ADOBE PHOTOSHOP CS

Lesson 1: Navigating the Workspace The Menu Bar The Status Bar The Toolbox The Palettes Review Quiz

Lesson 2: Working with Documents Navigator Palette & Hand Tool New View & Duplicate Image Size & Resolution Image Size Dialog Box Resizing Practice [V5.x] [V6.x] Canvas Size Crop Tool Crop Tool Practice

Additional Crop Tool Practice [for v6.0 only] History Palette Basics Saving Images Review Homework Assignment

Lesson 3: Image Modes & Color Selection Color Primer The Color Picker Color & Swatch Palettes Custom Swatch Exercise Eyedropper & Info Palette Review & Assignment

Lesson 4: Selections and Masks Marquee Selection Tools Lasso & Wand Selection Tools Selection Tool Practice Select Menu Commands Transforming Selections Quick Mask Mode More Quick Mask Alpha Channels & Channel Palette Mask/Selection Practice Exercises

Lesson 5: Layers and Blend Modes Intro to Layers The Layers Palette [V5.x] [V6.x] Important Layer Information Move, Copy & Transform Layers Advanced Layer Features Layers Review

Lesson 6: Adding and Working with Type Working With Type Introduction The Type Tool (v.5.x) The Type Tool - Continued (v.5.x)

The Type Tool (v6.x) The Type Tool - Continued (v6.x) Type Palettes and Text Warping (v6.x) Type Tool Exercises 1-5 Type Tool Exercises 6-10 and Homework

Lesson 7: Painting Tools Intro, Paint Bucket and Fill Command Gradient, Pattern and Line Tools Brushes and Fade Command Pencil, Paintbrush and Airbrush Tools Eraser Tools Painting Exercises: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Lesson 8: Retouching Tools Retouching Tools Intro & Tips Blur, Sharpen, Smudge Dodge, Burn, Sponge Clone Stamp, History Brush, Art History Brush Retouching Exercises: 1&2 3 4&5 6&7 8 9 10

The Menu Bar

The menu bar consists of 11 menus: File, Edit, Image, Layer, Select, Filter, View, Window, and Help. Take a few moments now to look at each of the menus. You may notice that some menu commands are followed by ellipses (...). This indicates a command that is followed by a dialog box where you can enter additional settings. Some menu commands are followed by a right pointing arrow. This indicates a submenu of related commands. As you explore each menu, be sure to take a look at the submenus as well. You'll also notice that many commands are followed by keyboard shortcuts. Gradually, you'll want to get to know these keyboard shortcuts as they can be incredible time savers.

As we make our way through this course, we'll be learning the most useful keyboard shortcuts as we go along. In addition to the menu bar, Photoshop often has context sensitive menus for accessing some of the most likely commands depending on which tool is

selected and where you click. You access the context sensitive menu by right clicking in Windows, or pressing the Control key on a Macintosh. One of the most convenient contextual menus can be accessed by right clicking/Control clicking on the title bar of a document for quick access to the duplicate command, image and canvas size dialogs, file information, and page setup. If you already know how to open an image, go ahead and try it now. Otherwise, you'll learn how in the next section.

The Toolbox
Now let's explore more of the Photoshop toolbox. If you have the Quick Reference Card that came with Photoshop, it would be a good idea to locate it now. When you look at the toolbox, notice how some of the buttons have a tiny arrow in the lower right corner. This arrow indicates that other tools are hidden under that tool. To access the other tools, click and hold down on a button and the other tools will pop out. Try this now by clicking on the rectangle marquee tool and changing to the elliptical marquee tool. The hidden marquee tools are shown here.

Now hold your cursor over one of the buttons and you should see a tooltip appear that tells you the name of the tool and its keyboard shortcut. All the marquee tools have a shortcut of M. An easier way to switch between the different hidden tools is to use the keyboard shortcut along with the Shift key modifier.

For the marquee tools, the Shift-M combination toggles between the rectangular and elliptical marquee tools. The single row marquee tools are less often used and must be selected from the toolbox flyout. Another shortcut for cycling through the hidden tools is to Alt/Option click on the toolbox button.

Take a few moments now to familiarize yourself with the tool names using the tooltips. Use the shortcuts you've just learned to explore all the hidden tools. As you select each tool, note the hints provided in the status bar area for each tool. Moving down in the toolbox, we come to the color swatches. This is where the foreground and background colors are displayed. The tiny arrow to the top right allows you to swap foreground and background colors. The tiny black and white swatch symbol to the lower left allows you to reset the colors to the default of black foreground and white background. Hold your cursor over those two areas to learn the keyboard shortcuts. To change a color, simply click on either the foreground or background color swatch and select a new color in the color picker. Experiment by changing the foreground and background colors and then resetting them back to defaults. The next two buttons on the toolbox allow you to toggle between quick mask and selection mode. We'll learn more about this later in future lessons. Below that you have a set of three buttons that allow you to change the appearance of the workspace. Hold your cursor over each button to see what it does. Notice the keyboard shortcut for all three is F. Hitting F repeatedly toggles between all three modes. Try it now. This is a convenient place to mention a few more shortcuts for modifying the workspace appearance. Feel free to try them out as you read. When in either

of the full screen modes, you can toggle the menu bar on and off with the Shift-F key combination. In any screen mode you can toggle the toolbox, status bar, and palettes on and off with the Tab key. To hide only palettes and leave the toolbox visible, use Shift-Tab. The last button on the toolbox is for moving your document to ImageReady. We will not be exploring ImageReady in this course. Before we move on to the palettes, let's review what we learned about the toolbox: 1. An arrow indicates a flyout of hidden tools. 2. Each main tool has a single letter keyboard shortcut assigned to it. 3. The Shift key combined with a tool shortcut allows you to toggle the hidden tools. 4. D = resets the foreground color to black and background color to white. 5. X = swap foreground and background colors. 6. F = toggles screen modes 7. Shift-F = Turns menu bar on and off in full screen modes 8. Tab = toggles the toolbox, status bar, and palettes on and off 9. Shift-Tab = toggle only the palettes on and off

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The Navigator Palette grouped with the info and Options Palettes.

The Palettes
When you first open Photoshop, the palettes are stacked along the right edge of your screen in palette groups. The first group contains the Navigator, Info, and Options palettes. Next is the Color Swatches, and Brushes palettes. Below that are the History and Actions Palettes. Finally, you have the Layers, Channels, and Paths Palettes. Palette groups can be moved around in the workspace by clicking on the title bar and dragging. Each palette group has a collapse and a close button in the title bar area. Try the collapse button for each of the palette groups now. You'll notice the button works as a toggle, clicking the button a second time after the palette is collapsed will expand the palette again. You may also notice that some palettes do not completely collapse. Try collapsing the color palettes and you'll see that the For palettes that partially collapse, you can completely collapse them by holding down the Alt/Option key as you press the collapse button. You can also collapse a group by double clicking on any of the palette tabs. To display a collapsed palette, just click once on the palette tab if it's in the back of the group, or double click if it's in the front of the group.
Palettes can be resized either by holding your cursor over an edge and dragging when the cursor changes to a double pointing arrow, or by clicking

and dragging on the right corner. Only the Color, Options, and Info palettes are not resizable. When you click the close button on a palette group it closes all the palettes in the group. To display a palette that is not shown, you can either choose the command from the Window Menu, or display the palette using its keyboard shortcut. They are:

Enter or Return = Show/Hide Options Palette (V5.x only) Double click tool button = Show/Hide Options Palette (V5.x only) F5 = Show/Hide Brushes Palette F6 = Show/Hide Color Palette F7 = Show/Hide Layers Palette F8 = Show/Hide Info Palette F9 = Show/Hide Actions Palette

And don't forget these which we learned in the last lesson:

Tab = Show/Hide Toolbar and all Palettes Shift-Tab = Show/Hide all Palettes

To bring a grouped palette to the front of the group, click on the palette's tab. You can also ungroup and rearrange the palettes by clicking on a tab and dragging it outside of the group or to another group. Try it now by dragging the navigator palette out of it's default group. Then put it back by dragging it back onto the palette group.

First, the Navigator palette. If yours is not showing, display it now using any of the methods you learned previously.

You'll also need to open a document. In the center of the Navigator palette, you'll see a small thumbnail representation of your image, surrounded by a

red outline representing the visible area of your document. If your entire image is visible, the outline surrounds the entire thumbnail. If you look at the palette menu, you can choose palette options to change the color of the outline. Below the thumbnail, we find even more controls for zooming. The text entry field lets you type in any magnification number, and the slider lets you adjust magnification up and down, and the two buttons on either side of the slider allow you to zoom in and out by set intervals. If you move the slider all the way to the right, you'll see the maximum zoom level is 1600%. Move the slider back and forth a few times slowly and observe the red outline in the Navigator preview. As you can see, it gives you a visual clue as to what part of your image you are viewing. Click anywhere in the Navigator preview to move the focus to that area of the image. Click and drag in the preview to pan around your document. Remember, you can drag the edges of the navigator palette to change its size. The preview will increase as you increase the palette size. Another way to pan around a document is with the Hand tool. When the hand tool is selected you can just click and drag in your document to pan the visible area. Try it now. Okay, now that you've tried it... make that the last time you ever use the Hand tool because I am going to tell you the one keyboard shortcut you will find yourself using all the time: Spacebar = Hand tool. No matter which tool is active, the spacebar always temporarily activates the hand tool. Learn it; use it; and never look at the hand tool again. I'm not even going to bother telling you the shortcut and modifiers for the Hand tool; if you're curious, you know by now how to find that out. At any time while working, when you need the most accurate representation of what you're working on, you should set the magnification to 100%. At any other magnification, there is going to be some level of distortion. Remember the current magnification level will always be displayed in the status bar, the navigator palette, or in the title bar of the document window.

Graphics File Format

1. JPEG - JPEG is best for photos when you need to keep the file size small and don't mind giving up some quality for a significant reduction in size. JPEG is not suitable for images with text, large blocks of color, or simple shapes, because crisp lines will blur and colors can shift. Only JPEG offers the options of Baseline, Baseline Optimized, or Progressive.

2.

TIFF - TIFF is good for any type of bitmap (pixel-based)

images. TIFF produces large files, but there is no loss in quality. TIFF also preserves layers, alpha transparency, and other special features when saved from Photoshop. The type of extra information stored with TIFF files varies in different Photoshop versions, so consult Photoshop's help for more information.

3.

PSD, PDD - PSD and PDD are Photoshop's native

format. Use PSD when you need to preserve layers, transparency, adjustment layers, masks, clipping paths, layer styles, blending modes, vector text and shapes, etc. The PDD extension was used in Adobe PhotoDeluxe (now discontinued), but it is identical to PSD format and the two can be used interchangeably.

4.

BMP

- Use BMP for any type of bitmap (pixel-based)

images. BMPs are huge files, but there is no loss in quality. BMP has no real benefits over TIFF, except you can use it for Windows wallpaper. .

5.

PICT

- PICT is an old, Mac-only bitmap format, similar to

BMP for Windows. PICT is not often used today.

6.

PNG

- Use PNG when you need smaller file sizes with no

loss in quality. PNG files are usually smaller than TIFFs, in my experience. PNG also supports alpha transparency (soft edges) and was developed to be a Web graphics replacement for GIF.

7.

GIF - Use GIF for simple Web graphics having limited colors.
GIF files are always reduced to 256 unique colors or less and they make very small, fast-loading graphics for the Web. GIF is great for Web buttons, charts or diagrams, cartoon-like drawing, banners, and text headings. GIF is also used for small, compact Web animations. GIF should rarely be used for photos.