RP LIVE: Feedback for Carrie Beene product retouch

[Doug Nelson]

Tell us what you thought of the show and give us your requests for future shows with Carrie Beene.

[Flashtones]

I learned some things. Copying and pasting an alpha channel so as to use the fade/blend mode was interesting.

But while (or possibly because) I have a great interest in product retouching, I thought the project was too simple. I'd rather see a more demanding task, requiring a brisker pace of production, rather than a task requiring 40 mins of work dragged out to 2 hours with questions.

I understand you are trying to reach a broad audience, from beginner to advanced, but I wonder if there aren't tweaks that could better the experience to all. Perhaps you could have different webinars geared to different levels of experience, or projects that require more than 2 hours that are split into parts A and B, wherein the presenter can go through the material uninterrupted for the first three or so hours, with 60 mins left for followup questions?

Really like what you're doing here, would just like to see the presenters allowed to control the flow so that more material can be covered in the time allowed.

[KCorner]

I totaly Agree with Flashtones, I was expecting more .. i thought one project would be enough, but i didn't learn more then alpha channel too..

I like her works with the product & the dog but i thougth it will go beyond copy and pasting.

I think Q&As should be judge by how relevant to the subject and the rest answerd in the form, this is what happend to pdn live show last June they answerd 3 or 4 questiones then the rest they post it in the blog or whatever they have in the site.

After all Carrie Beene I appreicate your time and sharing knowledge... Doug too

Keep up the good work

[markc78]

Really enjoyed it, took alot away from this not so much in the way of new techniques but more from the overall approach & structure of the workflow for product retouching such as the dividing up of an image into its major elements & the simplifying of this in the hand-off to the client, which may all seem simple but still needs to be covered in these tutorials.

Would be very interested in more product retouch tutorials & particularly more complex examples , & also please do at least one , pref more , on HAIR!

Cheers Guys

[JasonRS]

I lost the audio on this and ended up not learning anything, reading the comments abouve I'm in two minds as to whether to watch the rebroadcast.

[Ruby2]

I enjoyed the broadcast very much! I wasn't sure upon signing up, but I have gotten so much out of all of the other broadcasts, I thought I'd give this a try, and I'm so glad I did! I got some great tips, and I find it absolutely fascinating how a particular task can be tackled in an almost endless variety of ways. Keep up the good work!! I'd love a webinar on tips and tricks for using a wacom tablet!

[skydog]

I also lost the audio for about 30 min...

[Mike Abbott]

I have to say that I was expecting more. I quit after 45 minutes through sheer boredom.

[ningyo]

I had no audio at all. The control panel said the audio conference was having technical difficulties and to try back later. Can I get a refund?

[Doug Nelson]

Send me an email.

[carrie]

Hi Guys,

I think perhaps it's a good idea to have a skill level designation for the webinars. Sometimes when I get into talking about Channels, different types of masks and paths people with less experience can be a bit confused. Apparently that stuff didn't faze our saavy listeners (or just watchers in some cases unfortunately).

Mostly the product session was to show how to build a file correctly and cleanly and deliver it to the client in simplified layers. Sorry you bowed out Mike, we did hit upon some fun cool tips later on in the broadcast.
Thanks for the comments, let's see if we can't do something scarier next time: how about hair!!

Cheers!
Carrie

[Andrew Lawrence]

My audio worked amazingly, I had some issues last time but I clicked on something wrong and had to go through the webinar menu clicking on different preferences.

I really enjoyed this and took a lot away from it. It's always interesting and you can learn how people have a different ways of doing something that might be a lot better than you do.

But I was expecting a bit more..... I think I just would like to see a more exciting photo - a high end metallic product or something.... something that looks way different from where it started, but I understand it's hard to get permission to use some models/products and show the before.

As for having different skill level designations, I don't think this is a good idea. I vote they should all be pretty advanced. Why else have top level people devoting their time to sharing. I don't want to have them waste time explaining how the curves adjustment layer works. If I could get in to watch someone like steven meisel shoot for 10 bucks, I might not understand everything that's going on, but it would be priceless. These live events offer something well above and beyond what you can find in all of those "expert" photoshop books you find at the store. If we have these amazing retouchers generously come and sprinkle some knowledge on us we shouldn't take that for granted, if something goes over my head a little it motivates me to look into it. We can afford to get advanced in these things, That's why I watch them. Any beginners will hopefully be keeping notes and asking about these things in the forum for countless people to answer.

Overall I did learn some new tricks and thank you Carrie so much for your time! Doug, you do a great job as moderator of these things and you ask some great questions before I can even type them.

[d00dle]

2hrs is pretty long and boring questions should be @ the end so people can leave early. some questions are just plain stupid, ex. why don't you name your layers?

[Flashtones]

It's not so much that there are questions, it's that Doug is getting people who are already great teachers and then questioning everything they do. It becomes halted and tedious.

My suggestion is to let the presenters present. If a presenter is blowing through everything without a word then they should be slowed down here or there. For the most part I think the moderator should stand back and only interrupt on an as-needed basis. This would allow time for more substantial projects to be undertaken in the allotted time.

I don't mean to come off too strong as I have enjoyed and learned from the sessions I've seen and will continue to subscribe.

[Andrew Lawrence]

Originally Posted by Flashtones

It's not so much that there are questions, it's that Doug is getting people who are already great teachers and then questioning everything they do. It becomes halted and tedious.

My suggestion is to let the presenters present. If a presenter is blowing through everything without a word then they should be slowed down here or there. For the most part I think the moderator should stand back and only interrupt on an as-needed basis. This would allow time for more substantial projects to be undertaken in the allotted time.

I don't mean to come off too strong as I have enjoyed and learned from the sessions I've seen and will continue to subscribe.

I agree with this as well, I think a lot of the questions are good questions that I wonder myself, but sometimes I would rather figure them out on my own later and move onto other things getting as much info as I can to follow up on later.

The "questioning as-needed" would be hard for the moderator to judge though, there could be a lot of beginners watching these things probing Doug with endless questions because they are lost on how to create a new layer. But I do understand your frustrations - I've attended many a lecture with top-name photographers were the Q&A sessions consisted of questions like "what type of camera do you use?" and "do you think film is better than digital?"

[JasonRS]

Originally Posted by Andrew Lawrence

The "questioning as-needed" would be hard for the moderator to judge though, there could be a lot of beginners watching these things probing Doug with endless questions because they are lost on how to create a new layer.

The questions / interruptions come up after each event, but they don't change...

If Doug takes on board Carrie's recommendation above to define a skill level for each of these sessions all of this can be avoided, or ignored.

It should also be made clear from the start that basic Photoshop skills are a requirement, and most of those basic queries can be addressed with 30seconds and a search engine

This is after all, RetouchPRO and not Photoshop101

- Define the skill level when it's announced
- Ignore the Photoshop 101 stuff
- Have the Instructor control the flow of questions from Doug on a pull, not push basis.
- Or save the questions to the end (they may get answered during the session!)

This could be trialled for the next few events to see if it works, so far all the other sessions have followed the same format of random questions being fired in.

I use the same Webinar software for running technical events in my day job (I work for Citrix btw) and I don't allow any questions to be fired in randomly, only at predefined points as quite often the questions people are asking get a reply of I'm comng to that, or we'll cover that in a minute. So, often the question was unnecessary anyway.

My 2p's worth, and I'd happily host an event on my account as a separate trial, if Doug wants to.

[mkunert]

Here's some feed back... and excuse me but I am still fuming....

the webinar didn't work on my macs. What a waste of money and time.

Oh, yeah... I did finally get it to work, about 30 seconds before the webinar ended. Gotta say, those 30 seconds didn't teach me a lot.

How do I get a refund?

[Doug Nelson]

Just send me an email to dnelson at this domain.