dekePod Video Podcasts Launches With '101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes'

SEBASTOPOL, Calif. -- They claimed no matter how fast you gabbed (or crooned) no creature (or robot) could deliver 100-plus, real-world Photoshop instructions in five minutes or less. Yet today, digital imaging master and modern day troubadour Deke McClelland proved the naysayers wrong. In his new music video -- titled 101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes and Deke's kickoff to his new video podcast series, dekePod -- he breathtakingly sings, buzzes, leaps, dances and kick-boxes his way through dozens upon dozens of useful Photoshop tricks.

Whew! Sponsored by O'Reilly Media and lynda.com, this all-new, irreverent, laugh-out-loud music video not only entertains, but also captures the zany, intense enthusiasm essential to most (if not all) creative endeavors. What inspired Deke? "This has long seemed like an obvious idea to me: Come up with 101 Photoshop Tips, rattle them off in precisely 5 minutes and set them to music," says Deke, creator of O'Reilly's One-on-One book series, which uses video, step-by-step exercises and hundreds of full-color illustrations. "I didn't see anyone else doing it, so I figured I better do it myself."

There's more. "When I was writing the piece, I kept coming back to Nada Surf's 'Popular,' which is essentially an enlightened football hero's advice against going steady in high school. I've listened to the thing like Orson Welles watched Stagecoach before making Citizen Kane. Obsessively. But I didn't want my 101 Tips piece to come off as some kind of parody or homage, so I hooked up with this amazing band called The Jellybricks and we rewrote the tune and made it our own. The result is an authentic music video with a make-or-break story line. If there's any humor in it, it's because I'm taking my ridiculous task so extremely seriously," explains Deke.

You can start enjoying and learning from "101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes" now at digitalmedia.oreilly.com/dekePod. And it's available for immediate download, sharing and also reposting on O'Reilly, iTunes, lynda.com and YouTube.

Indeed, Deke's wacky Photoshop tips-fest portends more good times ahead for dekePod. The upcoming all-new instructive video podcasts promise to be uncensored, unregulated and frankly unlike any other videos on the topics of computer graphics, digital imaging and the unending realm of creative manipulations. New five-minute video podcasts in topics ranging from "Stretching a Photo in Illustrator" to "Metadata Forensics" and "Stealth 'Shop: Don't Fear the Lab Mode" are scheduled to be posted every other week and available for download starting Tuesday, July 8.

"101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes" as well as all the upcoming dekePod episodes are produced by San Francisco-based Flying Moose Pictures. "The production work that went into this was mind blowing. Flying Moose specializes in character-driven storytelling, so they bring a completely different aesthetic to my process," says Deke.

So what fuels Deke's compulsive impulse to entertain while teaching? "There's a massive amount of video training going on these days," says Deke. "It's expanding like wildfire. Much of it is educational, but very little of it could be mistaken for entertaining. And yet, my field, computer graphics, it's exciting stuff. Computer graphics are the backbone for every flashy magazine ad, every televised sporting event and every blockbuster action movie. I mean, Pixar for crying out loud! And yet we just take for granted that computer graphics training should be so dull it puts you to sleep?"

For those excited by computer graphics, eager to learn, but weary of tediously dull training videos, dekePod delivers precisely the opposite. "Some folks will love it, some will hate it, but hopefully no one will yawn," says Deke. "If we get people watching this who don't know Photoshop from a hole in the ground, then I'll know we succeeded."