Perfecting Light and Shadows Using Adobe Photoshop
with Maggie Taylor
December 10 and December 13, 2025
Course Description
By popular demand, here is our next installment of Maggie Taylor’s always intriguing online series of Photoshop compositing adventures. This one, in mid-December, explores manipulating and organizing light and shadows. Maggie says, “as photographers, we absolutely have to master the ability to capture the nuances of light and shadow to tell our stories. Cameras are used to do this for many storytellers, but for those creating composites or montages, Adobe Photoshop is the tool we use for capturing light and shadows.”
Work along with Maggie as she puts together a composition with believable shadows and intriguing light. She shares her favorite techniques for generating shadows and enhancing both existing and non-existing light in a composite. There are numerous ways to create a realistic-looking shadow, and Maggie demonstrates several techniques with this goal in mind. She then discusses how she takes time to carefully consider the light in an image, analyze problems, and correct them using non-destructive adjustment layers and their masks. Maggie also explores layer styles as a way to add light to an image.
Participants are able to download the same files Maggie uses in the live group sessions and access the recordings of the Zoom sessions after class and reassemble the images at their own pace as a teaching tool. Each live group session consists of 90 minutes of insights and demonstrations from Maggie, followed by 30 minutes for questions and answers. Join Maggie for this entertaining and comprehensive presentation on the joys of perfecting light and shadows to your digital composites.
Additional Information
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
Open to anyone interested in this special program.
What You Should Know:
Participants with intermediate and advanced Photoshop skills will benefit most from this webinar. A grasp of Photoshop layer and layer masks, as well as some familiarity with smart objects is helpful, but anyone intrigued by Photoshop compositing is welcome to attend.
Special Notes:
Class will meet 10:00 am – 12:00 pm (Mountain Time) on Wednesday, December 10, and Saturday, December 13 (two online sessions).
Zoom Video Conferencing software (available for no charge from Zoom.com) will be used to facilitate the class sessions. Further details will be emailed to registrants.
Santa Fe Workshops always aims to produce a high-quality experience for our online attendees. That said, variables including regional and local internet provider speeds, traffic on Zoom's servers, and your own computing hardware can contribute to a less than ideal streaming event. While we do our best to minimize the impact of these variables, they are outside the control of Santa Fe Workshops.
Policies:
View Withdrawal and Transfer Policies for online programs.
For the convenience of participants, recordings of each class session are posted privately for one month after the end of each session. Santa Fe Workshops takes the recordings down after one month to protect the intellectual property of our instructors.
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about
Maggie Taylor spent ten years making color still-life photographs before transitioning to digital imaging in 1997. Her label-defying, whimsical, and poetic images have been collected by numerous museums. Her books include Internal Logic, No Ordinary Days, Adobe Photoshop Master Class: Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams, Solutions Beginning with A, Through The Looking Glass, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.
Website: maggietaylor.com
Instagram: @maggietaylor.art
