Beginning Monday, CreativeLIVE will host a week full of 40 free online classes taught by professionals at the top of their fields. Taking down two of the largest barriers to accessing education — geography and cost — founder Chase Jarvis hopes Photoshop Week will inspire creative individuals to pursue their passion for photo editing.

Classes are geared toward all levels, from noobs to pros, but each course focuses on how photo editing can be used to further your career.

CreativeLIVE has already educated a few million people through online workshops and tutorials through the website.

"When you get these people next to each other, you get to survey and sample a broad range of styles and types of education — and you get to experience it all at the same time," Jarvis said. "What's broken is the education system. Our hope is to transcend that system."

Online audiences can interact with the instructors through social media on Twitter and Facebook. Designated students who participate in the live audience will act as ambassadors, bringing the online students' questions to instructors. This not only allows students from all over the world to take part in the course but allows them to shape its direction.

"We are inherently social. Online classes where you can download the syllabus — that is not social," Jarvis said.

Gurus are given the ultimate access to anything they might need to aid them during instruction. All workshop sessions are shot with the full CreativeLIVE treatment, using multiple cameras and equipment that keeps the audience engaged. "The best teachers you ever had were entertaining and engaging. We want to continue in that vein," Jarvis said. "They’ve gotten better and have more at their disposal."

Lesa Snider, a long-time CreativeLIVE instructor and the author of the Photoshop and iPhoto series of Missing Manuals, says being able to communicate with an engaged audience that wants to participate is a huge incentive for her as an instructor. "That is a huge difference. I can feel the whole of the Internet there with me, and it is the most rewarding and fulfilling thing that I have been able to do," she said.

Enrollment in Photoshop Week is free by signing up on the website. From looking at advanced numbers, Jarvis is hopeful this will be the biggest Photoshop course of its kind in the world.
Image via iStockphoto, ileela
















































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Smartphone cameras are great — except, usually, for zooming in, lighting and producing high-quality photos.

Researchers at MIT, however, have developed a processor chip that they say can instantly convert mobile device snapshots into professional-looking pictures.

The chip, pictured here, integrates into any mobile device or digital camera, and can be used to improve lighting, apply effects and kill low-light background noise. Plus, researchers say, it uses significantly less power than full computer processors or video cards.

One of the chip's tasks enhances low light photos. "Typically when taking pictures in a low-light situation, if we don’t use flash on the camera we get images that are pretty dark and noisy," Rahul Rithe, a graduate student in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, says in a press release. "And if we do use the flash we get bright images but with harsh lighting, and the ambience created by the natural lighting in the room is lost."

So, to avoid photos turning out like this, the chip takes two images — one using flash, one without it — and combines only the most desirable parts of both photos into a composite image.



It's unclear when the processor will come to market. The group presented their findings at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, which wrapped up today.

Does this sound like something you'd use?

To learn more, and read the official release here.

6 Apps for Editing Photos

5. Filterstorm

Filterstorm offers many of the same features you might find in a powerful desktop photo editor on your mobile phone. The app can support up to five layers at a time, and allows you to make adjustments to the image including brush, gradient, color range, vignette or selecting opacity. You can work with the brightness/contrast in a photo, the temperature, exposure, and saturation as well as crop a picture how you would like and specify a specific aspect ratio you’d like the final image to be.



Photoshop Express

Who says you need a computer to use Photoshop? Adobe Photoshop Express is a free, lightweight version of the popular photo editor that allows you to do things like crop and straighten your photos, as well as apply filters, effects and even borders to your prints.

The free app comes with a number of basic features. With a number of other filters, effects, and more available as in-app purchases.



1. Camera+

Camera+ is an app designed for not only editing your photos, but for taking them as well. The app has a built-in stabilizer for steadying your camera while taking pictures, a 6x zoom for getting close to your subject, and as well as a grid to help you line up your shot perfectly.

Once you’ve taken a photo, Camera+ has some built-in editing tools as well as a ton of built-in effects for giving your picture a finishing touch, as well as built-in borders. Finished pictures can be shared instantly on Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr from directly within the app.



2. PicsPlay Pro - FX Photo Editor

PicsPlay Pro for Android has over 200 professional presets, allowing you to customize your photo on the fly. The app has several built-in themes such as HDR, Blur, Vintage and Black & White, and has real-time opacity control on those presets, allowing you to customize each one to best fit your own personal needs.
Photos edited using the app can be instantly shared with others on a variety of different services, including Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.


3. Pixlr-O-Matic

With more than 100 effects, 280 overlays and almost 200 different borders Pixlr-o-Matic lets you customize your pictures quickly and easily to give them a seemingly endless array of different looks. In addition to editing photos already stored on your phone, you can also use the app to take new pictures. Finished photos can be shared with friends via Facebook, or saved to your phone as high-resolution files that you can then print out or use in other projects.



4. PicSay Pro

Ever wish your dog could talk? Anything is possible with PicSay Pro. The Android app has a number of traditional photo editing features such as the ability to remove red eye and crop and straighten photos, and adds to it special effects like the ability to add tech and word balloons to your pictures or make just a small portion of a black-and-white photo color.


Thumbnail image via iStockphoto, PeskyMonkey; post image courtesy of MIT


















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