When I first learned about how to use the Adobe Creative Suite programs in the summer of 2006, I really became fascinated. I couldn’t believe how advanced programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge, and Dreamweaver were. I was taking a Graphic Design class at RISD and learned how to edit photographs, how to create images/posters in Illustrator, and how to build a website using HTML in Dreamweaver. In the end, we had to create an advertisement for a kitchen utensil using all of these programs. It opened my eyes up to an area I had never encountered before.
This past Jterm I took a college writing course called ‘contemporary creative nonfiction’. We were expected to blog every day and also to create a multimedia essay through iMovie as a final project. Using iMovie was a good experience for me. I learned how to incorporate image, voice, and music all in one. It was definitely a challenge but I gained a lot from the course.
Sarah, I can totally identify with your being awestruck and fascinated by programs like Photoshop and Dreamweaver. I did some work with these programs as well as Premiere (a program similar to iMovie) in my first year seminar. I often found that I had to divide my concept into three incomplete separates (voice-over, image and soundtrack) and then weave them together into a coherent whole. I also found that the conclusions I was able to reach in a digital story were different from those reached in a typical essay. What did you find were the limitations to compiling an essay using imovie and photoshop? Did it change the content, depth or tone of your final essay?
I found Dreamweaver back in its 3.0 iteration and fell in love. I’ve never been unhooked. But, since I’m self-taught with pretty much everything and am only ever focused on plain and simple information delivery (i.e., I’m in love with my code), I haven’t really explored the full possibilities offered by the Macromedia/Adobe suite legacy. Integration has, heretofore, not been my strong point. With your experience with the parts and the whole, where do I start?