Session 1 started off a bit slow, as it was the first session and the first time ITA had done the Choice Sessions section of the day, as it is a oart after noon lab. This day was all about introducing the concepts behind Photoshop Actions and Sctipts as tools used for increasing project productivity. This day was all about getting students familiar with learning how to use, create/record, save, download & install, load, and incorporate these two aspects of Photoshop in different kinds of projects.
The students seemed to be really amazed at how the actions and scripts were carried out and how much they could accomplish in such a short amount of time once they were run. By the end of the session the students had a couple of different projects they finished; one project was from a batch rename script, one was from an action they downloaded from the internet and loaded into Photoshop, and their last one was from an action they created/recorded themselves.
Overall, it was a pretty informative session; however, next session will definitely need to be a bit more project-oriented (i.e. rather than having the main focus be "actions and scripts within the context of a few projects" it will be more so focused on creating cool projects and/or effects and seeing how actions and/or scripts can aid in that process) in order to ensure students' attentiveness.
Session 2
This session was a lot more interesting for the students, as it was much more project oriented. First we started off with a quick review from last session just about the main purpose of actions and scripts and their many uses, then we jumped right into the first project which was "Reading" actions--this project consisted of downloading an action of a cool effect from the internet (http://www.turningturnip.co.uk/photoshop/photoshop-actions/photo-box-action.php), loading it into Photoshop, viewing its contents/recorded steps, and then finally attempting to re-create the cool effect using the action as a step-by-step guided tutorial. The purpose of this project was to get students more familiar with actions, the process and order at which actions may be recorded, and also to get more familiar with the Photoshop interface and different tools and such, as they encountered many new terms for different Photoshop tools and processes through reading the recorded steps of the action. Unfortunately, this particular action in order to achieve this cool effect was entirely TOOOO long so about a third of the way through reading the action we decided to just stop and hit the "play" button to finish it up...we got super impatient. It would have been nice to actually be able to finish reading the action and doing it ourselves and then to press "play" and see how close/good we were at reading the steps of the action but it was just way too time consuming, so next time I'll be sure to pick a cool effect with an action that has less effects.
Next, the students created their own actions which they saved to their folders for other students to load up and attempt to "read" themselves to see if they could get the same effects (although I think most of them just hit the "play" button...I guess I was having a lot more fun with the reading of actions then most of the students).
The final project of the day was a walk through project called "Clipping Mask Collage." The students really enjoyed this project and were very satisfied with their results. This, again, was another way to give the students a bit more experience with creating longer actions and getting a better feel for the idea that not all steps that on may take in Photoshop can be recorded with actions (such as the Brush Tool) and also that sometimes there needs to be a specific order to how you record your actions in order for them to give the same effect when you run them/press play on another image.
Overall it was a pretty successful session, and next session will more centered around scripts.
