[Ownaginatios]

This course is only available to students enrolled in the software engineering and game design program. The course description listed on the McMaster engineering site is rather dated, and there is not at all in any shape or form a component where you design websites. The course is entirely dedicated to learning how to use Photoshop.

The course starts off with really basic stuff (showing you how to find brushes .etc) in Photoshop, and then gradually moves onto making your own brushes, using shapes, paths, filters, masks and then ends with making your own textures.

The breakdown of the course is three technical assignments worth 10% each, two studio assignments (basically a longer technical assignment) worth 20% each, 7 to 8 tutorials worth collectively 25% and a 5% 'quiz' on some of the technical stuff in Photoshop.

I found this course to be pretty tedious. All the assignments took a very long time compared to assignments from other courses (usually more than 5 hours), and it was pretty much impossible to get higher than an okay mark. One thing in particular I found annoying is that the professor pretty much stuck to a marking range between 70% and 80%. This means that people that left assignments until the last minute and rushed would get somewhere similar to low or mid 70s, while someone who spent a very long time would only get a high 70.

Fortunately the tutorials and quiz are pretty much where you get free marks, so if you do well on those, you can end with a pretty decent grade in the course.

Overall, I would say this course was okay. If you already know Photoshop pretty well, then you aren't really going to learn much. If you don't know Photoshop, however, the professor's tutorials are quite helpful and informative.

I'm still wondering what this course has to do with software engineering or game design exactly... :p