uCertify - Photoshop ACE Exam aid

A few weeks ago, I posted about the new study aids I'd found for the Adobe Certified Expert Exam in CS2. I didn't want to take a course, which would spend 90% of the time covering the things I already new, and I didn't want a book for the same reason.

The test-based preparatory software seemed like an ideal solution for me. I didn't need a refresher course on everything I knew, I needed to isolate what parts of my knowledge were insufficient, and aggressively target that knowledge. What better way to do that then to practice with questions that cover the exam objectives with questions in the same style as the test?

Between the two study aids of this type that I'd found, I decided to go with uCertify for three reasons: ExamAids is listed in British pounds and I worried that there may be differences between the British and American versions of the test, uCertify offered a pre-purchase option on the CS3 exam (at a discount, no less), and then, to my delight, they also offered a "bulk" purchase discount when buying more than one program at once. End result? For less than half the price of one test, I could buy prep material for both the CS2 test and the CS3 recertification test. (note: the CS3 version has now shipped, so that discount is no longer available)

And here's a bit of full disclosure: shortly after making my purchase decision, someone from the uCertify PR team found the above-mentioned blog post where I debated between those two options, and emailed me, offering to let me try the software for free in exchange for a review. As I'd already placed the order with them, I agreed, but warned them that I'd give an honest review -- so while I am writing this with that in mind, I am trying to be unbiased, if not downright antagonistic.

And as I said, I'd already made the decision to buy their software before they offered.
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Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. You can comment here or there.

Photography quote

"It is part of the photographer's job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country. Most photographers would feel a certain embarrassment in admitting publicly that they carried within them a sense of wonder, yet without it they would not produce the work they do, whatever their particular field. It is the gift of seeing the life around them clearly and vividly, as something that is exciting in its own right. It is an innate gift, varying in intensity with the individual's temperament and environment".

Bill Brandt - "Camera in London", The Focal Press, London 1948, p. 14

Outside the box #5: My first love

rosetiger: Tell me about your first love or the person you THOUGHT was your first love.

Love is a strange word in my mouth these days. I thought I knew what love was when I was fourteen, thought it should be epic and awe-inspiring, overwhelming and all-embracing. I thought love meant that you'd be willing to ride out and slay dragons in her name. Strange, then, that my first overwhelming need to connect with a particular person somehow managed to be epic and awe-inspiring, even though she never let me near the dragon.

That first love of mine, who was so many firsts of mine, who was so few firsts of mine, taught me that love wasn't about riding out to face anything. She needed me to keep my home-fire burning, needed me to be a blazing inferno kept so distantly from her that I was little more than a candle in the dark.

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