If there’s one thing that this year’s Cybernet Expo excelled in, it would be the incredibly informative seminars. Friday’s seminars were no exception, covering a number of areas that were equally beneficial to both novices and old-timers alike..The Photoshop and Flash workshop was slightly geared toward the novice designer, but was so packed full of information that even the most seasoned Web designer couldn’t help but walk away with something new. The panel featured some of the industry’s most notable designers, Photoshop and Flash gurus, including Hungryman (http://www.paysitedesign.com), Mark Tiarra (http://www.LUMYR.com), and Andy Abraham (http://www.Eyemage.net).

Hungryman started off the festivities with an in-depth look at the newest features available in Photoshop 7. Photoshop 7, he pointed out, was the largest single Photoshop upgrade since Photoshop 4, years ago. This means that a wide variety of great new tools are available to make designing a much more efficient process.

The new Healing Brush is one of those new features. This is a brush that is similar to the clone tool, but is much more effective for gradient color tones such as skin. Rather than cloning the texture and the color value of a given sample, the healing tool will instead clone only the texture data, and will automatically blend the color to match the area in which it is applied. Hungryman used the example of an old man’s face, from which he skillfully removed a dense concentration of wrinkles.

Hungryman then covered the ability to fine-scale each brush. Not only can you change the size of the brushes, but also the hardness, color dynamics, scatter, shape, angle, and weight. This makes the brushes much more useful, due to the increased precision of control and detail the user can attain.

The new File Browser feature in Photoshop 7 is laid out just like Windows Explorer, but contains a few features that many may not know about. For instance, with just a few clicks, it is now possible to quickly batch rename an entire directory of images.

Photoshop 7 also introduces a couple of other conveniently integrated tools such as spell check. No longer are you forced to open up a dictionary to check your spelling – it can be done right within Photoshop.

At this point, the panel moved on to some specific techniques for creating interesting effects, beginning with a very easy way to create a logo with a realistic lightning effect. They taught us how to instantly create buttons using the new Button Maker tool. And best of all… they taught us how to neatly cut a person out of a picture. How many of us have struggled with this in the past? With Photoshop 7, cutting out an object or person is a relatively simple task.

Finally, Hungryman and Mark Tiarra finished up with some great tips on getting some use out of Layer Styles. They covered a number of different tools, including the handy Stroke tool that will put a nice, solid outline around your text, making it stand out more heavily against a background.

Finally, Adam took center stage, and very skillfully (albeit a bit nervously) gave us some insight into the inner workings of the latest Macromedia Flash release.

Adam’s focus wasn’t as heavy on the hows of using Flash but rather the whys and the whens. Many people have passed an unwarranted judgment against the use of Flash in design due to its misuse and overuse by many designers. Flash does not have to be overwhelming in a design, as Adam demonstrated. Flash can be much more effective when used subtly, and with purpose.

For instance, one might use Flash to create a “Join” link on a tour page, making that particular “brick” stand out more visibly against the rest of the page with a small, flashy animation. This kind of work will not be page heavy, will not annoy or distract the visitor, and will pull the eye to the place you most want the surfer’s attention.

Of course, he warned, Flash can become page heavy if overused, and its visibility is limited to those who have the Flash viewer installed. He and Mark made a couple of suggestions to avoid alienating surfers who lacked the appropriate plug-ins.

He went on to explain the basics of Flash, indicating to those who aren’t familiar with it that it is a tool to create potentially complicated animations without having to create individual frames (as one would have to do with an animated gif). Animations of many frames also come out much smaller than an animated gif possibly could.

When one creates a shape, he demonstrated, it is stored in the Flash library as an object. Objects and animations can then be saved as symbols. It is these objects and symbols that allow Flash to be capable of such complicated animations. Rather than creating an entirely new image for each frame, Flash will simply take the symbol you’ve created and use ActionScript to move it in the way you specify. The filesize, in this way, is kept down, and the frame rate can be very high.

For designers, this seminar was a goldmine of information. The panelists, despite some difficulties finding their way around unfamiliar interfaces (designers all customize their interfaces, so designing on a different computer can be cumbersome), managed to pull off an amazing workshop.