into a message normal people can take home, reflecting the NSPCC core strategy: give abuse children a voice.

Create a cohesive composite by amalgamating two stock images, cutting out the hand with a precise selection brush, feathered edges, and shadows, and align lighting for realism and cohesion.

Flatten and merge layers for edits, then apply hue, saturation, contrast, and brightness to create a dramatic effect. Present four to five options to the client while aligning with branding.

A simple set of tools, used correctly, can significantly improve a piece; use them sparingly to project confidence to art directors who judge work by its standard.

Explore the final practical module by applying an animation technique that uses two still photographs to create a dynamic result, using the course repository and your own images.

Conclude the course by crafting a simple yet dynamic pseudo hi-def motion sequence, separating background and foreground assets and extracting main subjects for video distribution or web use.

Use the smart selection brush to remove subjects, feather for realism, refine with the clone brush, blur the background for a 3-D look, export PNG with alpha.

Create a pseudo hi-def motion sequence by importing background and foreground, using queening to move elements independently for a parallax, camera-tracked effect, and render a smooth five-second sequence.

Wrap up the module by celebrating completed practical exercises and showing how art direction can be approached in diverse ways, including moving image, film, video, and animation as future avenues.

Apply a thought-driven approach to every project, from typography to retouching, using a brief and desired reaction as your route to success as an art director.