Photoshop expert, trainer, author.
Biography
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.
Books
(
Blog
Recent Posts | All Posts
Deke's blog posts are hosted at:http://www.deke.com/dekeblog
Martini Hour 057, In Which Deke Gives You Part of His Brain
March 18 2010
This week's visit to the dekeLounge comes with party favors. Yes, dekeOphiliacs, in addition to spending an hour with the man---shoes off and drinks in hand---you get to go home with a little token of Deke's affection, his dekeKeys shortcut file. Haven't you ever thought it would be great if… read moreMartini Hour 056, In Which Colleen Is Trapped in a Mellow Yellow and Purple Groove
March 11 2010
Hello deKats and deKittins, coming to you from a very relaxed place this week. I have no idea why. I guess it's just because it's me and my good buddy Deke, in a show where Deke does what Deke does best, go all-nerdy on some obscure issue related to graphics.… read moreMartini Hour 056, In Which Colleen Is Trapped in a Mellow Yellow and Purple Grove
March 11 2010
Hello deKats and deKittins, coming to you from a very relaxed place this week. I have no idea why. I guess it's just because it's me and my good buddy Deke, in a show where Deke does what Deke does best, go all-nerdy on some obscure issue related to graphics.… read moreRussell Brown's "2010: A Photoshop Odyssey"
March 11 2010
You may know Russell Preston Brown as that "Adobe guy" (as Steve Jobs once dismissed him) who either: 1) brought Thomas Knoll and Adobe together to create the product we now know as Photoshop or 2) wears silly wigs. He is, of course, both: serious thinker and blithering goofball. Which… read moreMartini Hour 055, In Which Deke Teases Because He Loves...Photoshop
March 04 2010
In the words of Photoshop PM John Nack, "We swear because we care." If we weren't using Photoshop everyday, reveling in its amazing almost magical powers, we wouldn't notice all those little annoying things that make our work just a teeny bit irritating. Or a lot irritating if we have… read moreMartini Hour 055, In Which Deke Teases Because He Loves...Photohsop
March 04 2010
In the words of Photoshop PM John Nack, "We swear because we care." If we weren't using Photoshop everyday, reveling in its amazing almost magical powers, we wouldn't notice all those little annoying things that make our work just a teeny bit irritating. Or a lot irritating if we have… read moreMartini Hour 054, In Which Deke Challenges My Brain's Ability to Retain "Personal" Metadata
February 25 2010
What does it take to get invited back to the 'lounge in short order? Well, we invited Tom Hogarty, Adobe Project Manager of Lightroom, back because a) he knows how to order a martini, and b) he knows a thing or two about a cool application that you can download… read moreMartini Hour 053, In Which Photoshop Turns Twenty and Martini Hour Turns One
February 18 2010
You know, it seems like only yesterday, our favorite little pixel-wrangler was just learning how to grasp things with its tiny little hand tool. And today a grown-up Photoshop turns 20---as sophisticated, complex, and worldly a piece of software there ever was. It's also the one-year anniversary of the day… read moreMartini Hour 052, In Which Colleen Compliments Our Guest's Definition of a Martini
February 11 2010
At last, a guest who knows a good martini when he is offered one. This week's guest, Tom Hogarty, besides being discriminating beverage connoisseur, is also the Adobe Project Manager for Lightroom, Camera Raw and the DNG file format. We wanted to talk with Tom specifically about the Lightroom part… read moreMartini Hour 051, in Which Deke Discovers Our Guest Can't Even Find Matching Socks
February 04 2010
Despite his mismatched socks, we still trust this week's guest, photographer and author Ben Long, to be our resident expert on travel and photography, and doing the two well together. In the time I've known him, Ben has taught photography in Florence, been on assignment in Africa, and ridden his… read moreMartini Hour 50, In Which Colleen Discovers Real Men Like to Share
January 28 2010
No we didn't overindulge on cocktails to the point of spilling our darkest secrets on air (which would probably be way more boring than it sounds), rather we spent this week's Martini Hour talking about sharing photos with two of our photographer friends, Ben Long and Mikkel Aaland. Read more » read moreMartini Hour 49, in Which Deke Is Invited to Rub a Guest's Feet
January 21 2010
We're joined this week by our good friend Mikkel Aaland, who, as Martini Hour Faithful know, was there at the inception of the original, offline Martini Hour. But in addition to his going olive-for-olive with me and Deke in Las Vegas, Mikkel has also authored two amazingly beautiful Lightroom books.… read morePhotoshop Top 40 Is Officially Complete
January 17 2010
Ah, it feels so good. Tonight I finished recording the last of my Photoshop Top 40 podcasts, produced in association with my beloved video publisher, lynda.com. And while the most recent ones won't go live for months, I wanted you to have a sense for what's coming. The final two… read moreJanuary 14 2010
Tonight I was driving back from lynda.com to Room 101 at my beloved Blue Iguana after a long but uneventful evening of recording the final Photoshop Top 40 videos. And I had an epiphany. So I thought I'd post it and see what you think: Imagine you die and not only… read moreJanuary 14 2010
Tonight I was driving back to my room at my beloved Blue Iguana from lynda.com after a long but uneventful evening of recording the final Photoshop Top 40 videos. And I had an epiphany. So I thought I'd post it and see what you think. Let's say I die and not… read moreRecent Posts | All Posts
Multimedia
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.
Buy Now and Save
Use discount code: OPC10
All orders over $29.95 qualify for free shipping within the US. See details.
