Photoshop CS4: Fundamentals

1. What Photoshop Can Do

Introducing Photoshop
Combining one image with another
Adjusting brightness and contrast
Adjusting color and tone
Cloning away unwanted details
Adding an entire composition
Creating a dark and stormy sky
Reducing the noise in the sky
Sharpening the detail
Cropping the artwork
Working with text layers

2. Open and Organize

The Adobe Bridge
Opening an image
Opening multiple images
Adding file information
Introducing Bridge
A whirlwind tour of Bridge CS4
Adjusting the interface and thumbnails
Full-screen preview and rotating
Ratings and labels
Filtering thumbnails in the Contents panel
Moving, copying, and deleting files
Creating and assigning keywords
Searches and collections
Batch renaming
Grouping images into stacks
Comparing images in Review mode
Playing images in a slideshow
Customizing and saving the workspace

3. Setting Up 'Shop'
Preferences, color settings, and shortcuts
Setting general preferences
Setting interface preferences
Changing the color of the pasteboard
Other preferences
Installing the CS4 color settings
Applying color settings in Photoshop and CS4
Installing keyboard shortcuts
Organizing the palettes
Saving your workspace

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4. Navigation
Getting around with OpenGL
The tabbed-window interface
Arranging image windows
Scrolling (aka panning) images
Common ways to zoom
The smooth, continuous Zoom tool
Zooming inside free-floating windows
Viewing the image at print size
Contextualized (bird's-eye) scrolling
Nudging the screen image
Scroll wheel tricks
Using the numerical zoom value
The new Rotate View tool
Cycling between screen modes

5. Basic Color Correction

Making drab colors look better
Brightness and contrast
Adjusting numerical values in Photoshop
Introducing adjustment layers
Editing and saving adjustment layers
Introducing the Histogram
Using the Histogram palette
Restoring details with the History brush
Using the Color Balance feature
Introducing the Variations command
Color primaries and complements
Correcting the color cast
Fading a static adjustment
Revert and Undo (for before and after)
Hue and saturation
Changing the color of paint
Adjusting hues selectively
Refining your color range
Enhancing a low-saturation image
The new Target Adjustment tool
Boosting colors with Vibrance

6. Image Size and Resolution

Imaging fundamentals
What is image size?
The Image Size command
Selecting an interpolation option
Upsampling vs. "real" pixels
Changing the print resolution
Downsampling your artwork
The mythology of upsampling

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 Better ways to make an image big

7. Cropping and Straightening

Frame wide, crop tight
Using the Crop tool
Crop tool presets
Previewing the crop angle
The Crop command
Auto Crop & Straighten
Straightening an image with the Ruler tool
Precisely cropping the "wedges"
Crop without cropping
Perspective cropping

8. Making Selections
Photoshop versus the real world
Meet the Selection tools
Drawing a geometric selection outline
Blurring a selection outline with Feather
Dragging and dropping a selection
Creating a graduated selection
Aligning one image to another
Inverting and matching colors
Matching colors with more control
Filling and fading a selection
The fantastical image rotation trick
The Magic Wand tool
Tolerance and other options
Grow, Similar, and Inverse
The Quick Selection tool
Deselect and intersect
Previewing a selection in Quick Mask mode
Using the Refine Edge command
The Polygonal Lasso tool
Saving a selection
Accessing the Move tool on the fly

9. Paint, Retouch, and Heal

The benefits of brushing
Don't be a slave to the brush
Changing size and hardness
CS4's size-and-hardness preview trick
Adjusting roundness and angle
Brush shape, jitter, and other dynamics
Miscellaneous Brush palette settings
Opacity, flow, and the Airbrush option
Switching blend modes
Painting with the help of the Rotate view

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 Painting with imagery
Creating photographic artwork
The new and improved Dodge tool
Dodging (brightening) shadow detail
Erasing with the History brush
The new and improved Burn tool
Erasing to a snapshot
Balancing saturation with the Sponge tool
Brightening yellow or dingy teeth
Recoloring inaccurate hues
Why red-eye happens
Using the Red Eye tool
Copying areas with the Clone Stamp tool
Meet the Healing brush tools
Healing away scratches
Detail matching
Fixing a problem edit
Straight lines and the Fade healing brush
Rebuilding fine details
Using the Patch tool
Combining Magic Wand and Patch
The Transparent checkbox
Flipping and rotating with Clone Source

10. Layer Essentials

The layered composition
Introducing the Layers palette
"Jumping" a selection to a layer
Enlarging with the Spherize filter
Erasing with a layer mask
Exploiting the visibility of a layer mask
Moving a layer
Auto-switching between layers
Combining layers into a clipping mask
Changing the stacking order
Customizing the transparency grid
Expanding the canvas size
Revealing oversized layers
Feathering a vector-based vignette

11. Printing, PDFs, and Web Galleries

Printing from Photoshop and the Bridge
Meet the subjective color-matching image
Gauging print size
Scale, position, and page orientation
Refreshing the print preview
Output options
Color management options

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 Outputting PDF contact sheets
Creating a Flash-based web gallery

12. Saving Images for the Web

Rules of the Web
Introducing web graphics
Building a figure in miniature
sRGB: the color space of the world wide web
Creating a comparative "2-up" figure
Saving a JPEG photograph
Copyright, Matte, and Blur
Comparing alternative compression settings
Downsampling graphic art
Saving a GIF
The antiquated GIF vs. the better PNG

Still to Come
Until next time

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