CHAPTER 1: PHOTOSHOP CC GUIDED TOUR

To access a tool thats hidden deep within a toolset, add the Shift key to the tools shortcut key, and youll
cycle through all the tools in that toolset.
If you need to switch tools temporarily for a quick edityou can use the spring-loaded tools feature.
Just press and hold a tools keyboard shortcut to switch to that tool and then perform your edit.
Photoshop uses your foreground color when you paint or fill something with color; its where most of the
action is. The program uses your background color to do things like set the second color of a gradient (a
smooth transition from one color to another, or to transparency) and erase parts of a locked Background
layer (page 78);
To swap your foreground and background colors, click the curved, double-headed arrow just above the
two chips or press X. To set both color chips to their factory-fresh setting of black and white, click the tiny
chips to their upper left or press D (in a two-column Tools panel, theyre at the lower left).
Adjustments. This panel lets you create Adjustment layers. Instead of making color and brightness
changes to your original image, you can use Adjustment layers to make these changes on a separate layer,
giving you all kinds of editing flexibility and keeping your original image out of harms way. Theyre
explained in detail in Chapter 3, and youll see em used throughout this book.
Styles. Styles are special effects created with a variety o flayer styles. For example, if youve created a
glass-button look by using several layer styles, you can save the whole lot of em as a single style so you
can apply them all with a single click (instead of adding each style individually). You can also choose from
tons of built-in styles; theyre all discussed starting on page 124.
Layers. This is the single most important panel in Photoshop. Layers let you work with images as if they
were a stack of transparencies, so you can create one image from many. By using layers, you can adjust
the size and opacity ofand add layer styles toeach item independently. Understanding layers is the
key to Photoshop success and non-destructive editing; youll learn all about them in Chapter 3.
Channels. Channels are where Photoshop stores the color information your images are made from.
Channels are extremely powerful, and you can use them to edit the individual colors in an image, which is
helpful in sharpening images, creating selections (telling Photoshop which part of an image you want to
work with), and so on. Chapter 5 has the scoop on channels.
Youve got several ways to retrace your steps, including the lifesaving Undo com- mand. Just choose
EditUndo or press -Z (Ctrl+Z).
If you need to go back more than one step, use the Step Backward command instead: Choose EditStep
Backward or press Option--Z (Alt+Ctrl+Z).
You can step forward through your editing history, too, by choosing EditStep Forward or Shift--Z
(Shift+Ctrl+Z).
Whereas the Undo and Step Backward commands let you move back through changes one at a time, the
History panel (Figure 1-10) kicks it up a notch and lets you jump back several steps at once.
he History panel keeps track of everything you do to your images, beginning with opening them. You can
even take snapshots of an image at crucial points during the editing process, like when you convert it to
black and white and then add a color tint.

Duplicate the layer by pressing -J (Ctrl+J).

To open the Preferences dialog box, choose PhotoshopPreferencesGeneral
(EditPreferencesGeneral on a PC), or press -K (Ctrl+K).
Deleting Photoshops preferences file can be a useful troubleshooting technique. (It resets all the
preferences to what they were when you first installed the program.) Just choose FileQuit (FileExit on
a PC), and then press and hold Shift-Option- (Shift+Alt+Ctrl) when you restart Photoshop. Online
Appendix B (available from this books Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds) has more
about this procedure.
Photoshop includes a bunch of built-in tool recipes, called presets, such as frequently used crop sizes,
colorful gradient sets, patterns, shapes, and brush tips. You can access em through the tools Preset
Picker at the far left of the Options bar. Figure 1-15 (top) has the scoop.
CHAPTER 2: OPENING, VIEWING, AND SAVING FILES
-N (Ctrl+N) create new file