Photoshop expert, trainer, author.
Check out dekePod, a video podcast series with Deke McClelland.
Electronic publishing pioneer Deke McClelland is a popular lecturer on Adobe Photoshop and the larger realm of computer graphics and design. He has hosted the interactive "Video Workshop" CD that shipped with Photoshop Versions 7, CS, and CS2, as well as hundreds of hours of tutorial-style video training for industry leaders lynda.com and Total Training. In addition to his video work, Deke has written 84 books translated into 24 languages, with more than 4 million copies in print.
One of the most award-winning writers in the technology market, Deke received the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Computer Book in 1989. Since then, he has garnered more than 20 honors, including seven independent citations from the Computer Press Association. In 2002, he was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame.
In 2004 Deke created the One-on-One™ book series, which uses video, step-by-step exercises, and hundreds of full-color illustrations to provide readers with the closest thing possible to private instruction from a recognized expert. These ambitious, self-paced guides include the bestselling Adobe Photoshop CS2 One-on-One and Adobe InDesign CS2 One-on-One. Late in 2006 Deke teamed up with vanguard online training company lynda.com to bring the One-on-One training strategy to a line of video products, beginning with Photoshop CS3 Beta One-on-One Preview, the first series available for the public beta of Photoshop CS3. In addition to the full 20-plus hour Photoshop CS3 One-on-One, his plans include Illustrator One-on-One and InDesign One-on-One. Among Deke's current lynda.com videos are Photoshop Elements 5 Essentials and the #1 ranked Photoshop CS2 Channels and Masks (available for immediate viewing at www.lynda.com/deke).
Deke is an Adobe Certified Expert, a member of the PhotoshopWorld Instructor Dream Team, and a regular speaker for the Photoshop Fling cruise seminars. Deke lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and two super-powered boys.
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Deke blogs at:
http://www.deke.com/dekeblog
dekeBytes: Yes, I Dare to Make a Photoshop CS4 Wish List
In 2002, I wrote a preview of Adobe Photoshop 7 for a popular computer magazine. Although I praised the program for its file browser, expanded Brushes palette, and healing tools, I lamented its lack of ambition in the parametric department.... read more
dekeBytes: Suddenly, Photoshop's Brightness/Contrast Does Not Suck
One of the more surprising new features of Photoshop CS3 is the Brightness/Contrast command, which has gone from being one of the worst features to one that is actually quite useful. I'll show you what I mean with this example.... read more
dekeBytes: Introduction to a Bridge 2 (Far)
Bridge CS3 (already in dot-release, 2.1, as I write this) is the new version of the Adobe Bridge that ships with Photoshop CS3, the other individual CS3 applications, and the six, count them six, skews of Creative Suite 3. While... read more
Illustrator Advanced on Its Way; Same Goes for Deke's Techniques
December 12 2012
Just returned home from a long day at the office. And, boy, am I psyched. First, my Illustrator CS6 One-on-One: Advanced course goes live at my beloved video publisher lynda.com tomorrow. It will include, among other things, the following neon type effect created entirely from scratch using Illustrator combined with… read moreMy Latest Video Course, "Illustrator CS6 One-on-One: Intermediate," Came Out 2 Weeks Ago
December 06 2012
That's right, Part 2 of my cradle-to-grave video treatise on Adobe Illustrator CS6 is out on lynda.com. I would have mentioned it 2 weeks ago, on November 21, when the course went live. But I was on vacation in Ireland. In the northern city of Derry, to be exact. And… read moreIrish Inspirations, Day 7: Castle Hunting around Clare
November 25 2012
Our next day in Ireland was dedicated to indulging Deke's insatiable desire for castle hunting. Neither rain, nor dusk, nor getting lost in narrow roads could deter him. We drove around the wilds of County Clare, seeking Deke's often elusive prey. The clouds cooperated for the most part, providing a… read moreIrish Inspirations, Day 6: Happy Shadow Puppet Turkey Day
November 23 2012
Outside, there wasn't much to share visually about this rainy Thanksgiving Day in Galway. Except that we almost forgot it was Thanksgiving. We wandered in the rain in the "Latin Quarter," ducking in for a pint or a coffee where appropriate, completely oblivious.Then suddenly we were in this rather touristy… read moreIrish Inspirations, Day 5: Derry from the Walls
November 22 2012
We just realized that it's actually Thanksgiving at home, so we're going to mostly take the day off and pretend that drinking Guinness and eating Shepherd's Pie is tradition. Just a quick check in to talk about our delightful day in Derry, yesterday. Our hotel was actually just along the Wall… read moreIrish Inspirations, Day 4: A Giant Cause for Photoshop
November 21 2012
Today we visited the Giant's Causeway in County Antrim, a UNESCO world heritage site that basically marks the origin of Irish hero Finn McCool's bridge to Scotland. Either that or it's an area of about 40,000 interlocking basalt columns, the result of an ancient volcanic eruption some 50 million… read moreIrish Inspirations, Day 2: Vaguely Familiar Spiraling
November 19 2012
Nothing about Day 2's spiral encounters in Ireland was younger than 1000 years old and the oldest was over 5000. Yet, we could still find connections to our personal experience in the modern world. It was easy to make the connection, especially if we squinted and drove by too fast.One… read moreIrish Inspirations, Day 1: I <3 Dublin
November 18 2012
Day 1 (I refuse to count what is now nostalgically known as "Tow-Truck Day") brought pilgrimages to two sacred sites of equal but disparate sanctity. Trinity College is the home of the Book of Kells, a painstakingly illuminated Latin manuscript of the Gospels created sometime around the year 800. There's… read moreIrish Inspirations, Day 0: Part III of Europe in the Off-Season
November 17 2012
Welcome to Part III in our design-absorbing adventures in Europe during the slow season, in which we stuff our suitcases full of warm clothes, gladly endure a little chill in order to avoid hordes of tourists, and share inspiring bits of design that we find along the way. If you missed… read moreThis Is Not a Political Entry, This Is An Historical One
October 31 2012
Here in The States, the presidential election draws nigh. I have my opinion. You have yours. Let's grab a pint and throw darts for luck.What I think is funny is how much attention has recently been drawn to what a polarized nation we are. For example, in 2008, the electoral… read moreMy 11-Hour "Photoshop CS6 One-on-One: Advanced" Video Course Is Now Live at lynda.com
September 19 2012
It's been a while since my last video course. Roughly 7 weeks to be exact. What have I been doing with myself? I blame Deke's Techniques. And That Darn Challenge. And then, of course, my personal life. Which has been a blast lately. Even so, last Thursday (September 13) marked… read moreThe Much Ballyhooed All-Adobe Workflow
December 18 2007
For most of the 1990s, the design market was shared by three programs: page-layout software QuarkXPress, image editor Adobe Photoshop, and drawing application Macromedia FreeHand. (Some shops preferred Illustrator, but FreeHand tended to be the more popular choice of page... read moreBlack and White Options in Photoshop CS3
July 25 2007
In a world that is saturated with color, there is something about the elegant simplicity of black-and-white imagery that gets right to the heart of things. The removal of color allows our eyes and minds to focus on subtleties of... read moreJuly 04 2007
A few weeks ago, Scott Kelby, editor of Photoshop User magazine, invited me to submit a 5-minute technique for his weekly NAPP TV podcast (formerly Photoshop TV). It was a tough decision: Say "yes" and become a regular adjunct on... read moredekeBytes: Palettes Aren't Panels (Vampires Aren't Zombies)
June 15 2007
With the release of its CS3 products, Adobe has once again ever so slightly shifted its official marketing and documentation language. The newest casualty? Palettes. Palettes no longer exist. The word "palettes" has been struck from the Adobe lexicon. Those... read moredekeBytes: Photomerge Also No Longer Sucks
May 31 2007
Sorry I couldn't stop by last week, but I was busy fearlessly leading my crackerjack team in the final throes of getting the latest edition of my book, Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on-One, off to the printer. (An excuse or a... read moredekeBytes: Photomerge Also No Longer Sucks
May 31 2007
Sorry I couldn't stop by last week, but I was busy fearlessly leading my crackerjack team in the final throes of getting the latest edition of my book, Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on-One, off to the printer. (An excuse or a... read moredekeBytes: Go See My Video Blog
May 17 2007
Just wanted y'all to know: In addition to this here HTML version of dekeBytes, there's a new video version of dekeBytes as well. One's up now, and another goes up tomorrow. The movies are short, between 3 and 5 minutes,... read moreFusing Two Images, Automatically!
May 10 2007
This new feature in Photoshop CS3 allows you to automatically align multiple images captured from a single vantage point, even if you shot them without a tripod. For instance, let's say we have these pictures of me and my wife,... read moredekeBytes: Your Basic Smart Filter Mask
May 03 2007
Last week, I showed you how to use Smart Filters, a new feature in Photoshop CS3, to apply non-destructive filter effects to an image. Well, just as you can use layer masks with adjustment layers, you can apply masks... read moredekeBytes: Welcome to Smart Filters
April 25 2007
Last week, I talked about how long I'd been waiting the arrival of Smart Filters. In this installment of dekeBytes, I'll give you a sense for how this new feature in Photoshop CS3 works by applying some detail sharpening... read moreRecent Posts | All O'Reilly Posts
dekePod 018: Photoshop and the Andy Warhol Silkscreen Effect
Publish Date: Jun. 11, 2009
Have you ever wanted to create an authentic looking Andy Warhol silkscreen? One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Warhol was known for his avant-garde paintings and screenprintings. Remember Warhol’s garishly colored celebrity images of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, or Mao Zedong? In the studio he called The Factory, Warhol took an assembly-line approach to his high-contrast, silkscreens and produced art as a mass consumable, like a t-shirt or a pack of gum. It’s not surprising that his art is still popular today, and there are lots of one-click Warhol solutions. But if you want the real thing, join Deke McClelland in the final episode of this dekePod series, as he dissects Warhol’s process, and shows you how to use Photoshop to render your favorite portrait in bona-fide Warhol magnificence.
dekePod 017: Photoshop and the Visual Communications Makeover
Publish Date: May. 28, 2009
Signs are our friends. They help us observe the rules when we actually need to know the rules. We don’t all speak English, and tourism is a huge industry, so signs need to be language-independent. Which is why a vocabulary of immediately identifiable symbols is essential to every working artist and designer. So if symbols are so important, why are most such an indecipherable mess? Computer icons! Laundry instructions! Or Deke’s favorite: What you shouldn’t throw into an airplane toilet! Learn what works and what doesn’t in this laugh-out-loud episode of dekePod.
dekePod 016: Photoshopping the Great Masters
Publish Date: May. 14, 2009
They say you can’t be too rich or too thin. So how about getting rich by making others thin? Plenty of experienced retouchers make small but enviable fortunes shaving body fat off already lithe models. But rather than showing you a present-day example--honestly, how many underfed waifs do we need to see made skinnier?--Deke takes us back to a time when ideas of beauty were very different: the High Renaissance. In those times of mean circumstances and manual labor, body fat was a thing to be envied. How best to take a well-fed model rendered by the likes of Raphael and make her look like a modern work of art?
dekePod 015: Photoshop and the Lost Undersea Channel
Publish Date: Apr. 30, 2009
The ocean is a different world. Where else can you cavort with colorful animals a thousand feet or more above the Earth’s surface? But the romance of the sea comes at a price. Just as the watery depths rob our lungs of air, they rob our eyes of color. It’s not uncommon for an underwater photo to lack any information in the Red channel. Which is where coral, clown fish, and our very own skin tones live. Fortunately, Deke knows how to summon a Red channel back from the dead. Watch this dekePod and learn how to create underwater images that will satisfy your inner Jacques Cousteau.
dekePod 014: Photoshop vs. Adobe Bridge—Beware the Cache, the Cache Must Die!
Publish Date: Apr. 16, 2009
If you use Photoshop, then you probably browse your images with Adobe’s Bridge, which shows you thumbnails of your files. Good news: The Bridge lets you preview images without going to the trouble of opening them. Bad news: Those previews result in large cache files that eat up your hard drive. Worse yet, they permit others to track what you’ve been looking at. Even if you’ve long since destroyed the original file, the thumbnail persists! Learn how to protect yourself—and maybe even save your job.
dekePod Episode 013: The Mating Habits of the Pen Tool
Publish Date: Apr. 2, 2009
Adobe's landmark pen tool defined an industry. But to the uninitiated, its reliance on anchor points and control handles makes it as approachable as first-year algebra. Until you see it's nothing more than a mating ritual: The points are boys and the handles are girls. Once you get that, it all falls into place.
dekePod Episode 012: The Droplet Song (A Love Song to a Lost Feature in Photoshop)
Publish Date: Mar. 19, 2009
How best to encourage people to use an obscure but super-useful Photoshop feature? Rhyme, rhythm, and romance. Hence a music video that will make all your automation dreams come true. Give Deke five minutes of your time and he’ll set your world on fire.
dekePod Episode 011: Giving It Up For the Family
Publish Date: Dec. 9, 2008
Creative professionals are routinely roped into frivolous art projects for their families. You don't want to spend much time on them because who wants to do more of what you already do all day? But you don't want to do a lousy job because your cred's at stake. Oh and because, sure, you care about your family. In this episode of dekePod, Deke shows you how to create a spectacular birthday party invitation, with little effort, using a combination of found art and Photoshop.
dekePod Episode 010: The Instant Liquid Diet
Publish Date: Nov. 19, 2008
Ah, the holiday season, a time of expansion. Great physical expansion. Fatty, high-calories food is everywhere you turn. And so we grow. But not this year. In some distant future, when you review Thanksgiving 2008 in your photo album, you’ll look back on it as the first of many years that you actually lost weight. "Thank you dekePod," you'll say. Because in this episode, Deke teaches you how to transform fat into fit using the Liquify command—and with smooth, stretch mark-free results.
dekePod Episode 009: Sixties Space Siren
Publish Date: Nov. 5, 2008
If you’ve seen an episode of the original Star Trek, you’re no doubt familiar with the show’s main character, Captain Kirk, and his eternal blurry-eyed fascination with women. Every time he came in sight of a love interest, she appeared to him in diffused focus. In this episode of dekePod, Deke shows how you can achieve a nearly identical effect in Photoshop with such flattering results that you yourself could win the captain’s affections.
dekePod Episode 008: The Masks Palette
Publish Date: Oct. 22, 2008
Photoshop CS4 has been out one week. Hardly enough time for any of us to embrace it, let alone place our faith in it. And yet faith is precisely what one of the program's most highly touted features, The Masks palette, requires of you. Everything about it is promising; little about it makes sense. The palette that makes masks also wears one. In this special Halloween episode, we unmask the Masks palette. Will it be a bag of treats? Or a bundle of tricks? You'll find out, in dekePod.
dekePod Episode 007: Faking an HDR Portrait
Publish Date: Oct. 8, 2008
Think nothing can scare you? Enter dekePod, that thing that is not even slightly scary and yet, be honest, gives you the heebie jeebies. In this episode, Deke investigates how to simulate an extreme-detail HDR portrait -- which would otherwise require you to shoot multiple exposures of a person locked down in a body brace -- using flimflam and forgery. And a shrunken skull. These are the depths of scariness we go to. Here at dekePod.
dekePod Episode 006: Photoshop CS4, Buy or Die
Publish Date: Sep. 23, 2008
September 23 marks the announcement of Adobe's Creative Suite 4. And that means a new version of the company's flagship image editor, Photoshop. Coming just 18 months after its predecessor, is Photoshop CS4 any good? Enter dekePod, Deke McClelland's irreverent and uncensored video series. Day and date with Adobe's announcement, Deke provides a third-party, impartial, and highly opinionated review of the new software. Titled "Photoshop CS4: Buy or Die," this episode promises to show you all facets of the program—complete with commentary—without interrupting your busy day. In just five minutes, you'll know whether you want to upgrade or not. Either you buy or it dies, it's as simple as that.
dekePod Episode 005: Spirographs on Steroids
Publish Date: Sep. 3, 2008
In this episode, Deke makes the startling claim that Illustrator, a complex piece of software that costs hundreds of dollars, is better than an $8 Spirograph. Using nothing but half an ellipse and a few live, editable effects, Deke shows you how to construct something truly extraordinary. "Trust me on this one. Artist, non-artist, proficient with Illustrator, never even heard of the program -- I don't care if you live in Antarctica, you have no access to electricity, you haven't seen sunlight in 45 days -- oh my God, what are you, a penguin? -- you're gonna wanna watch this!"
dekePod Episode 004: Stretching a Photo in Illustrator
Publish Date: Aug. 20, 2008
Have you ever wanted to stretch a photo's background but leave the foreground unchanged? Or turn a horizontal photo into a vertical one without making a mess of it? You can't do it in Photoshop CS3, but you can in its companion program, Adobe Illustrator. Deke shows you how in a way that'll make you so happy, you'll think you're on drugs. And wait till you see the new look! Deke is dreamy.
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