Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Basics Guide

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most powerful software applications for image editing, touch up, color correction, and painting and drawing. You can use it to work with images that have been digitized on flatbed or film/slide scanners, or to create original artwork. The image files you create in Photoshop can be printed to paper or optimized for use in multimedia presentations, web pages, or animation/video projects.

This guide is intended to introduce you to some of Photoshop's many editing tools and capabilities. You will find that there is often several ways to accomplish a task when working on a project in Photoshop.

The Work Area

The Palettes Photoshop's palettes control the behavior of its tools. The Windows menu displays a list of palettes available. When you select the palette you want from this menu, it appears as a floating window in your workspace. By default, the Photoshop palettes are arranged along the right side of the window, generally grouped in threes. To activate a palette you simply click on its tab.

showing or hiding a palette: To show a palette, go into the Window menu and select the palette you want to show. To hide a palette, go into the Window menu and select the palette you want to hide. You can also click on the close button in the upper rightt-hand corner of the palette to hide it. To show or hide all open palettes at once, press the shift key, then the tab key. To show or hide all open palettes and the toolbox at once, press the tab key.

selecting a palette: Photoshop stacks palettes together when it displays them. For example, when you select Show Layers, Photoshop displays the Layers, Channels, and Paths palettes stacked together in one window with the Layers palette on top. Tabs behind the palette shown list the names of the other palettes in the group. To display a palette in a group, click on its tab. To move a palette out of its stacked grouping and into its own window, click on the tab of the palette you want to separate and drag it out of the window.

moving a palette: To move a palette, click on the top of its window and drag it to the desired location.

making a palette smaller: To make a palette smaller, double-click on the palette tab. The window will collapse to show just the palette's name. Double-click on the tab again to make the window full sized again. You can also manually resize the palette window by dragging the bottom right-hand corner of the window.

accessing each palette's menu: Each palette has a variety of menu options. To access these options, click on the right-pointing arrow in the upper right-hand corner of the palette. A pop-up menu will appear displaying these options.

color: The Color palette displays the color values for the currently selected foreground and background colors. You can change foreground or background colors by altering the color values or by clicking on a color in the color bar at the bottom of this palette.

swatches: The Swatches palette displays the color look up table (CLUT) for the image file that is currently open in Photoshop. To select the foreground color, click on the color you want to use. (Your cursor will turn into an eyedropper when you move it over the Swatches palette.) To select a background color, hold down the ALT key and click on the desired color. To add a new color to the Swatches palette, use the eyedropper tool to select a color from the Color palette or from your image. Then position the eyedropper over an empty space in the Swatches palette and click to add the new color to the palette.

layers: Photoshop's Layers palette displays all the layers in an image. Layers are organized with the most recently created layers at the top of the palette. Using the Layers palette, you can change the order of the layers in your image, duplicate or delete existing layers, show or hide layers, and set options for each layer in your image.

history: The History palette, which is new in Photoshop 5.0, records and displays individual changes made to an image and allows you to undo them. Every time a change is made, Photoshop saves the changed state of the image in the History palette. You can also delete unwanted changes and view the state of your image before and after you change it.

Selections

Learning how to select areas of an image is of primary importance when working with Photoshop since you must first select what you want to edit. Once you've made a selection, only the area within the selection can be edited; areas outside the selection are immune to change. There are four basic selection tools in the toolbox.

1) The marquee tool allows you to select rectangular or elliptical areas in an image.

2) The lasso tool lets you draw a freehand selection area, with either curves or straight lines.

3) The move tool lets you move a selection marquee or objects on a single layer.

4) The magic wand tool lets you select parts of an image based on color similarities of adjacent pixels.

Each tool has its own Options toolbar. By default, the Options toolbar is located under the main menu options. The Options toolbar can be moved from that location, by dragging it with the mouse, causing it to become a floating window like the palette windows. This toolbar allows you to change the options for whichever tool you have selected in the toolbox

Layers

Every Photoshop image contains one or more layers. Every new file is created with a background, which can be converted to a layer. When you scan an image and open it in Photoshop, it is placed on the background. Layers are a fundamental part of Photoshop's versatility.

The Layers palette shows all layers in an image. It is organized with the most recently created layers at the top of the palette. When you create a new image in Photoshop, the background layer is the first layer in the image. As you work, you can add more layers to your image, which allows you to organize your work in steps. In the Layers palette, a paintbrush icon appears in the first left-hand column next to the layer you are working on. Visible layers have an eye icon in the second left-hand column next to the layer you are working on.

creating layers: To create a new layer, go into the Layer menu and select New > Layer or simply click the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette. The New Layer dialog box will appear with a default name for the layer in the Name box. If you want to, change the name of the layer, then click on OK. The new layer will appear in the Layers palette above the currently selected layer. You can also click on the arrow in the upper right-hand corner of the palette and select New from the Layers palette menu.

deleting layers: To delete a layer, select the layer you want to delete, go into the Layer menu and select Delete Layer. You can also delete a layer by selecting it, then going into the Layers palette menu and selecting Delete Layer or by clicking and dragging the layer into the trashcan icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

working with background layers: To convert the background layer into a normal layer, double click on it. The Make Layer dialog box will appear. If you want to, type a new name for it, then click on OK. To create a new background layer, delete the current background layer. Select an existing layer, or create a new layer and leave it selected. Then go into the Layers menu and select New > Background From Layer. The selected layer will now become the background layer. Everything contained in the layer will become the background of the image, so if you want the background to be a solid color, you must fill the layer with a solid color (using the paint bucket tool after selecting a color) before you change that layer into the background layer.

When you are finished creating a file, you can flatten the layers in your image. Flattening an image merges all the layers into a single layer. This effect greatly reduces your image's file size. This effect is permanent, so do not flatten your image until you are finished making changes to it. To flatten the layers in your image, go into the Layer menu and select Flatten Image.

Important: Generally, in order to use an image file in an environment outside of Photoshop (like in another program or placing the image in a web page), it must be flattened and saved as a GIF, JPEG, or other file type. The multi-layered photoshop graphic file (PSD OR PDD) is not readable by most other programs.

Saving Your File

Photoshop provides several ways to save files:

• the Save command saves the file in its current file format.
• the Save As command lets you save an alternate version of the file in a different format.
• the Save a Copy command lets you save a copy of the file, leaving the original file intact.
• the Save for Web command opens an imageview window that lets you compare the original image and file size with up to three optimized versions.

Important: Only the Photoshop (.psd, .pdd) format is available for layered files. In addition, many formats do not support files in certain color modes. If you do not see the format you want, flatten the image or use the Save a Copy command.

About Jpeg Format

When saving in Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format, you can specify the image quality and compression level. To specify image quality and compression, enter a value between 0 and 10, or choose an option for Quality, or drag the slider. There’s always a trade-off between image quality and the amount of compression: higher-quality images use less compression (and more disk space) than lower-quality images. You can also select a format option for the JPEG file. Select Baseline (“Standard”) to use a format recognizable to most Web browsers. The Baseline Optimized format optimizes the color quality of the image and can produce a slightly smaller file size, but is not supported by all Web browsers. The Progressive format causes the image to display gradually as it is downloaded. However, progressive JPEG images files are slightly larger in size, require more RAM for viewing, and are not supported by all applications and Web browsers. Because the JPEG format discards data, it is important to save JPEG files only once. Edit and save your image in a format that does not discard data (such as the Photoshop format), and save in JPEG format only as a final step.

For more information about the JPEG and GIF graphic formats, see the "Optimizing Graphics for the Web" resource guide.

Recommended Books

• Photoshop masters: the latest artwork & techniques from the world's top digital artists / edited by AGOSTO Imprint Gloucester, Mass. : Rockport Publishers, Inc., c1998. (Lauinger Library Stacks, TA1637 .P56 1998)

• Photoshop in a nutshell : a desktop quick reference, 2nd edition/ Donnie O'Quinn: O'Reilly, c1999. (Lauinger Library, Picchi Center, T385 .O68 1999, Library Use Only)

• Photoshop for the Web, 2nd edition/ Mikkel Aaland: O'Reilly, c1999. (Lauinger Library, Picchi Center, T385 .A34 1999, Library Use Only)

• Photoshop Power Shortcuts/ Michael Ninness: Hayden Books, c2000
  (Lauinger Library, Picchi Center, T385.N574 2000, Library Use Only)

Developed and maintained by the Gelardin Center Staff. Used with permission.

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