WEB DIGITAL IMAGERY: PHOTOSHOP CS2- BEGINNING Words of Wisdom and Comfort – And on Getting Around in CS2

Welcome to the world of image editing in Adobe Photoshop! You have before you the world’s most advanced image editing application. Photoshop is the gold standard for image editing: used by graphic designers, artists, photographers, and everyday folks like you and me who want to make our images look...well…simply better. With Photoshop, you can create stunning works of art from a blank canvas or existing images, or simply crop and resize your kid’s soccer team photo for email or printing at your local Wal-Mart. You can repair damaged or otherwise less-than-perfect images and restore them to their original glory. Your images can be destined for print, web, electronic presentation, or other distribution…Photoshop lets you prepare them for anything!

Now, at this point, you might be thinking to yourself, “What have I gotten myself into? All those bells and whistles…? It looks REALLY complicated… All I want to know is how to email my photos to my Aunt Bernice in Poughkeepsie.” Well, fear not intrepid user! While Photoshop is the most advanced image editing application in the world, yea, even the universe, it is also VERY approachable. More importantly, you don’t need to know how to use EVERY feature of Photoshop in order to be a successful “Photoshopper”. And therein lies the words of wisdom and comfort mentioned in the title of this lesson. Learn what you need to know to accomplish the task at hand—be it resizing and cropping an image for email, converting a color image to black and white, or what have you. Do that well and do it often, until you can do it without having to look up the step-by-step directions each time. When you have a project that calls for another, yet unlearned, Photoshop technique, find out how to do it, and add that technique to your repertoire. In other words, learn what you need to know for what you’re trying to do at the moment.

Before long, you’ll find yourself looking at an image and saying, “Hmmm, I think I could make that better in Photoshop.” And the cool thing is, before you can spell, “Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium” (or “Mississippi”), you’ll be doing just that! (Making images better in Photoshop, that is…not spelling

WEB DIGITAL IMAGERY: PHOTOSHOP CS2- BEGINNING Words of Wisdom and Comfort – And on Getting Around in CS2

“Mississippi”). And trust me, gentle reader, it DOES get easier and less intimidating once you start using the program.

In these lessons, I will emphasize not only the how-to’s of Photoshop, but also the how-to-more-efficiently’s of Photoshop. That is, wherever appropriate, I’ll make reference to keyboard shortcuts that will save you time in your image editing workflow. That way, you can spend less time hunting for the menu option or function and more time thinking creatively about what you want to do with your image. Some of these that you’ll use frequently, you’ll want to commit to memory. I’ll let you know…

Help! I use a Macintosh and you’re teaching Photoshop on a Windows-based computer!

Photoshop operates EXACTLY the same way on the Mac as on a Windows-based computer. The only difference (besides the minor cosmetic differences) is the substitution of the CTRL (control) key on Windows for the Command (�) key on the Mac, and the ALT key on a Windows keyboard for the OPTION key on the Mac. So, for example, to save a file on the Windows computer, the keyboard shortcut is ctrl-S. On the Mac, it’s �-S. It’s that simple. The screenshots you’ll see in these handouts are from the Mac version of Photoshop, but both Mac and Windows keyboard shortcuts will be included.

Let’s get to Photoshopping!

Photoshop CS2’s workspace: toolbar, options bar and several floating palettes.

WEB DIGITAL IMAGERY: PHOTOSHOP CS2- BEGINNING Words of Wisdom and Comfort – And on Getting Around in CS2

One of the coolest things about Photoshop is that as part of the Adobe Creative Suite, Adobe has made every effort to make it similar to the other Adobe Creative Suite applications wherever possible. So, if you know Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, or GoLive, you already have a head start on understanding some of the functions and locations of features in Photoshop. If not, don’t despair because the reverse is also true: knowing Photoshop will get you a step ahead on working with the other Creative Suite applications as well!

The screenshot above shows the typical arrangement of the Photoshop workspace, which consists of the image area, a toolbar, a contextual tool options bar that changes according to currently active tool, a menu bar, and a host of floating palettes. There are a lot more palettes that can be displayed, but as a rule, you’ll want to display only those you need at the moment so as not to use up valuable screen real estate and get in the way of your image editing efforts.

The Toolbar The Toolbar is a floating palette, but one that you’ll want to leave open at all times (as is the layers palette, but we’ll get to that later). This is where you select the various tools to perform all the different functions in Photoshop: selections, cropping, image repair, cloning, erasing, gradients, text, etc. Look carefully, and you’ll notice that some of the tools have a small black triangle in the lower right corner of the tool icon. This indicates that there are hidden variations of the tool under the visible tool icon. To reveal the variants of the tool, click and hold on the button. Then to select the desired tool, scroll through the tool variants, and choose the tool you need. At the bottom of the toolbar are tools to select foreground and background colors (currently shown as the default setting of black for foreground, white for background), and tools for toggling in and out of Quick Mask mode.

WEB DIGITAL IMAGERY: PHOTOSHOP CS2- BEGINNING Words of Wisdom and Comfort – And on Getting Around in CS2

The Options Bar The tool options bar is a “contextual” options bar. That means that the options that appear there are related to the currently active tool.

For example, in the screenshot above, you see options related to things you can do with the Crop tool (currently selected, but not visible in the above screenshot).

Here’s another example of the options bar. This time, the Type tool is active:

As you can see, with the type tool active we have options related to things you can change in regard to type: the font, font size, paragraph alignment, font color, etc.

And yet another example with the Brush tool active:

Here you can choose the brush shape and size, blending mode, opacity, and flow: all things important to using the brush tool.

Floating Palettes Palettes abound in Photoshop. You can show and hide them from the “View” menu, and some that are used commonly even have keyboard shortcuts to activate them (F7 for the layers palette, for example).

At the right, you see the Layers palette (one of the most important palettes in Photoshop, and one that you’ll want to have open at all times).

Palettes serve many functions: organizing layers, choosing colors, creating paths, navigating your document, undoing actions, applying actions, etc.

WEB DIGITAL IMAGERY: PHOTOSHOP CS2- BEGINNING Words of Wisdom and Comfort – And on Getting Around in CS2

Palettes can be moved around your desktop by dragging on the palette’s title bar. Click and hold on the palette’s title bar, and drag it to the desired location. Double-clicking on a palette’s title bar will collapse the palette (like a window-shade), leaving it open, but out of the way.

Reveal additional options for a particular palette by clicking the fly out menu at the upper right of the palette, near its title bar.

Palettes may consist of multiple nested palettes–sort of a “palette within a palette,” if you will. In the screenshot at right, the “Layers” tab is active. However, you see that there are also two other tabs, “Paths” and “Channels”, each with unique functions. Select these nested palettes by simply clicking on their tab. One of the cool things about Photoshop is that you can customize the palettes by dragging and dropping tabs from one palette onto another. So, you can create an uber-palette that contains all the tabs you use commonly, and it only takes up the screen real estate of a single palette. How’s that for efficiency?!?

WEB DIGITAL IMAGERY: PHOTOSHOP CS2- BEGINNING Words of Wisdom and Comfort – And on Getting Around in CS2

The Menu Bar Photoshop’s menu bar is like any other application’s. It contains options for creating new files, opening, saving, viewing different windows, etc.

It also contains a few menu options not found in other programs, such as “Image”, “Layer”, “Select”, and “Filter”. Also, if you’ve purchased third party plug-ins ofilters, they may add additional menu items to your Photoshop menu bar (as seen here: “onOne”).

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So, see…if you know any keyboard shortcuts from other programs you work in, you may already know some Photosh