The Photoshop Guidebook

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1
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Photoshop Interface …………………………………………………….1-4

Toolbar Basics ………………………………………………………………5-10

Menu Basics ………………………………………………………………...10-12

File Basics and Document Window ………………………………………...13

Arranging and Customizing the Workspace ………………………………..14-16

What is the Adobe Bridge …………………………………………………..17

What are transformation and how to use them?

Hidden Right Click Features ………………………………………………..18-19

Retouching and Repairing Tools ……………………………………………20-22

Painting in Photoshop, Introduction to Brushes …………………………….23-27

Working with Layers and Layer Styles ……………………………………..28-30

What are Adjustment Layers ………………………………………………..31-32

The Power of Filters ………………………………………………………...33-34

Working with Selections ……………………………………………………35-36

2
 Learning Photoshop’s Interface…

The most important part of learning any new program will be first getting familiar with
the interface. Luckily for us Photoshop has been broken down into 5 separate areas; the menu
bar; toolbox; options bar; palettes; and the image area. We will be going into greater detail on
each of these areas in later chapters, but for now we will stick to the basics.

1.2 MENU BAR .You will find that the menu bar will be the same for all Adobe products. It
contains all of Photoshop’s options giving you access to the file commands, edit commands,
help files, and much more.

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1.3 TOOLBOX .The toolbar contains
all of the various tools for editing an
image. The toolbar is divided into several
similar tools, we will be going into greater
detail later in the next chapter.

1.4 PALETTES. The palettes are small

windows that can be turned on or off. They
will allow you to have more control over
your images, layering, channels, paths, and
other important features. From the palettes
you can fine tune the majority of the settings
for your tools.

On a side note, Photoshop opens up with

only 3 basic Palettes, your layers, channels,
and paths. If you find yourself needing more,
go to your menu bar and select “window”.
From there you will have access to over 20
additional palettes to extend your capabili-
ties.

4
1.5 OPTIONS BAR. Your options bar is the toolbar that sits right below the main menu
navigation of Photoshop. Watch this bar closely while switching between tools in Photoshop
and you will quickly realize, that each tool has it’s own set of options.

1.6 IMAGE AREA. Your image area is the basic working window in Photoshop. Once you
have selected a tool in Photoshop, you will find yourself moving into the image area to make
edits. This is where your digital art, comes to life.

5
 CHAPTER TWO TOOLBAR BASICS

In chapter two we will be going over the basic tools included in Photoshop and their
basic features. We will be covering each tools use in greater detail in later chapters, as well as
giving you basic tips on their use.

2.1 The very firsttool you will pick up in

Photoshop will be the basic move tool. This tool is
used to select various elements and move them
around.

2.2 Justunder the move tool you have your basic

selection tools( marquee tools). By default the
square select tool is visible If you click the little
triangle on the right corner, you will have access to
the 4 others. The rectangular marquee is used to
create a rectangular selection; the elliptical mar-
quee creates a circular selection; the single row
marquee will select a row 1 pixel high and across
your image; and the single column marquee will
select a row from top to bottom.

2.3 The lasso tool is much like the Marquee tool,

however the lasso tool is used for making
freehand selections rather than a set circle or
rectangle. There are three tools in this group, the
lasso tool, polygonal lasso tool, and the magnetic
lasso tool.

The lasso tool is used to make freehand selections

where the selection border will be placed around the
area, you draw with your mouse.

The recommended lasso tool is the Polygon Lasso.

Your selections are made up of a series of lines,
which are ended by a click in different areas. This
makes long straight selections much easier. Wheels
and arches are normally selected by making many
small straight lines.

The final lasso tool is the magnetic Lasso. It

automatically clings onto different areas, making 6
easy selections with very little effort.
2.4 The quick selection tool is a relatively new tool to
Photoshop, it allow you to use a brush in Photoshop and
paint your selection.

The next tool on our list is the magic wand. This tool works
by clicking in an open area and all of that color will be se-
lect. In order to adjust the strengths of this tool you must
adjust you tolerance.

2.5 The Crop tool allows you to select an area of an

image and discard everything outside the area.

The slice tool is a tool for web designers it allow you to

slice you image into squares. So each individual square can
be taken into you web design software.

Likewise, your slice select tool allows you to select your

different slices.

2.6 The next tool is the eyedropper tool. This tool is

used to select whatever color you hover your mouse icon
over.

The Crop tool allows you to select an area of an image and

zoom into this area.

The notes tool is basically what it sounds like, it allow you

to leave yourself notes and store them with you file.

The count tool is another tool used for collecting data. This
time it is use to count the number of objects in your file.

2.7 The next series of tools are the spot healing brush
tool, healing brush tool, patch tool, and the red eye tool. If
you can’t guess by the name these tools are used for image
correction.

The spot healing brush tool is best used to remove blemishes

from certain areas of your image.

The healing brush tool is a mix between the spot healing

brush tool and the clone stamp tool, where it will use a
predefined pattern to correct areas of your image.

The Patch Tool retouches image using sampled pixels or a

sampled pattern
7
The red eye tool is a one click solution to red eye. In short it
is best used to remove red eye from your images.
2.8 The next tools on our list will be the brush tool,
pencil tool, and the color replacement tool. We will be
dedicating an entire chapter to the brush tool so we will not
be covering it in this section.

The pencil tool is just a small variation of the paint brush,

it creates smaller more refined lines.

The color replacement tool replaces color you paint on

with foreground color without painting over image detail.

2.9 The next two tools on the list are the clone stamp
tool and the pattern stamp tool

The clone stamp tool works by sampling a small square

and repeating it wherever you right click the mouse.

The pattern stamp tool allow you to paint with a pattern

that you selected, from one of Photoshop's stored libraries.

2.10 Next in line we have the history brush tool, and the
art history brush tool.

The history brush in particular happens to be one very

powerful tool, it works in conjunction with the history
pallet ( you will learn about later). It will allow you to
paint an image, but instead of using color it turns that area
back to a pre defined state.

The art history tool works exactly the same as the history
tool but it can be used to produce a more of a stylized
stroke. Which can give way to some extremely creative
designs.
2.11 The next tools on our list are the eraser tool, back-
ground eraser tool, and magic easier tool.

Anyone who has ever worked in Photoshop has made a

mistake that has needed erased, and the eraser tool gets the
job done.

The Background Eraser tool samples the color at the center

of the brush, and deletes pixels of a similar color as you
drag around your image

The magic eraser tool is a hybrid between the magic wand

tool and the eraser tool. It will automatically make what 8
ever color you select transparent.
2.12 The next two on the list are probably the simplest tools
to use, to gradient tool and paint bucket tool.

The gradient tool will either fill the entire image or just you
selection with a gradient.

While the paint bucket will fill you entire image or selection
with a solid color

2.13 If your are anything like me you will find the next three
tools to be the coolest things since sliced bread. The blur tool as
you can guess is a brush that instead of painting can be used to
blur the image.

Like wise the sharpen tool can be used as a brush to sharpen

areas of the image.

And finally the smudge tool is personally a favorite of mine. It

works as a brush but instead of painting it will smudge the
colors of your layer together. However you want to be careful
not to over use it.

2.14 Next in our list we have three of the most underrated

tools in our Photoshop. The dodge tool, burn tool and the
sponge tool.

The dodge tool works by lighting the pixels you paint over.

The burn tool like you might think is the complete

opposite of the dodge tool, it will darken the individual pixels
you paint over.

The sponge tool works by adjusting the saturation of a small

area of your image.

2.15 The pen tool is one of the most versatile tools found in
Photoshop, especially if you will be exporting your work from
Photoshop and finishing it in another program. Another
program such as illustrator, 3d studio max, after effects, etc..
And would need to keep your image paths.

The pen tool allow you to draw paths directly on your

Image and adjust them. Like wise the other tools in this rollout
all help you to control the accuracy of the pen tool.
A better way to think of the pen tool is to think of connecting
the dots, because you will drawing individual points around 9
your image and Photoshop will later connect them into a path.
2.16 Next on the list is the text tool. I will not be
spending to much time going over this tool as it is the
same text tool in other programs. The only slight
difference is you have the option to select horizontal text,
vertical text, or use a text mask. A text mask will allow
you to use the outline of your text on your images.

2.17 The next two tools we will be looking at will be the

path selection tool and direct selection tool.

The path selection tool will allow you to select a path and
edit it’s attributes using the pen tool options.

The direct select tool selects and entire mask and allow you
to move or edit the mask, or the shape.

2.18 The last tools we will be looking at will be the shape

tools. As you can see from the diagram we have the option to
create a rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, polygon,
simple line, or even a custom shape.

2.19 Everything on the toolbar doesn’t happen to be a tool, their

are also navigation controls included in Photoshop. Just to help
you navigate around your image when zoomed in, giving you
the option to work on small sections of your image.

The first set of tools are for strictly working with

3d models, the two that will be important to note in this group
will be the pan tool and the zoom in tool.

The pan tool allow you to drag your image from left to right,
up and down. Which will really come in handy once you begin
working in Photoshop.

The Zoom tool allow you to zoom in and out of your

image. To help you work on the entire image at once, or all the
way own to a single pixel.
10
 CHAPTER THREE MENU BAR

The menu bar consists of 11 menus: File, Edit, Image, Layer, Select, Filter, Analysis 3D, View,
Window, and Help. I would actually recommend taking a few minutes and playing around with
the menu bar. As there are a ton of additional options available to you that we will not have
time to cover. If you took my advice and decided to play around with the menu bar you may
notice that some commands within the menu bar are followed by extra periods. Whenever you
see this it is an indicator that the following command have a dialog box attached to it. A good
example of this will be if you click the file menu button.

file menu button> new

If you actually clicked on the new button you

will be taken to a new dialog box, that gives
you options to set a new document up for edit-
ing. For the rest of these lesson I will be using
the following syntax for navigating the different
menus.

File > New

In addition to some commands having extra

periods some commands will have right arrows
next to them. These right arrows indicate that
there is a submenu with related commands
connected to it.

If you notice in our next example in the

Layer > New an entire submenu will open up
giving you additional options .

11
Unfortunately there are so many additional options included within the menu bar that I will not
have enough time to reveal them all to you. Instead I will give you a brief overview of what
each menu element have to offer. However we will not be covering the file menu, or the help
menu as they are the standard menu that has been included in every program. Instead we will
focus on the options that are Photoshop specific.

The first menu that we will be covering will be the edit menu. Your edit menu will give you
access to all of your basic options such as edit > Undo as well as your basic transformation set-
tings, and your preferences.

Your image menu will give you access to various controls to adjust your image size, rotation,
and even your image attributes such as brightness, contrast, hue and saturation.

The layer menu will give you access to all of your layer properties, such as creating new layers,
and working with adjustment layers.

Your select menu will give you access to your selection tools. Such as selecting the entire im-
age, selecting all layers, and even saving various selections to work on later.

12
You filter menu is one menu you really want to play around with. In fact we will be dedicating
an entire chapter to it’s use and capabilities.

The analysis menu is an underused menu, it give you access to statistics about your image. It
also gives you access to the rule tool and count tool.

Your view menu gives you access to all of your navigation options, such as zooming in, pan-
ning, and fitting the document to the screen, or viewing it at the actual size.

The window menu option gives you access to the additional palettes Photoshop have to offer.
You can see from the figure their are far more palettes and tools than you will ever need.

13
 CHAPTER FOUR FILE BASIC

All right before we can continue with learning Photoshop and all of its wonderful
uses, we must first take a little time and go over some of the basic. Such as the basic
attributes of the various file formats you can work with in Photoshop. Photoshop by itself is
the industry standard for imaging editing because it can work with so many file format, and
each file format will be unique in it’s use, and capabilities. For this chapter we will look at
the 5 basic file formats and their uses.

PSD files are Photoshop specific and are the original Photoshop file. Since they preserve
layer and channel information, users can continually edit and adjust images using the PSD
file. PSD are the files you will be using mostly since they are the only files you can continue
to work on after you save it.

GIF CompuServe Graphic Interchange Format: GIF files are most commonly used for
Web-based line art such as logos and buttons. Since this format can only support a maximum
of 256 colors.

JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group: JPEG files support full color palettes; therefore,
when saving photographic images to use on the Web, the best format is JPEG. A word of
caution when using JPEG format: Every time a JPEG file is closed, the file recompresses;
therefore, editing and adjusting should be done using the PSD file so image quality is not lost
with multiple recompressions.

PNG which just so happens to be my personal favorite. Joint Photographic Experts Group:
the important note about PNG files is that a PNG supports an alpha channel. The best way to
think of an alpha channel is to imagine a transparent background behind your image.

BMP files or bitmap files are one of the oldest file formats around. They are high quality file
formats that have image quality far greater than the average JPEG. However with the high
quality comes the added file size, so BMP files should be used Sparingly.

14
CHAPTER FIVE ARRANGING AD CUSTOMIZING THE WORKSPACE.

One of the most powerful and versatile abilities of Photoshop cs4 is having the ability to
customize your workspace. Customizing your workspace will not only speed up your
production by giving you access to tools you use most, but it can also help Photoshop run up to
20 percent faster. On top of all of this it is relatively easy to set up, by default this is the way
Photoshop will open up. Please take note of where your layer palettes, history palettes, and tool
box are located.

This is not necessarily a bad setup however as you get more advanced in Photoshop you may
want to set it up to your individual style. For this short lesson I will show you first how to
change a palette and position it, secondly we will take a look at one of my favorite layouts. I
will be showing you how to set up Photoshop for an artist, or rather how to set it up for digital
painting.

The first thing you want to do is right click onto one of the open
palettes. Once you do that you will have the option to either close
the palette, or you can access Photoshop's interface options.

15
For the workspace we will be creating I chose to exit all Palettes and start over fresh. Which
when we look again we will see a completely blank workspace.

To create our custom workspace we will need to go to the window tab and select layer, color,
navigator, adjustments tab, and finally the brushes tab. which will leave us with an interface
looking like this, which to say the least, looks even more jumbled than before we started.
However with the new Photoshop we can move and dock any palette or panel we see.

16
In order to move a panel or Palette you need
to click in the title bar of that panel, or pal-
ette. From there you will have the option to
move the Palette/ Panel to any location in the
workspace.

Lets skip ahead and take a look at where I

decide to position my Palettes/Panels. As you
can see from the example the Brush Palette,
and color Palette are now connected to
The actual brush tool. In my opinion it makes
painting with the brush tool easier when all
of you advanced options are right there in
front of you.

Once you have a workspace you are

comfortable with
Click window > workspace > save work-
space.

17
 CHAPTER SIX WHAT IS ADOBE BRIDGE

Adobe bridge is a piece of software that will become your best friend as you get more skilled
not only in Photoshop, but the entire adobe creative suit. Illustrator, Dreamweaver, flash, image
ready, after effects are all part of the Adobe creative suit. No matter the program Adobe bridge
is the software to keep all of your assets organized. Don’t just take my words for it the creators
of Adobe had this to say about their product.

Adobe® Bridge CS3 is a powerful, easy-to-use media manager for

visual people, letting you easily organize, browse, locate, and view
creative assets. Available in all six editions of Adobe Creative Suite® 3
software and all professional Adobe creative applications, Bridge
provides centralized access to project files, applications, and settings, as
well as XMP metadata tagging and searching capabilities.

Whenever you first open up Adobe Bridge you are provided with a screenshot of your entire
desktop and all of the assets available on your computer. From there you have the option to
move them from folder to folder. This will become more important as you start to work with
larger projects and need help organizing your files, and transferring your files from one
program to another..

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 CHAPTER SEVEN WHAT ARE TRANSFORMATIONS AND HOW TO
USE THEM. ( hidden right click features)

Transforming changes an object’s appearance by modifying one or more of its physical

characteristics. The transform functions in Photoshop include scaling, rotating, skewing,
changing perspective, distorting, and flipping. Photoshop allow users to transform entire
images, individual layers and/or specific selections. The transforming options are located under
the Edit menu in the Transform fly-out menu. To give you a better understanding of the
transform functions, I have taken a basic square and applied the various transformations to it.

Basic square

scale rotation skew

distort perspective warp

19
In addition to being able to use Photoshop
transformation tools to drastically change
your image appearance there is another
feature you will need to know. That is the
hidden right click features. Depending on
which tool you have selected if you right
click out onto your canvas you will have
options to fine tune your settings. For this
example we will be using the brush tool and
looking at it’s hidden right click features.
Every tool will have it’s own unique right
click features and settings. So I would
recommend taking sometime and getting
use to these features.

For our next example we will be looking at

one of the selection tools. I used the magic
wand tool as our background was solid
white. If you noticed after we clicked, we
now have the option to adjust our selection,
which will allow us to select additional
objects, grow our selection, feather our
selection, and even invert the selection. No
matter which tool you are using in
order to truly master them you will need to
master their individual right click features.

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20
 CHAPTER EIGHT RETOUCHING AND REPAIRING TOOLS

Photo retouching is defined as the ( Treatment of a photograph to remove dust spots or

blemishes, or to adjust or remove unwanted elements of the image, or add new elements to an
image). Fortunately for us Photoshop is the industry standard for photo retouching and
repairs. What that means is that we have a way to restore and improve all of our old Photos.
Photoshop has far to many tools, effects, and adjustments for me to go over in one lesson, so
instead I will go over the most important tools, and it will be up to you to practice on your
own. For our example we will be looking at how to improve an existing photo by removing
spider veins, getting rid of blemishes, evening out the skin and finally adjusting the brightness
and contrast of the image. We will be using the spot healing brush tool, blur tool, and finally
adjusting the brightness and contrast of our image. To begin please select an image you will be
happy working with for this lesson.

The original image itself doesn’t look to bad, however if you blow it up you will see that there
are spider veins above her eye, and her skin tone could use some small work. If you are
really observant you will see a few extra wrinkles just beneath her chin.

21
In version cs3, Photoshop released a very handy new tool called the Spot Healing Brush. The
Spot Healing Brush quickly removes blemishes and other imperfections in your photos. It
works by painting with sampled pixels from an image or pattern and matches the texture,
lighting, transparency, and shading of the sampled area to the area being healed. We will be
using the Spot healing tool to remove the vein above her eye.

Select the Spot Healing Brush tool

Choose a brush size in the options bar. A brush

that is slightly larger than the area you want to
fix works best so that you can cover the entire
area with one click. However to give you a
sense of how the spot healing brush tool works
we will be using a slightly smaller size I chose
31 pixels.

From there the spot healing tool will work like

a regular brush, just slowly mouse over the
area you would like to correct.

After you are satisfied the vein above her eye is

removed move to the lower chin. We will be
using the spot healing brush again however this
time we will be using a slightly larger brush
size. At the moment we just want to lightly
touch that area as we will be picking it up later.

Next we want to select the blur tool, and begin

smoothing out the cheeks just a bit. We want to
be careful at this stage, too much blur can really
destroy and image. A better way to think of the
blur tool is to think of cove up worn by a model
Just enough to hide the blemish, but to much
can be distracting.

At this point in time we just want to lightly

mouse over the small blemishes on her face
with the blur tool. If you find that the blur tool
is set too strong you can always adjust its
strength in the options toolbar.

22
The next tool we will be picking up will be the color
dodge tool, this tool works by lighting up small areas of
your image. The most important thing to note about the
color dodge tool, is that it will leave all of your texture,
color, and patterns the same.

With the color dodge tool selected we want to slightly

touch key areas to make highlights, such as the eyes and
whitening the teeth.

If you have been taking the time to follow along the steps
you should have successfully removed the veins above her
eye, blemishes from her cheeks, excess wrinkles from the
skin, and whitening the teeth and eyes. Now we will apply
a filter to the entire image to bring everything together. I
will going over how to apply an adjustment in a later
chapter

However this is the original image versus our corrected

image.

Original Retouched

23
CHAPTER NINE PAINTING IN PHOTOSHP, AND AN INTRODUCTION
TO BRUSHES

Although this chapter is titled an introduction to brushes, it will really be a tutorial on the
hidden power of the brush tool. If your wondering why we decided to spend an entire chapter
on the brush tool when Photoshop has some many other tools to offer? It’s because if you learn
how to use the basic brush tool you will learn how to use almost all of Photoshop other tools.
The majority of the other tools in the toolbox happen to work around the brush tool. To begin
this chapter we will start with a new document that is 640 x 480 and a blank white background.

The first thing we will do is select the very basic brush tool, and
begin to just play around on the canvas.

By that I mean just makes some scribbles don’t try to be

creative just yet. Right now we are just focusing on getting use
to paining with the mouse.

From here we will begin to look at some of the basic brush tool
features. We have to get through the basic if we want to get to
the good stuff. If you would like to change the size, shape and
type of brush you must click the on the options bar. From their
you will be taken to brush sub menu. Please if you do anything
else take some time and experiment with this sub men.

24
If you actually followed my advice and click the arrow you should be looking at the brush sub
menu. We are going to take just a little time and go over what each of these options mean. I
have marked the major areas of interest that will really have an impact on the way our brush.
works.

The first and most basic option

that we have is the ability to
change the size and thickness of
the brush that we will be using.
We also can change the
hardness which is how hard the
brush will strike the canvas. The
higher the hardness number is set
to the darker the center of the
brush will appear on the canvas.

25
The next options and one of the most
important is the ability to change the brush
shape. As you can see by the default menu we
have a very large selection available to us
Photoshop also allow us to create our own
brush and save it as a preset. The beauty of
saving a brush as a preset is that we can use it
for any of our other tools, such as for making
selections, erasing, color correcting, etc..

For now please select one of the other brush

preset and play around on the canvas and look
at the difference between the new shape and
the old brush we used earlier.

For this example I choose to use the maple

leave preset and just played around with the
canvas. As you can see each brush has it’s
own special characteristics and shape.

There is also one more very important

option tat we have available to us. That is
the ability to change the opacity of each our
brush. By masterfully controlling the
opacity of our brush we will be able to
blend colors, and painting with far more
control. If you would please take a little
time and see how different brushes at
different opacities can greatly effect our
image.

26
One other very important feature we will be covering in this lesson will be how to control the
brush color. You may have already guessed this but down in the right hand corner of the
toolbox, is the color tools.

If you would like to change the color please

click on one of the squares, you have your
choice of foreground color and background
color.

Once you click one of the squares you will

be taken to the color picker sub menu. You
literally have over 1 million different color
options to choose from. All you have to do
is decide upon which color you would like
and click ok. You can even use this color
picker tool to select a color from an image.

27
 Chapter nine part 2
Fine tuning your brush settings.

All though we covered quite a lot of the features that the brush tool have to offer, we still only
scratched the Surface. So far we learned how to change the brush shape, size and color. Not
bad, but if you really want adjust your brush then you will have to access the brush palette. For
this please go to workspace, and select your brush palette or hit F5.

If you followed along with the directions you should be look-

ing at the brush preset sub menu, right off the bat you should
be able to see a few special choices. I will try and give you an
overview of what each of these options are capable of.
However I would really recommend taking some time and
playing around with these different options. I scribbled a few
things on the canvas using the standard maple leaf brush to
give you a sense of what the different features are capable of.

Shape Scattering Texture

Dual Color Dynamic Other Dynamic

28
 CHAPTER TEN WORKING WITH LAYERS AND LAYER
STYLES

Layers are like transparent sheets stacked one on top of the other. Each layer can have different
images and effects. When the image is viewed it will look like all of the various layers are one
single image. The images show in the order you stack them, where the top layer shows first and
the bottom layer becomes the background.
Using layers in your workflow will allow you to work on various
parts of your image without effecting all of the image. Such as the
example I am working with if we just wanted to move over the long
rectangle using a layer all we would have to do is select that layer
with the move tool and slowly move it over.

As we stat to get into the later chapter working with adjustment

layers it will become extremely important as you have the option to
apply effects one layer at a time. Not only effects but all of your
other adjustments a well.. There are however just a few more things
we will need to cover in this basic layer lesson. If you look at the
layer palette you will notice a few icons that stick out.

The icon next to the number 1 looks like a little lock. If you click
the lock what ever layer you have select will become locked.
Which means that layer will not be able to be selected or edited
until you unlock it.

The icon next to the number 2 looks like an eye, this means that
the current layer is visible. If you didn’t want the layer to be
visible click the eye and that layer will become invisible.

The layer next to the number 3 looks like a small trash can this
layer will delete your selected layer.

The layer next to the number 4 will create a new blank layer.

Number 5 is connected to your blending modes. Right now it is set

to normal which mean their are no special layer effects attached to
it. we will be covering the various blending modes in a later
chapter.

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Lastly in this chapter we will be looking at layer styles and how to apply them. A layer style is a
special effect that is applied to an entire layer and all of it’s content. Including drop shadows,
beveling and contorting, applying textures and patterns to your image.
Accessing your layer style menu is quite simple just double click what ever layer you would
like to apply your effect to.

To give you a better example of how layer styles work I will apply various layer style effects to
our test image. At this time I would recommend taking some time and playing around with the
various layer styles.

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31
 CHAPTER ELEVEEN WHAT ARE ADJUSTMENT LAYERS

Adjustment layers are special layers in Photoshop that let you apply an adjustment onto its own
layer. A better way to think of it, is a glass sheet you place over top of your image. You then
can make all your adjustments on top of the glass, if you are unhappy with the result simply
delete the glass and the original image will not be affected. There are many adjustments you can
make to a layer, such as, color balance, levels, hue/saturation, brightness, contrast, etc. You
should create an adjustment when you feel an image needs to be modified. Adjustments can
quickly enhance your digital or scanned images, and are used frequently to create great layer
based designs.

Applying an adjustment layer

First select a basic image you will be happy working with.

Click the new adjustment layer icon on the layer palette

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Once you click the new adjustment layer icon you will be given the adjustment layer submenu.
As I said in the above paragraph adjustment layers differ from normal adjustments as they do
not effect your original image.

However if you followed along you should be

looking at the adjustment layer sub menu
which gives you the option to adjust the
brightness and contrast, levels, curves,
exposure etc.. Sadly there are far to many
adjustments for me to display in this lesson, so
to give you an idea of their power I will apply
the simple adjustment posterize to my image.
Remember if I don’t like the settings I can
always just go back an delete the adjustment
layer..

Original

Posterize

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 CHAPTER TWELEVE THE POWER OF FILTERS

Photoshop has a wide range of filters that you can

be used to add special effects to your images.
To use a filter, Select the layer or selection you
would like to apply the filter to.

Pull down the Filter menu. The menu

consists of a list of filter types you can choose
from.

Each menu selection see picture to the right

represents a family of filters; each has a sub menu
that allow you to select the filter you want. For
example, below is the Distort sub menu, listing all
of the possible distortion effects you can choose
from.

Sadly there are far to many various filters for me

to be able to go over in this chapter, so instead I
hope that you will take it upon yourself to actually
try and apply each different filter to your image.
For the sake of this chapter I will show you some
vary basic examples of what filters are capable of.

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Original

Dark Strokes

Crystallize
35
 CHAPTER THIRTEEN WORKING WITH SELECTIONS

The selection tools allow you to select a portion or an area of an image to work on. Most of
Photoshop’s other tools, effects, and filters can then be applied to the selected area changing its
color, shape, texture, position and other attributes, while leaving the rest of the image
untouched. If you remember from lesson 2 Toolbox basic, Photoshop offers 3 basic type of
selection tools. The Marquee Tools , Lasso tools, and the magic wand. Each type of selection
tool has its own special attributes and settings, it will be up to you to select the best one for the
job.

The Lasso Tool and Polygonal Lasso Tool lets you draw a border around the area you are trying
to select, primarily freehand. Use the lasso tool if you want to draw your selection entirely by
hand. If you want your selection to be primarily straight edges then use the Polygonal Lasso
Tool. With the Magnetic Lasso Tool, you can draw the selection border, and it will automati-
cally snap to a high-contrast edge in the area graphics.

To use the Lasso Tool:

Select the Lasso Tool from the Toolbox.

Set any desired options in the Options Bar.

To draw a freehand selections, simply drag the mouse around the area you would like to select.

To begin drawing straight-edged lines of the selection, hold down the Alt key and click at the
beginning and end points of the segment.

To close the selection border, let go of the mouse button

To use the Polygonal Lasso Tool:

Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool from the Toolbox.

Again set the desired options in the Options Bar.

To draw straight-edged lines of the selection, click at the desired beginning and end points of
the line you which to create.

If you would to draw freehand lines hold down the alt key as you mouse around the area.

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How to use the Magnetic Lasso Tool

Select the Magnetic Lasso Tool from the Toolbox, and again select the options you would like.

Click to set the endpoint of the selection.

To draw a freehand segment, move the mouse pointer along the edge of the area you want to
select.

As you move the pointer around the image, the selection lines will automatically snap to the
strongest edge in the area around the pointer.

If you want to switch to either the Lasso Tool or Polygonal Lasso Tool, hold down the Alt
key. From there you can draw either freehand or straight edges.

Again you close the selection by double clicking the mouse.

Hw to use the Magic Tool:

Select the magic wand tool from the toolbox, and click your desired options.

The magic wand tool is a little different from the other selection tools, as it is the easiest to use
and the hardest to master. First and most important you must set you tolerance 0 to 255.

Basically the magic wand works by selecting all similar colors to the color you select. So you
must be careful the higher the tolerance level is set the broader the range of colors you will
select.

Similarly the lower the tolerance level the more accurate the selection will be.

There is one more important setting to note when using the magic wand tool.
The “Contiguous” option, Check or un-check the Contiguous option. If Contiguous is not se-
lected, all pixels that are the same color as the pixel will be selected no matter where they are.
Otherwise, only adjacent pixels of the same color will be selected.

This is the End of The Photoshop Guide Book

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