Matt Howes

Photoshop Tools and Features User Log

The purpose of this log is for you to record what tools and features you used in the creation of your digital graphics. You should try to use as many as possible and you
must record how, why and when you used them. You do not need to record repeated actions but each single new action should be recorded. An example of this would
be setting up a new Photoshop file/image which would cover the ranges; “Image Settings” (all) and part of “Menus” (some of). You only need to do this once. Remember
that where the “e.g.” appears in a range, as many of the items should be covered as possible but not all of them; your tutor will guide you here. Where possible you
should also provide a screen dump to illustrate the action (see sample image below).
Tools and features  How, why and when used. Screen dump
Menus: 
Open; When creating the blank photoshop
document, we might need to open
any other images. Wed did this by
selecting file in the top left corner of
the screen, going down the drop
down until open and then locating
the file I needed to open.

save; When creating the graphics, I

wanted to save the product multiple
times along the way so that if it
crashed I would lose any work. For
this is went file, save as and saved a
main file in a folder. Then along the
project all I needed to do was press
CTRL S which is a hotkey to save.

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Matt Howes
import; The import tab is under the main File
which is located at the left side of
the screen at the top. For this I
selected import and opened any
other file that I might need when
creating the product. This is different
to open as it opens an image etc, in
the document that is already open
unlike open which opens a new tab.

export; When something in the product was

complete, depending on what type
of background it has would depend
on how it would be exported. All my
images had a transparent
background so for this I went: file,
save as and changed the format to a
PNG file. If it has a solid background
and no need for a transparent file
you go: File, save as and change the
file to JPEG, and change the file
quality to MAX.

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Matt Howes
edit; The edit tool contains lots of
different things to do with the layer
you are working on. The first thing
that I used was the free transform
tool. This selects the layer and allows
you to rotate it, flip or move it. The
other things that I used was stroke.
Stroke allows you to change how
thick lines are around the outside of
an image or how much of the
capacity of colour can be shown on
the image.

view; The view tab allows you as the user

to select what you want to see on
the screen and how big it is. For
example, the tool that I was using
the most was the zoom in and out
tool. For this you can either select
view, zoom in/out or you can use
the hotkey which is ALT + or ALT -.

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Matt Howes
help During creating my graphics, I didn’t
use the help tool. I spent more time
looking on the Adobe website at
their forums where other people
was asking the questions and
answering them. However, the help
tool consists of multiple ways of
telling you how to do certain things
on photoshop but if there isn’t a
solution it sends you to the Adobe
forums page.
Image settings: 
size; For the images that I was using a
way of setting them so that they are
all the same size was by using the
properties tool on it and setting
them all to an odd number. Then
repeating that with all m images so
they were the same size.
Resolution; On opening photoshop that is when
you select the resolution of the sizer I
wanted. For all my graphics, I used
the default photoshop size which
was 1819x1417 pixels.

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Matt Howes
Height and Width; When I was setting different sizes of
layers and images, I needed to pay
attention to the height and width
that they were. The way that I set an
images size was by selecting the
image, going over to the right-hand
side where properties was and
adjusting the size of the image. I did
this with multiple images such as on
my navigation menu to be sure that
all the boxes that I had created was
all the exact same size.
background; One of my images that I created had
a solid background. My headphone
icon had a solid blue background on
it. For this I used the beginning
option in Photoshop to set the
default colour to blue. This was so I
didn’t have to mess around with the
fill bucket tool to set it blue.

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Matt Howes
transparency; All but one of the images that I
finished with are all transparent
images. When I was starting on each
graphic I set my background to
transparent. For this I selected the
background layer and dragged the
white of the screen making it
transparent. Then when I was saving
I made shore to export it as a PNG
file.
file name When I created my graphic to start
with I didn’t name the file until I did
my first save. I was saving as I went
along in the original photoshop file
with the name of what the graphic
was so that when I was opening
multiple photoshop files I would
know which one my main one was.

Drawing tools: 

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Matt Howes
tool options; When I was using the pencil to draw
some of my outlines one of the main
tools that I used was the width tool.
This was used so that it stood out
more and I could fill the inside of it
easier.

Brush and Pencil; For some areas that I couldn’t use

the fill tool because the layers
weren’t all connected I used the
brush and pencil tool. If I wanted a
faint colour I used the brush tool
and if I wanted a solid colour I used
the pencil tool. The way I was using
the was zooming into the individual
pixels that I couldn’t access with the
fill tool and ‘coloured’ them in.

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Matt Howes
duplicate; When creating a lot of my things I
used the duplicate layer tool a lot.
This was so that when I was creating
graphics that are symmetrical I
wanted them to be the same. When
creating graphic like this I made one
half of the graphic, right clicked on
the layer and selected duplicate
layer, they flipped it horizontally and
placed it next to the other layer.
Then after that I right clicked and
selected merge visible making that
duplicated layer one layer.

fill; For some of the graphics that I

created, they required to have a
main area filled in one colour. For
this I created another layer over the
area that I wanted to be filled in and
used the fill tool. To select the
colour, I wanted I used to colour
picker in the bottom left hand side
and selected the colour I needed.
For the colours, I was picking they all
needed to be the exact same shade
of blue. The way I got this was got
the # number from another graphic
and pasted that into the colour chart
giving me the exact colour I needed.

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Matt Howes
text; On 2 of the graphics that I created I
used text. On my main navigation
bar, there is text all through it. For
the text on there I used the main
text tool and changed the colours to
the scheme I was going for. On my
delivery icon, I also used the tool
again to put the text on the back of
the lorry. With that text, I went into
the blending options and selected to
have the outline on that as black.
line; For some of the outlines that I was
doing when making my graphics I
was using the line tool. Because the
line tool was so thin I had to set it to
a width of 10 so that It created a
basic thick black line. After I had
done all my lines I placed them
where I needed them and merged
them all together.

shape; For some of the graphics that I

created I had to use some of the
basic shape tools, such as the
rounded square tool and the normal
square tool. For this I selected the
tool and to get a perfect square I
held down shift and dragged it out.
Once I had done that I adjusted the
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Matt Howes
size using the size tool on the right
side of the screen under properties
so that it was the size I needed.
zoom; Throughout using photoshop I was
using the zoom tool to zoom in and
out of areas that I needed to see
individual pixels with. To do this I
was using the shortcut CTRL + and
CTRL -. The other way to do it would
have been View, Zoom in/out.

guides and rulers; When I had to measure some of the

lines I had created, instead of
duplicating them I created a new
one and used the ruler to measure
how long and wide it was. I got the
ruler tool from the toolbar on the left
and then dragged it from point a to
point b. The dimensions were given
to me at the top of the screen where
I wrote them down and placed
them, in the new shapes
dimensions.
Paletts, e.g. colour, On the pallets, I used some of these
gradients, layers, tools. The main one that I used the
object, brushes,
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Matt Howes
history, actions, most was the colour and gradient.
size, resolution; The way that I used the gradient
was selected my primary and
secondary colour in the colour
swatch, selected the colour gradient
tool from the bar on the left-hand
side and dragged from down up on
the screen giving me my two colours
in a gradient effect. For the brush
tool, when I was adding a faint fill
into a square for example I would
use this tool. This doesn’t give a full
colour unlike the pencil tool which is
why it is better.
Layers, e.g. The layer play a huge part in
copying, saving, creating something in photoshop.
arranging;
This is because photoshop works
flattening; colour
selection, only with layers. When creating
something for each little area that I
did I would create a new layer so
that when I want to select a certain
area it won’t all be merged together.
When copying a layer, I right clicked
on the pacific layer and that selected
duplicate layer.

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Matt Howes
Colour selection, For some of the colours that I was
e.g. foreground, using I needed to make sure that
background,
when I wanted to use the same
colour swatch,
eyedropper colour again I would use the exact
right one. The way that I did this
was by using the eyedropper tool.
For this I selected on the eye
dropper tool and selected an area
that already had this colour. When I
clicked on it, it would set as my
primary colour. Then I selected the
fill bucket and filled in the area that I
wanted. For the colour swatch if I
was selecting a colour but couldn’t
use the eye dropper, I would get the
# code number and pasted that into
the swatch giving be the exact
colour. When I opened photoshop I
didn’t want to have any background
colour as my images had to be
transparent. The way I did this was
by unlocking the background layer
and dragged the white of the main
page, giving me a background
which was transparent.
Editing tools: 

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Matt Howes
Selection, e.g. One of the main tools that I used
marquee, lasso, throughout creating the graphics,
magic wand,
was using the wand tool. This tool
magnetic lasso,
deselect; helps to delete areas in certain
images that are all the same colour,
without having to go around it with
the rubber tool. Another tool which
I used was the lasso tool. This helped
me cut out certain shapes in images
that was round. For this I dragged it
from point to point until it joined
backup at the original point, then
held down CTRL and dragged it
away.
Transform, e.g. The transform tool was used
scale, rotate, skew, frequently throughout the process
flip; cut; copy;
of creating the graphics. This tool is
paste; crop; trim;
erase; undo; fill used to help crop, rotate and flip any
images. This helped when I was
making my headphone icon
because I needed to duplicate and
flip my image to. For this I selected
edit, transform and flip horizontal.
Then I cropped the image down
slightly by also using the free
transform tool. Once I had done that
I merged the two layers together
giving me the one image.

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Matt Howes
Advanced tools: 
Image On some of the images that I used I
adjustments, e.g. had to change the saturation tool so
brightness and
that my image would then look like
contrast, hue and
saturation, colour it was going to be used as a rollover
balance, gradients, image. For this I selected on the
transparency, layer that my image was and
invert; masks; reduced the saturation level,
keeping the colour but reducing the
lightness of it. For some areas of
images, I needed the image to blend
against the background with
transparency. For this I used the
wand tool to delete sections, so
when I placed the image back over it
again I then had a transparent kind
of image. Another way that I did this
was by adding a clipping mask to
the image. For his I put my image at
the top over a shape and right
clicked the image and added the
clipping mask, which then puts the
image inside my shape.

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