Introduction to Photoshop

Words of Wisdom and Comfort And on Getting Around in Photoshop

Welcome to the world of image editing in Adobe Photoshop! You have before you the worlds most advanced image editing application. Photoshop is the gold standard for image editing: used by graphic designers, artists, photographers, and everyday folks like you and me who want to make our images look...wellsimply better. With Photoshop, you can create stunning works of art from a blank canvas or existing images, or simply crop and resize your kids soccer team photo for email or printing at your local Costco. You can repair damaged or otherwise less-thanperfect images and restore them to their original glory. Your images can be destined for print, web, electronic presentation, or other distributionPhotoshop lets you prepare them for anything! Now, at this point, you might be thinking to yourself, What have I gotten myself into? All those bells and whistles? It looks REALLY complicated All I want to know is how to email my photos to my Aunt Bernice in Poughkeepsie. Well, fear not intrepid user! While Photoshop is the most advanced image editing application in the world, yea, even the universe, it is also VERY approachable. More importantly, you dont need to know how to use EVERY feature of Photoshop in order to use it successfully. And therein lie the words of wisdom and comfort mentioned in the title of this lesson. Learn what you need to know to accomplish the task at handbe it resizing and cropping an image for email, converting a color image to black and white, or what have you. Do that well and do it often, until you can do it without having to look up the step-by-step directions each time. When you have a project that calls for another, yet unlearned, Photoshop technique, find out how to do it, and add that technique to your repertoire. In other words, learn what you need to know for what youre trying to do at the moment.
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Introduction to Photoshop
Words of Wisdom and Comfort And on Getting Around in Photoshop

Before long, youll find yourself looking at an image and saying, Hmmm, I think I could make that better in Photoshop. And the cool thing is, before you can spell, Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium (or Mississippi), youll be doing just that! (Making images better in Photoshop, that isnot spelling Mississippi). And trust me, gentle reader, it DOES get easier and less intimidating once you start using the program. In these lessons, I will emphasize not only the how-tos of Photoshop, but also the how-to-moreefficientlys of Photoshop. That is, wherever appropriate, Ill make reference to keyboard shortcuts that will save you time in your image editing workflow. That way, you can spend less time hunting for the menu option or function and more time thinking creatively about what you want to do with your image. Some of these that youll use frequently, youll want to commit to memory. Ill let you know Help! I use a Macintosh and youre teaching Photoshop on a Windows-based computer! Photoshop operates EXACTLY the same way on the Mac as on a Windows-based computer. The only difference (besides the minor cosmetic differences) is the substitution of the CTRL (control) key on Windows for the Command (!) key on the Mac, and the ALT key on a Windows keyboard for the OPTION key on the Mac. So, for example, to save a file on the Windows computer, the keyboard shortcut is ctrl-S. On the Mac, its !-S. Its that simple. The screenshots youll see in these handouts are from the Mac version of Photoshop, but both Mac and Windows keyboard shortcuts will be included. Lets get to it!

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Introduction to Photoshop
Words of Wisdom and Comfort And on Getting Around in Photoshop

Photoshop CS6s workspace: toolbar, options bar, floating panels and Mini Bridge.

One of the coolest things about Photoshop is that as part of the Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe has made every effort to make it similar to the other Adobe Creative Suite applications wherever possible. So, if you know Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, or Dreamweaver, you already have a head start on understanding some of the functions and locations of features in Photoshop. If not, dont despair because the reverse is also true: knowing Photoshop will get you a step ahead on working with the other Creative Suite applications as well! The screenshot above shows the typical arrangement of the Photoshop workspace, which consists of the image area, a toolbar, a contextual tool options bar that changes according to currently active tool, a menu bar, and a host of panels (floating or docked). There are a lot more panels that can be displayed, but as a rule, youll want to display only those you need at the moment so as not to use up valuable screen real estate and get in the way of your image editing efforts.

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Introduction to Photoshop
Words of Wisdom and Comfort And on Getting Around in Photoshop
The Toolbar The Toolbar is a floating panel, but one that youll want to leave open at all times (as is the layers panel, but well get to that later). This is where you select the various tools to perform all the different functions in Photoshop: selections, cropping, image repair, cloning, erasing, gradients, text, etc. Look carefully, and youll notice that most of the tools have a small black triangle in the lower right corner of the tool icon. This indicates that there are hidden variations of the tool (or related tools) under the visible tool icon. To reveal the variants of the tool, click and hold on the button. Then to select the desired tool, scroll through the tool variants, and choose the tool you need.

At the bottom of the toolbar are tools to select foreground and background colors (currently shown as the default setting of black for foreground, white for background), icons for swapping foreground / background colors, resetting to default colors, and tools for toggling in and out of Quick Mask mode.

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Introduction to Photoshop
Words of Wisdom and Comfort And on Getting Around in Photoshop

The Options Bar The tool options bar is a contextual options bar. That means that the options that appear there are related to the currently active tool.

For example, in the screenshot above, you see options related to things you can do with the Crop tool (currently selected, but not visible in the above screenshot). Herea another example of the options bar. This time, the Type tool is active:

As you can see, with the type tool active we have options related to things you can change in regard to type: the font, font size, paragraph alignment, font color, etc. And yet another example with the Brush tool active:

Here you can choose the brush shape and size, blending mode, opacity, and flow: all things important to using the brush tool.

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Introduction to Photoshop
Words of Wisdom and Comfort And on Getting Around in Photoshop
Floating Panels Panels abound in Photoshop. You can show and hide them from the View menu, and some that are used commonly even have keyboard shortcuts to activate them (F7 for the layers panel, for example). At the right, you see the Layers panel (one of the most important panels in Photoshop, and one that youll want to have open at all times). Panels serve many functions: organizing layers, choosing colors, creating paths, navigating your document, undoing actions, applying actions, etc. Panels can be moved around your desktop by dragging on the panels title bar. Click and hold on the panels title bar, and drag it to the desired location. Doubleclicking on a panels title bar will collapse the panel (like a windowshade), leaving it open, but out of the way. Reveal additional options for a particular panel by clicking the flyout menu at the upper right of the panel, near its title bar.

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Introduction to Photoshop
Words of Wisdom and Comfort And on Getting Around in Photoshop
Panels may consist of multiple nested panels or tabssort of a panel within a panel, if you will. In the screenshot at right, the Layers tab is active. However, you see that there are also two other tabs, Paths and Channels, each with unique functions. Select these nested panels by simply clicking on their tab.

One of the cool things about Photoshop is that you can customize the panels by dragging and dropping tabs from one panel onto another. So, you can create an uber-panel that contains all the tabs you use commonly, and it only takes up the screen real estate of a single panel. Hows that for efficiency! For example, since I use Actions a lot, Ive dragged the Actions panel onto the Layers/Channels/Paths panel to make my own customized superpanel that fits the way I work in Photoshop.
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Introduction to Photoshop
Words of Wisdom and Comfort And on Getting Around in Photoshop
The Menu Bar Photoshops menu bar is like any other applications. It contains options for creating new files, opening, saving, viewing different windows, etc.

It also contains a few menu options not found in other programs, such as Image, Layer, Select, and Filter. Many of the menu options have submenus that youll navigate through, or open dialogue boxes that allow you to make specific selections. Notice that many menu options have keyboard shortcuts: !-N (ctrl-N for Windows) to create a new document; !-S (ctrl-S for Windows) to Save a file. If you forget the keyboard shortcut for a command, you can locate that command in a menu and remind yourself.

The Universal Constant Many keyboard shortcuts are universal. That is, they do the same thing in all programs. For example, !-N / ctrl-N always opens a new document. !-S / ctrl-S always saves the current file. !-C / ctrl-C is the universal keyboard shortcut for Copy. !-V / ctrl-V pastes in all applications. So, seeif you know any keyboard shortcuts from other programs you work in, you may already know some Photoshop!

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