Frequently asked questions

There are quite a few people who are using older versions of Photoshop, Illustrator and so on - it's not unusual for companies to be understandably reluctant to purchase every single upgrade. From a training perspective, it's generally not a problem if you have an older version, although there are some exceptions.

Firstly, the application in the Adobe Creative Suite that changed most significantly in Creative Suite version 4.0 was Flash. If you are intending to attend our Introduction to Flash or Advanced Animation Techniques courses, you most definitely need Flash CS4 or CS5, as the techniques used for basic animation are quite different in older versions.

For advanced courses, we are likely to go into some depth with newer features, for example 3D in Photoshop, or Perspective Grids in Illustrator, so we would suggest that you make sure you have the current version in order to get the most out the course.

For all our Introductory courses (with the exception of Flash as mentioned above), having an older version of the software back at the office should not be a problem. The fundamental skills and techniques you will learn will almost all be transferrable. If you let us know in advance, and in particular, let the trainer know at the beginning of the course, he or she will be happy to point out any differences, and suggest alternative ways of doing things should the need arise. Often, the differences are mostly to do with things being in a different place, so no big deal.

If you are still unsure about anything, just get in touch and we'll be happy to clarify any details and answer any questions you may have.

Well, here's one of the first things you'll learn on both courses: Fundamentally, Photoshop is a pixel editing application, while Illustrator works with Vector graphics. Pixels are very small rectangular colour elements. Each pixel in an image can have a different colour assigned to it (one of 16.7 million if you really want to know). This makes it possible to work with photographs, and create realistic looking artwork and effects. The more pixels you have in a file, the bigger it will be.

Vector graphics,on the other hand, are computer generated, and as they don't use pixels, the quality when printed is absolutely clear. When you draw a vector, you can make it as small or as big as you like with no loss of quality, and no impact as to file size. As there are no pixels, everything always looks absolutely sharp, so you get a different 'look' - more like drawing, less like painting. Each element is independant, so you can move things around and change things endlessly.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Vector Graphics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics

There are some similarities betwen the two programs, and a certain amount of overlap in terms of what can be achieved. For example, you could design a header for a website (like the one at the top of this page) in either program (it was done in Illustrator actually). However, designing a company logo would best be done in Illustrator, while creating a montage combining several photographic images would be a job for Photoshop.

Here is a short list of some the things you would tend to do in either program:

Photoshop

• Retouching images
• Adjusting brightness, contrast, color and so on
• Cropping and resizing images
• Design for print or screen
• Creating digital artwork from scratch
• Combining images (putting someone's head on someone else's shoulders for example)
• Endless special effects...
• Cutting out images so they can be placed on complex backgrounds
• High-end photographic processing
• Doing almost anything you can imagine to any image

Illustrator

• Designing logos, icons, buttons, t-shirts, etc. etc.
• Design for print or screen
• Tracing images to turn them into drawings
• Doing anything at all to text
• Creating technical drawings, diagrams, floorplans, architectural drawings, flowcharts...
• Creating page layouts
• Working with maps
• Textile design
• Illustration of any type in almost any style using a huge range of tools, features, effects...

inDesign is a Page Layout program. This used to be called Desktop Publishing (DTP), but the term seems to have gone out of fashion. inDesign is highly optimised for working with multi-page documents and large amounts of text. That's not to say that you can't create page layouts in Illustrator, but if your intention is for example to design and publish a newsletter, report, brochure or a magazine with multiple pages, including text and images of various types, and prepare a high-quality file for printing, then InDesign is the program for you.

InDesign has a wide range of features which greatly facilitate the process of designing and laying out printable documents. These would include master pages, stylesheets for both text and objects, headers and footers, a high level of control over all aspects of typography, adjustable layouts, automatic page numbering, tables of contents, integration with Photoshop and Illustrator, the ability to wrap text around graphical elements and much more.

inDesign is widely used in the print publishing industry, and is now the accepted industry standard, having more or less replaced Quark Xpress in that position.

Firstly, it's widely accepted that most people fall into one of two categories. They are either 'front end' or 'back end' developers. Front end developers tend to concentrate on design, usability, optimisation and accessibility. They will work with HTML and CSS and usually programs like Photoshop for graphics in order to create good-looking and functional webpages. They may have some knowledge of languages like XML, Javascript and perhaps be able to create content in Flash as well. Back end developers tend to have some HTML and CSS skills, but will mostly concentrate on database integration, programming and more complex web applications.

Now let's go back to the orginal question about where to begin. You should start by learning HTML. We run a 'Getting Started with HTML' course, which pretty much covers everything you will need to get up and running quickly. Alternately, you could jump straight into the Dreamweaver Introduction course, and you'll learn about HTML on that course too. Even better, do both courses (HTML first makes the most sense), and get an even more thorough grounding in the essentials.

Now move onto CSS - our Introduction to CSS course takes you up to an intermediate level. Again, you'll learn enough about CSS on the Dreamweaver course to get started and build good-looking websites, but the CSS course shows you how to write the code from scratch, so you can go further.

If you want to be in control, ultimately you will need to learn how to write HTML and CSS. You don't necessarily have to actually write any code, you just want to feel confident about reading and editing it. I use Dreamweaver all the time, and usually don't bother typing in the HTML code myself, as there's little point - Dreamweaver does an excellent job. However, it's impossible to take things further, for example use CSS properly, if you don't understand HTML.

During our Dreamweaver introduction course, you don't write more than one or two HTML tags by hand, but we make sure that you look at the code while Dreameaver creates it for you, and we explain each element as you encounter it.

Dreamweaver has a range of additional capabilities - for example Spry, which uses a combination of Javascript, XML, CSS to create sophisticated widgets. For example, our courses pages use Spry to display information about our courses without having to load multiple pages. With stuff like this, you will find that Dreamweaver does most of the work, but again, in order to customise elements, and fix problems should they arise, you really need to know the code.

A page like this one doesn't require anything other than HTML (content) and CSS (presentation). However, a website that allows you to browse a catalog of products, make comparisons and so on, and perhaps make a purchase online, will require a database and other languages which essentially provide integration between the front end and the database, which resides on a server. Common systems include: PHP, ASP.NET and Coldfusion.

We currently offer beginners courses in PHP/MySQL, and in Drupal, which is a PHP-based development platform. To learn PHP, you only need to have HTML skills, but the three-day Drupal course requires some existing knowledge of PHP.

We provide 6 months free support via email following any course. To be honest, when someone gets in touch we don't check to see if six months have passed since they were here, but you get the general idea. We will do our very best to help out, and are happy to have a look at any files you might care to send over. Most problems can be solved with a gentle nudge in the right direction. Do consider that the answers to most questions are usually out there somewhere on the web, so have a search around, but if you do need help, mail support at ubiq. Of course, your queries should be relevant to the topic you learned with us, so if you've attended a CSS course, please don't ask for advice about growing potatoes. If you'd like recipes, just ask for them during lunch.

Advanced courses don't expect you to be an advanced user, just to be at a similar level to that achieved on an introductory course. So, it would theoretically be possible for someone to do an the Photoshop Introduction, and then go onto the Photoshop Advanced Design Techniques course. We would recommend that they waited a while between the two courses, and practiced what they had learned, but it would still be possible.

Most people coming on advanced courses have used the software for a while (sometimes for a long while), but feel that they: want to learn more sophisticated techniques/have gaps in their knowledge/feel that they are not doing things efficiently and want to learn the 'right way'.

We have questionnaires for all our advanced courses that we can send out to you. Basically we look at your answers and then if appropriate have a chat to you. We can generally sort out whether you are suited to an advanced course pretty quickly.

When there is some doubt, many people decide to do an introduction, even though they may already be familiar with some aspects of the course. It's often the best way to fill in the gaps in your knowledge, and by day 2, you are usually at an intermediate level in any case.