ACA Exam and Photoshop – the requirements

The ACA Exam (aka Adobe Certified Associate) certifies that individuals have the entry-level skills to plan, design, build and maintain effective communications using different forms of digital media.  This exam is split in five topics containing different objectives that a candidate will have to meet.

Number 1: Setting Project Requirements.

This topic includes four objectives that are needed to start up a photoshop project successfully and these are:

• Identify the purpose, audience and their needs for preparing images
• demonstrate knowledge of standard copyright rules for mages and image use
• demonstrate knowledge of project management tasks and responsibilities
• communicate with others about design plans

Number 2: Identifying design elements when preparing images

This topic contains six objectives

• demonstrate knowledge of image resolution, image size and image file format for web, video and print
• demonstrate knowledge of design principles, elements and image composition
• demonstrate knowledge of typography
• demonstrate knowledge of colour correction using Photoshop
• demonstrate knowledge of image-generating devices, their resulting image types and how to access resulting images in Photoshop
• understand key terminology of digital images

From the third topic and onwards it is more based on Photoshop and the aims surrounding this software coming from Adobe

Number 3: Photoshop and its features

This topic has five objectives to meet

• identify elements of thePhotoshop user interface and demonstrate knowledge of their functions
• demonstrate knowledge of layers and masks
• demonstrate knowledge of importing, exporting, organising and saving
• demonstrate knowledge of producing and reusing images
• demonstrate an understanding of the features and options in a colour management workflow

Number 4: manipulating images with photoshop

This has eight objectives to meet

• demonstrate knowledge of working with selections
• use photoshop guides and rulers
• transform images
• adjust or correct the tonal range, colour or distortion of an image
• demonstrate knowledge of retouching and blending images
• demonstrate knowledge of drawing and painting
• demonstrate knowledge of type
• demonstrate knowledge of filters

Number 5: pushing digital images with photoshop

This contains only one objective

• Demonstrate knowledge of preparing images for web, print and video