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I took today off of the daily grind in order to attend the Photoshop Creativity Tour which was instructed by Bert Monroy. I wasn't sure what to expect; I have attended a few conferences/seminars before but they were usually more technical in nature. This was my first session which was attended mainly by artists, and people who make the majority of their income by being creative under under the direction of a client that does not really know what they want.

I was quite early arriving at the Telus Convention Centre, and I meandered around checking out what was for the taking. After loading up on all the swag I could get my hands on, I went in to grab my seat. I surveyed the mass, and I couldn't help but think that these people were a little bit cooler than the usual technical conference goer. I watched as Blurr and Quicksilver clad artists circled around, shmoozing and card swapping, until the announcement got things underway.

After that moment, I was blown away. The presentation was equally geared to the illustrator (people still use Photoshop to illustrate, here's proof) and the photographer. There was a few sessions about planning perspective and using patterns that will not be as useful to me as some of the others, but the information on masking and channels was definitely worth the money spent. It was amazing to watch Bert do his thing throughout the day. It took him less than a minute to remove red highlights from a woman's hair, probably about two minutes plopping an orangutan into the middle of a wheat field. These are skills that I have, and I could have performed the same operations, but they would have taken me an order of magnitude of time longer. Then he started moving some wine glasses around, and putting reflections, liquids and highlights on them and I don't think I ever would have been able to pull that off until I learned a couple dirty little secrets. I was still stunned when he started generating wood texture for floors, and moving paintings between walls. In the end I realized that with all the tricks I know in Photoshop, I still have a great deal to learn.

At least I'm still on the enlightenment path, and am working to improve my knowledge.