Photoshop World – Dave Cross interview

Prolific Photoshop instructor, Dave Cross has just reached new heights in his Photoshop status as he is awarded with the honour of becoming the latest member of the Photoshop Hall of Fame. Rosie Tanner caught up with him at Photoshop World, Las Vegas, to find out how it feels to receive such a Photoshop accolade.

What does it feel like to be awarded a place in the Photoshop Hall of Fame?

It’s amazing and something that I never expected. I’ve always been the guy that just loves teaching Photoshop and gets the reward out of the feedback that people are learning something. To get the recognition is absolutely fantastic and nothing I ever expected.
It was awesome and it’s a pretty select group of people in there so it’s  nice to be among them, for sure.

How has Photoshop World changed since you first taught here?
The scope of what we teach and the number of instructors are the biggest changes. The first one I came to there were maybe 25 instructors and now its about 35 – there were  50 classes and now there are at least 70, alongside the expo too. Plus of course the numbers are much bigger, the first one I did we probably had a thousand people – now we’re averaging over 2,500 even in hard economic times.

Do you notice much of a difference as a result of the economy on show attendance?
Last year was the tough one as people weren’t sure if they should be spending the money to go, but we found last year’s crowd was the best one ever, because people were like ‘hey if I’m spending all this money to go, then I’m gonna darn sure I enjoy i!’ The whole atmosphere was exciting  and this year people are turning around and deciding to come for longer than a day and we’re very happy with the numbers and the enthusiasm

What are you teaching at the show?
I did a pre-conference session yesterday (Wednesday) with Cory Barker, which was a bit of an experiment. We’ve always shied away from hands-on classes, because that always has the potential for a nightmare of getting forty people in a room and some of which have just bought Photoshop yesterday and some are ten year veterans. But yesterday we started out by everyone shooting a model on a green screen background  using their own cameras. They went back to their laptop and we showed them how to extract the background and then Cory did some special effects to show them how to turn it into a movie poster. It was really fun and different as we’ve never done that before. Today I did two sessions, one on fixing common image problems like exposure and then a whole thing on working with Smart Objects and working flexibility. I have one other class tomorrow about integrating Photoshop with other programs.

z

z
What do you enjoy most about teaching?
Firstly, I’m a big ham, so when I’m in front of people I’m quite different than when you meet me in person – I’m quite a reserved, shy guy. But teaching to me is like performing – I love that aspect of teaching but in a fun way. By far the biggest thing for me is when people come up and say ‘Wow you just saved me so much time’ or ‘I took your class last year and I’m so much better for it’. I’ve had people come up to me almost crying because they want to express how much I helped them and you can’t beat that – that’s awesome. That’s why the Hall of Fame thing was the icing on the cake – I just do it because I love doing it. For me it’s always been about the student feedback. I used to teach classes of six to eight people and now I teach classes of six to eight hundred but I still know there’s people nodding and getting what I’m saying.

Any plans for you to come to the UK?
I have been pushing for that like you can’t believe. I said ‘You know Scott [Kelby- president of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals] you’ve been there a number of times, Bert [Monroy] has been there now , I said I think it might be my turn now! The fellow who organises the seminar tour says he will do his best to send me – so I shall keep my fingers crossed. I would love to go to the UK and jump over to Europe too.

Have you got any favourite features in CS4?
You know CS4 is one of those ones that at first glance I was almost a little underwhelmed because I was waiting for this big feature, but then I started using it and was like oh my gosh there are so many things in here that make my life so much easier. A couple of  my favourite features are things that people often hate, like Tabbed documents. The first time I saw that I was like urrh i don’t like it but after trying it I can’t imagine not having it because it’s so much more efficient. I also like that adjustment layers are in their own panel now, they used to slap right in the middle and cover up my image and now they’re on the side – much more interactive. The other thing is the Mask panel, which you can use interactively and non-destructively to change masks. There are so many little things that I always feel badly when someone says ‘yeah CS4′, but until your try it you don’t know how great it is.

Any hopes for CS5?
I think Photoshop is at a point where it does some pretty amazing stuff, so i have my list of more little things I hope they will adjust. We sat with Adobe product managers and they said ‘If we could change things then what would they be?’ And we spouted out about a thousand things and they actually told us  they are working through that list. My hope is the will be two or three real enhancements  to two or three things that haven’t been changed in a long time. This morning in the keynote speech, Adobe revealed some changes that are being made to the brushes [see keynote speech report for full details] which look pretty interesting – how long has it been since they changed the brushes? And also they should still fix a lot of the little things. A lot of things you don’t realise are bad until they’re fixed and you realise ‘that was silly.’ We just  want it  be faster and easier. Selections are still a big part of Photoshop and although it’s got better I hope they keep tweaking that. Still they need to leave enough for us to teach – we don’t want it to be too good or we”ll all be out of a job!

What sort of Photoshop work do you do for fun outside of work?
I love photographing people. I tried landscape photography but wasn’t into getting up at 4.30am in the morning to do the whole sunrise thing. Plus I like interacting with people. I take photos with Photoshop in mind. I like doing things you can’t do photographically, like getting the same person to dress up in different outfits and have them arguing with themselves. I like to make it into something that didn’t exist.

Any projects coming up over the next year?
It’s been a while since I had a book out and the timing has been all messed up, so that’s definitely one thing I want to do. On a day to day basis though, we do so much at NAPP. I travel a lot teaching seminars, we do DVDs, video tutorials. I’d like to enhance the way our tutorials are searchable for users and that sort of thing and do more traveling to places like the UK!