10th Grade — Activating Your Adobe / Photoshop Account

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

Now that you've seen the tools on paper, which one are you most excited to actually click on today?

🎯 Today's Big Question

How do we set up and access Photoshop through our school Adobe account, for the first time?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Log in to the school Adobe account.
Install or launch Photoshop and open a new document with the correct settings.
Locate the tools from their paper toolbar poster in the real, live interface.

🧰 What You'll Need

Computer with Adobe Creative Cloud installed
School Adobe account login
Their Photoshop toolbar poster from the previous lesson

📋 Your Plan for Today

Do Now + excitement check (5 min).
Guided login: as a class, log in to the school Adobe account together, troubleshooting as needed (10 min).
Guided document setup: open a new document, comparing print settings (inches, 300 DPI, CMYK) vs. web settings (pixels, 72 DPI, RGB) (10 min).
Scavenger hunt: using their poster, students find and click on 8 real tools in the live interface and note where each one actually lives (15 min).
Share & wrap-up (5 min): pair up and quiz each other on where 3 tools live in the real interface.

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

⬇️ Open / download this slide PDF

📚 Key Words

Adobe Creative Cloud: The subscription service that gives access to Photoshop and other Adobe apps.
Document Settings: The width, height, resolution, and color mode chosen when creating a new file (these differ for print vs. web).

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Quick check: every student has successfully logged in and opened a new document by the end of class.

Exit Ticket: What is one difference between a document set up for print and one set up for the web?

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📤 How You Submit This — For Credit

How you submit today's work depends on what kind of work it was. Physical/paper work (most of this semester so far): photograph it with a classroom camera, upload the photo from its SD card onto a computer, and save it into your portfolio -- that upload is your submission, and the physical piece itself is yours to keep, the same as in Grade 9 (your notebook is the one thing with a home base in the room, and even that's your call to bring home when you want it). Digital work (once you're producing files in Photoshop, second semester on): no camera needed -- instead, EXPORT the file. Export your finished project as a JPG, as a PNG, AND save a copy as a PSD (all three), then upload all three into your portfolio. Either way: the portfolio upload, with a description, is what actually counts as turning the assignment in for credit.

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week, add your best finished or in-progress piece to your portfolio (the Google Drive folder you started in Grade 9, becoming your Google Sites portfolio in Lesson 10) with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, what tool/skill it used, and one thing you learned. Keep it current -- don't save it all for the portfolio-website lesson.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Activating Your Adobe / Photoshop Account.” This project asked: “How do we set up and access Photoshop through our school Adobe account, for the first time?” I used Adobe Creative Cloud by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🎓 ACP Exam Prep

This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 2: Project Setup and Interface

🔗 Want to Learn More?

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: The same account/systems setup a Business class covers when discussing professional software licensing.

Career Connection: Real studios run entirely on Adobe Creative Cloud — this exact login is what every job in Illustration or Digital Designer starts with daily.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Write a short step-by-step guide (with screenshots) for activating this account — real onboarding material for next year's class. Start here: do the activation yourself first, screenshotting every single screen as you go, before writing a word of instructional text.
Explore one Adobe app you haven't used yet and write a one-paragraph review of what it's for. Start here: open the Creative Cloud desktop app and scroll the full app list before choosing — pick something you've genuinely never opened, like Fresco or Premiere Rush, not Illustrator again.