Introduction to Photoshop And Basics Tools For Beginners
This guide is designed to get you up and running with Adobe Photoshop! Whether you are new to Photoshop or just brushing up because you haven't used it for awhile, this guide should help.
Most of the material should be relevant regardless of the version of Photoshop you are using. This guide covers core Photoshop techniques in Photoshop CS5, but the user interface is pretty consistent from one version to another. Some features may work slightly differently, but the concepts are the same.
Why Photoshop?
Information includes not only text and numbers, but images as well. The expression "a picture is worth a thousand words" is as true today as ever.
Adobe Photoshop is the industry-standard tool for digital imaging, which makes Photoshop expertise a valuable commodity in the workplace. Learning Photoshop is also a good way to learn imaging concepts. Concepts you learn from working with Photoshop apply to other imaging tools as well (including Photoshop Elements, which has a very similar user interface and features).
How to use this guide:
The purpose of this guide is to introduce basic Photoshop features and concepts so that you can use the program effectively. By the time you complete this module, you should be able to use Photoshop to open files and scan images, move around images using navigation tools, understand basic imaging concepts, do basic image editing, and prepare images for print and online presentations.
Getting Started
This section provides a brief introduction to the Photoshop user interface.
Photoshop can seem intimidating at first. But you don't need to know everything about Photoshop in order to use it productively. Learn how to do one task, and then you can add to your knowledge as you go along.
Photoshop Desktop
When you open Photoshop, the Photoshop desktop appears.
Components of the Photoshop desktop include the menu bar, image window, toolbox, status bar, and palettes.
The Menu Bar
The menu bar, at the top of the Photoshop desktop, includes several drop-down menus for choosing commands. Right below the menu bar, options for the currently-selected tool are displayed (see Toolbox tools, below).
Image Window
The image window displays the current image. The name of the image file appears at the top edge of the image window. If rulers are turned on, they appear at the top and left edges of the image window. To display or hide rulers, choose Ctrl-R or View>Rulers.
About Rulers: Rulers show the size of your image. To change the unit of measurement (such as from pixels to inches), double-click on the ruler, or go to Preferences (Edit>Preferences>Units & Rulers). If you are creating an image for the Web, use pixels as the unit of measurement.
The Toolbox
The toolbox contains tools for working with images in Photoshop. Only one tool is selected at any given time. To select a tool, click on its icon in the toolbox.
Some important tools are briefly described below. Toolbox tools are used for most Photoshop tasks, so more detailed explanations of how to use particular tools appear throughout this module.
The Status Bar
The status bar at the bottom of the Photoshop desktop provides information about your current view and other information that you can specify by choosing from a drop-down menu (in this example, the view is now 33.33% and the document dimensions are 8.371" x 8.371").
Palettes enable you to perform a wide variety of tasks in Photoshop. To display or hide particular palettes, go to the Window menu and choose a palette name.
Palettes are usually organized into groups. In the above example, Layers, Channels, and Paths are a group. You can easily move a palette group by dragging its blue bar (at the top of the group). To shrink a palette group, double-click on its blue bar. To hide a palette group, click its close box (the "X" on the right side of the blue bar).
You can drag the tabs of palettes to move them around or to combine them into other groups.
To reset palette locations to the default, choose Window>Workspace>Reset Palette Locations.
Getting images into Photoshop:
In order to do anything in Photoshop, you need to have an image. There are four main ways you can bring an image into Photoshop:
- You can open an existing image file by choosing File > Open or File>Browse. This would include images you have downloaded to your computer from a digital camera or from the internet. Photoshop can open most image file types.
- If your computer is connected to a scanner with a Photoshop plug-in that has been properly installed, you can scan an image into Photoshop by Choosing File > Import.
- You can create a new Photoshop file from scratch.
For more information, see the "Acquiring images" section of this guide.
Moving around an image
When editing images, you can do many tasks more effectively if you zoom in and move around the image. Zoom in close to make adjustments to small areas, then zoom back out to see how your edits have affected the overall image.
The main tools for zooming and moving around an image are the zoom tool, the hand tool, and the navigator palette.
- To zoom in, choose the Zoom tool (
) and then click or click and drag in the image.
When you zoom in, the zoom percentage (or view size) increases. The current zoom percentage is shown in the status bar and at the top of the image window. The zoom percentage shows the magnification at which you are viewing the image (not the actual size of the image). - A quick way to go to 100% view size is to double-click on the zoom tool icon in the toolbox.
- To zoom out, press the ALT key while you click with the zoom tool.
- Use the Hand tool (
) to move around the image in the window when you are zoomed-in. - When using another tool, you can press the spacebar to temporarily access the hand tool. You can then drag to move around the image. When you stop pressing the spacebar, you will return to using the other tool.
- To zoom and move around the image with the Navigator palette, choose Window>Show Navigator. The Navigator palette will appear:
Use the Navigator palette to zoom in or out of an image (by dragging the navigator slider) or to move around the image by dragging the view box (when you are zoomed in). The view box (red box in the above example) shows the part of the image that is currently being displayed in the main image window.Tips
Displaying and hiding palettes and the toolbox
- Press Tab to hide palettes and toolbox.
- Press Shift-Tab to hide palettes.
Correcting mistakes
- Choose Edit-Step Backward to undo your last action.
- Choose Window-Show History to view the History palette. Then you can click on a previous history state to undo one or more of your actions.
- Choose File-Revert to return to last saved version of the file.
Getting Help
To access online help, choose Help > Photoshop Help.Imaging Concepts:
Image size, resolution, and print size
Digital images are made up of pixels (picture elements), which can be defined as colored squares. Each pixel is only one color.A good way to learn about image size, resolution, and print size is to experiment with an image using the Image Size dialog box. To do this, open an image in Photoshop. Then choose Image > Image Size, and the Image Size dialog box appears.
Under Pixel Dimensions, Width and Height refer to the number of pixels in an image, which has to do with the size of the display on the screen.Under Document Size, Width and Height refer to the size of the image when printed.For Online Display
If you are placing an image on the Web, you may want to resample the image (add or delete pixels) in order to change the display size of the image. To resample, make sure "Resample Image" is checked. Unless you want to distort your image, also be sure that "Constrain Proportions" is checked. Then type in a new number of pixels in either the width or height field of Pixel Dimensions.Sampling up (increasing the number of pixels) makes images larger on a display screen. For sampling up, we suggest that you choose the Bicubic or Bicubic Smoother option from the Resample Image drop-down menu.Sampling down (decreasing the number of pixels) makes images smaller. For sampling down, we suggest that you choose either Bicubic or Bicubic Sharper from the Resample Image drop-down menu.Note: The resolution at which an image will display on a monitor is not related to image resolution. Typically the display resolution is around 100 pixels per inch. This is the case regardless of the setting under Resolution in the Image Size dialog box. You do not need to be concerned with this setting if you are placing the image on the Web; it only applies to printing.
