Introduction to photoshop Basics

Author Wells; Written on behalf of computer-tutorials.org . . .

 

Privacy Bit

You know the dance!! . . . .The words and opinions expressed in this article are merely those of the author, and as such do not in any way represent group beliefs held by any other associated person/group/association mentioned throughout the tutorial.

Please feel free to distribute this tutorial as freely as you wish, however please do not alter it in anyway before doing so.

If you have any questions/comments/suggestions, please feel free to contact me on m.wells@wam-design.co.uk

Introduction

This tutorial aims to provide you with a starting point/introduction to Adobe Photoshop, hopefully allowing you to become familiar enough with its workings to start dabbling with it. It is aimed at beginners!! And therefore contains basic contents only.

Obviously I can’t cover every tool, as frankly I’d be here all year, but I will cover those used most commonly, and enough to allow you to start producing some kick ass stuff. I will also introduce you to the common keyboard shortcuts along the way, as they save a massive amount of time when working on large projects and can be invaluable.

Also note I am using Photoshop CS, the differences between older products should be minimal to around version 5. If you are unsure though please contact me and I will be happy to advise on your specific problem.

Shouts must also go to the following peeps for proof reading and helping me out with my grammer ;).
Edit (CT Admin); ~W (aka Mu) ; Pixi3 (CT)

 

Contents

-Interface Overview-

First off, to reset your palate locations if your screen doesn’t look like this then go to Window-Workspace-Reset Palate location, that should then bring up all the default palates and place them nice and neatly into your workspace . . .Neat!

There are many other palates available in Photoshop, all of which are selectable from the Window menu. However you will notice that within the 5 palates Photoshop displays, it employs tabs within these palates so that each one can actually contain a number of different options.

It is also worth mentioning that any palate can be relocated to any point in the workspace by clicking and dragging the palate by the grey bar that runs along its top.

Now I’ll dissect that workspace and introduce you to the individual palates.

 

Tools Palate

The image to the left shows the tools palate. I always have this palate visible as it is quite handy, to say the least. This is where you select all the different tools available in Photoshop, although it also cunningly hides some other useful features.

Note the two, large coloured squares with one slightly overlapping the other? well these represent your selected foreground (the square on top), and background (the one towards the back) colours. To change the colours simply click once on the square you wish to change the colour of, this will then take you to the colour picker from where you can pick your desired colour.

*At any time press the ‘D’ key to revert to the default black foreground and white background colours*

*At any time press the ‘X’ key to swap the foreground and background colours*

*To fill the active selection with the current foreground colour at any time press ALT + BACKSPACE*

*To fill the active selection with the current background colour at any time press CTRL + BACKSPACE*

It is also note worthy that when working with any tool applying colour (e.g. using the paintbrush etc) that you will always work with the Foreground colour.

 

 

 

Layers Palate

The layers palate is the bottom most palate on the right hand side. The Layers palate also plays home to the Channels Palate and also the Paths palate, although these later 2 you can disregard for now.

I will leave further description of this palate until later in the tutorial when I cover Layers in more detail.

For a further description of the layers palate please hold fire until the end of this tutorial, alternatively, if you just cant wait any longer, jump there now by clicking here

History Palate

The History Palate also plays host to the Actions Palate, this palate contains macros effectively for carrying out repetitive tasks. It can be very useful, although it is a little off topic for this level of Tutorial so I will ignore it for now.

The history action is however an incredibly useful palate. Once you are familiar with it, it will ensure that you cannot make any mistakes to your project. Think of it as a detailed undo option. It stores a limited number of actions that you perform in your project as you do them, then at any point, by finding the action in the Palate, you can revert to the step before you performed that action.

By going to Edit-Preferences-General you can change the number of steps that Photoshop saves in the History palate, although obviously the more you select the harsher it is on your system resources.

Colours Palate

The Colour palate plays additional host to the Swatches Palate and also to the Styles Palate. You will more than likely find yourself not needing to use this palate at this stage, although it does become useful when creating web projects and working with custom colour sets.

The Styles Palate may also prove to be useful to you, depending on what exactly you use Photoshop for. In a nutshell it comprises of a combination of 'pre-set' layer properties which can be applied to your layers to transform them into a particular style. It also proves quite useful again in web design when wanting to keep a particular style throughout your site.

Navigation Palate

The Navigation Palate resides at the very top left of your workspace (as default). It also provides a home to the Information Palate and to the Histogram Palate.

In the Navigation Palate you will see a thumbnail of your current project. You can zoom in on your work area and also navigate around the area when zoomed in. Note zooming in and moving around your project in the Navigation Palate will affect the canvas area, not the preview in the palate itself.

Options Bar

The options bar lies above your tool palate, kind of embedded under the main menus running across the top of your workspace. It is invaluable in its purpose and will display differing options related to whatever task you are carrying out at the time. For instance in this image it displays options relating to the marquee tool as this is my currently selected tool. Many options here have their own shortcuts/hotkeys, depending on the tool, although it is always useful to demonstrate exactly what options are available to you at any given time.

So that is the basic introductions over, you should now know how the workarea is didvided up, and the general purpose of the different palates. Move onto the next page for a basic introduction into the fundamental tools of photoshop :).

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