Overview of Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe

Systems for Windows and OS X.
Photoshop was created in 1988 by Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, it has become the de
facto industry standard in raster graphics editing, such that the word "photoshop" has become a
verb as in "to photoshop an image," "photoshopping," and "photoshop contest," etc.
It can edit and compose raster images in multiple layers and supports masks, alpha compositingand
several color models including RGB, CMYK, Lab color space (with capital L), spot
color and duotone. Photoshop has vast support for graphic file formats but also uses its
own PSD and PSB file formats which support all the aforementioned features.
Photoshop files have default file extension as .PSD, which stands for "Photoshop Document."
Photoshop files sometimes have the file extension .PSB, which stands for "Photoshop Big" (also
known as "large document format").
Photoshop's naming scheme was initially based on version numbers. However, in October 2004,
following the introduction ofCreative Suite branding, each new version of Photoshop was designated
with "CS" plus a number; e.g., the eighth major version of Photoshop was Photoshop CS and the
ninth major version was Photoshop CS2. Photoshop CS3 through CS6 were also distributed in two
different editions: Standard and Extended. In June 2013, with the introduction of Creative
Cloudbranding, Photoshop's licensing scheme was changed to that of software as a service and the
"CS" suffixes were replaced with "CC". Historically, Photoshop was bundled with additional software
such as Adobe ImageReady, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Bridge, Adobe Device Central and Adobe
Camera RAW.

Adobe Photoshop is a seriously powerful photo and image editing

application.
This is a very common source of confusion and frustration. Although it is
possible to use Photoshop to design and construct original graphics, you will
find that it is difficult and limited. The reason is that Photoshop is not
intended to be used for this type of work. Photoshop is an image editing tool,
not a design tool. To create original images, Adobe provides other specialist
programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Image Ready.
PS TRIVIA
The real power of Photoshop is in working with existing images. Typical tasks
include treating and manipulation, compositing, converting to different
formats, printing, etc.

PS Reminder
Photoshop is so feature-rich that it does take a while to learn all the ins and
outs. Don't expect to become proficient overnight. However, the interface is
well set out and informative.

Elements of the Interface

Perhaps the most important element of the Photoshop interface is the
toolbar. It contains a bunch of icons that represent the different tools
Photoshop offers to alter and create images. These include tools for
selecting specific areas of images, changing the colors of the image,
stretching, transforming, and erasing parts of an image, and many more. To
get an idea of what some of these tools can do, mouse over the icons and
you will get an explanatory tool tip.
A. Panes
Panes are also important features of the Photoshop interface. All sorts of information are
displayed in these panes. They display location information, tool options, and history,
among other things. If you ever lose track of a specific pane (they tend to stack up), go to
the windows menu and select that pane to view it.
B. Menu Bar
Menus are probably the most familiar interface elements to a new Photoshop user. They
contain all sorts of options, but since these are not as visible as panes or the toolbar, they
are often only partially explored. Below are the features on the menu bar.
1. File Menu contains all of the stuff you expect. It lets you open and close documents with
a few extras including import, which deals with scanning, and save for web, which allows
you to export a web-ready image from your Photoshop file.
2. Edit Menu is another familiar menu. In Photoshop, edit houses all of the expected options
as well as fill and stroke, and other image-altering functions.
3. Items on the image menu affect a whole image for the most part. Here you will find color
adjustments, size adjustments, and any other changes you need to make globally when
working with a Photoshop file.
4. The layer menu is similar to the image menu. It allows you to make changes to an image
without altering your original image data. It contains options that affect only current or
selected layers. Just understand that an image in Photoshop consists of stacked
transparent layers. Options in the Layer menu affect these pieces of the image rather than
the complete image.
5. The select menu deals with selections you make. Selecting the specific parts of an image
you would like to change is a difficult part when working with Photoshop. This menu gives
you some options regarding selections, including the ability to save selections, reverse
them, or add to them. Learning the options on the selection menu can really save you some
time.
6. The filter menu is probably what most people think when they work with Photoshop. The
filter menu allows you to apply filters to any part of your image. These filters include ways to
change the texture of the image, with some potentially radical results.

7. The view menu is where you change the view settings. You can use this to show and
display guidelines on the image and to zoom in and out, among other things.
8. The window menu allows you to toggle back and forth between hide and show for each
interface element. This is the first place you should go if you lose track of a particular
window while you are working.
9. Last and least is the help menu. The help documentation is not so helpful, but for some
reasons, this menu contains two nice features: resize image and export transparent image.
C. Options Bar
The options bar which is located directly underneath the menus is a useful tool when
working with the different Photoshop tools.
As you can see right now, when the selection tool is in use, the options bar
reflects the changes that can be made to how that specific tool operates.
Here, you have selection options and style options which include the ability
to make the selection tool a specific size in pixels. When you switch tools, to
the paintbrush tool for instance, these options change. When a tool in
Photoshop is not behaving as you expect it to, the options bar should be the
first place you look to fix it.
Parts of the Options Bar
Zoom In/Zoom Out tools: You can choose Zoom In or Zoom Out as separate tools to
avoid using the Alt key to toggle between the two.
Zoom percentage: This figure shows you the current zoom level as a percentage. You
can edit the text by typing values between 5 and 3200.
Zoom slider: Click the down-pointing arrow to open a slider bar. Drag the slider left to
zoom out or right to zoom in.
Resize Windows to Fit: Select this check box to resize the window along with the image
zoom. Deselect the box to zoom in and out of an image while the image window remains at
a fixed size.
Zoom All Windows: If you have multiple images open and select this check box,
zooming with the zoom tool zooms all open documents simultaneously.
1:1: Click this button to zoom the current window to a 1-to-1 ratio, showing the zoom
level at which the file will be printed.

Fit Screen: Click to fit the image within the image window.
Fill Screen: Click to zoom the current window to fill the screen.
Print Size: Click to zoom the image to the size of the print file. Often, this option shows
you the same size as 1:1.

Anatomy of the Toolbox

The toolbox in Photoshop is split up into 4 unique categories so that finding the right
tool is never a hassle. Those categories are:

1.
2.
3.
4.

Selection, Crop & Slice Tools

Retouch & Paint Tools
Drawing & Type Tools (Vector Tools)
Annotations & Measurement Tools
In addition to these 4 sections a few other components make up the toolbox, most
notably, the Foreground andBackground colors.
Now that you see how the tools are all organized, lets take a look at some of the most
vital tools Photoshop has to offer. This is really just a cursory glance of the toolbox, as
wed be crazy to go into detail for EVERY SINGLE tool Photoshop has to offer in a single
lesson, but you ought to now have an understanding what some of the tools are capable
of. Well go over how to use many of these tools in later lessons.

Selection Tools

The Marquee Tools are used for selecting objects such as rectangles, squares, and
ellipses.
The Move Tool is used to move selections, objects, and layers.
There are several Lasso Tools which are used to make irregular selections. There is
a polygonal lasso tool for polygon selections, and a magnetic lasso tool which
automatically follows edges of objects.
The Magic Wand Tool selects an area of similar colors in a single click (such as the
white in the cloud logo).

The Crop Tool allows users to redefine their active image area but not resize the
ENTIRE image. Its sort of like cutting out a smaller picture from a larger photo with a
pair of scissors.

Retouch Tools

There are several healing tools in Photoshop which are used to repair imperfections in
images, or handle blemishes and red-eye.

With the Clone Stamp Tool, a user may select a source starting point somewhere on
an image, and then paint elsewhere using that starting point as a reference, effectively
cloning the source.

The Eraser Tool can be used to erase parts of an image, selection, or layer.

The Sharpen Tool is used to sharpen edges in an image, while the Blur Tool burs
edges. The Smudge Tool smudges an image, similar to using fingerpaint.

The Dodge Tool lightens parts of an image while the Burn Tool darkens. The Sponge
Tool is used to saturate, or desaturate parts of an image.

Painting Tools

The Brush and Pencil tools are used to paint strokes in graphics. These tools can be
highly customized for very effective painting.

The Fill Tools are used to fill entire layers, selections and areas with a solid color, or
gradient.

Vector Drawing & Type Tools

The Type Tools are used for creating and setting type in an image. Both vertical and
horizontal type can be created.

The Pen Tools are used to create clear shapes and paths which can be used as vector
objects that can be scaled to any size.

Cutom Shapes are vector objects that can be created on the fly from a list of presets
(including user created shapes).

Foreground / Background Color

A foreground color and background color can be set to be used to paint with, color
text, and fill objects among other things. This view provides an easy way to see what
colors are currently selected, and allows for easy switching between two different
colors.

Using Tools
To actually use a tool varies from case to case (again, well be covering nearly
everything youd want to know in the future lessons). To Select a Tool from the
toolbox, simply click it once. If the tool displayed has a black arrow in the bottom right
corner, that means that there are more tools of that type hidden underneath it. To select
one of these hidden tools, hold down the mouse button while over it, and then release
once youre over the tool youd like to select.

Using Palettes in Photoshop

Photoshop tools[edit]
This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality
standards. You can help. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (July 2012)
Upon loading Photoshop, a sidebar with a variety of tools with multiple image-editing functions
appears to the left of the screen. These tools typically fall under the categories
ofdrawing; painting; measuring and navigation; selection; typing; and retouching.[25] Some tools

contain a small triangle in the bottom right of the toolbox icon. These can be expanded to reveal
similar tools.[26] While newer versions of Photoshop are updated to include new tools and features,
several recurring tools that exist in most versions are discussed below.

Pen tool[edit]
Photoshop includes a few versions of the pen tool. The pen tool creates precise paths that can be
manipulated using anchor points. The free form pen tool allows the user to draw paths freehand, and
with the magnetic pen tool, the drawn path attaches closely to outlines of objects in an image, which
is useful for isolating them from a background.

Shape tools[edit]
Photoshop provides an array of shape tools including rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses,
polygons and lines. These shapes can be manipulated by the pen tool, direct selection tool etc. to
make vector graphics.

Measuring and navigation[edit]

The eyedropper tool selects a color from an area of the image that is clicked, and samples it for
future use.[25] The hand tool navigates an image by moving it in any direction, and the zoom tool
enlarges the part of an image that is clicked on, allowing for a closer view.[25]

Selection tools[edit]
Selection tools are used to select all or any part of a picture to perform cut, copy, edit, or retouching
operations.
Cropping[edit]
The crop tool can be used to select a particular area of an image and discard the portions outside
the chosen section. This tool assists in creating a focus point on an image and excluding
unnecessary or excess space.[27] Cropping allows enhancement of a photos composition while
decreasing the file size. The "crop" tool is in the tools palette, which is located on the right side of the
document. By placing the cursor over the image, the user can drag the cursor to the desired area.
Once the Enter key is pressed, the area outside the rectangle will be cropped. The area outside the
rectangle is the discarded data, which allows for the file size to be decreased. [28] The "crop" tool can
alternatively be used to extend the canvas size by clicking and dragging outside the existing image
borders.
Slicing[edit]
The "slice" and slice select tools, like the crop tool, are used in isolating parts of images. The slice
tool can be used to divide an image into different sections, and these separate parts can be used as

pieces of a web page design once HTML and CSS are applied. [29] The slice select tool allows sliced
sections of an image to be adjusted and shifted.
Moving[edit]
The move tool can be used to drag the entirety of a single layer or more if they are selected.
Alternatively, once an area of an image is highlighted, the move tool can be used to manually
relocate the selected piece to anywhere on the canvas.[25]
Marquee[edit]
The marquee tool can make selections that are single row, single column, rectangular and elliptical.
[25]

An area that has been selected can be edited without affecting the rest of the image. This tool can

also crop an image; it allows for better control. In contrast to the crop tool, the "marquee" tool allows
for more adjustments to the selected area before cropping. The only marquee tool that does not
allow cropping is the elliptical. Although the single row and column marquee tools allow for cropping,
they are not ideal, because they only crop a line. The rectangular marquee tool is the preferred
option. Once the tool has been selected, dragging the tool across the desired area will select it. The
selected area will be outlined by dotted lines, referred to as "marching ants". These dotted lines are
called "marching ants", because the dashes look like ants marching around the selected area. To set
a specific size or ratio, the tool option bar provides these settings. Before selecting an area, the
desired size or ratio must be set by adjusting the width and height. Any changes such as color,
filters, location, etc. should be made before cropping. To crop the selection, the user must go to
image tab and select crop.[30]
Lasso[edit]
The lasso tool is similar to the "marquee" tool, however, the user can make a custom selection by
drawing it freehand.[25] There are three options for the "lasso" tool regular, polygonal, and magnetic.
The regular "lasso" tool allows the user to have drawing capabilities. Photoshop will complete the
selection once the mouse button is released. The user may also complete the selection by
connecting the end point to the starting point. The "marching ants" will indicate if a selection has
been made. The "polygonal lasso" tool will draw only straight lines, which makes it an ideal choice
for images with many straight lines. Unlike the regular "lasso" tool, the user must continually click
around the image to outline the shape. To complete the selection, the user must connect the end
point to the starting point just like the regular lasso tool. "Magnetic lasso" tool is considered the
smart tool. It can do the same as the other two, but it can also detect the edges of an image once
the user selects a starting point. It detects by examining the color pixels as the cursor move over the
desired area. A pixel is the smallest element in an image. Closing the selection is the same as the
other two, which should also should display the "marching ants" once the selection has been closed.
[31]

The quick selection tool selects areas based on edges, similarly to the magnetic lasso tool. The
difference between this tool and the lasso tool is that there is no starting and ending point. Since
there isnt a starting and ending point, the selected area can be added onto as much as possible
without starting over. By dragging the cursor over the desired area, the quick selection tool detects
the edges of the image. The "marching ants" allow the user to know what is currently being selected.
Once the user is done, the selected area can be edited without affecting the rest of the image. One
of the features that makes this tool especially user friendly is that the SHIFT key is not needed to
add more to the selection; by default, extra mouse clicks will be added to the selection rather than
creating a new selection.[32]
Magic wand[edit]
The magic wand tool selects areas based on pixels of similar values. One click will select all
neighboring pixels of similar value within a tolerance level set by the user. If theeyedropper tool is
selected in the options bar, then the magic wand can determine the value needed to evaluate the
pixels; this is based on the sample size setting in theeyedropper tool. This tool is inferior to the quick
selection tool which works much the same but with much better results and more intuitive controls.
The user must decide what settings to use or if the image is right for this tool. [33]
Eraser[edit]
The Eraser tool erases content based on the active layer. If the user is on the text layer, then any
text across which the tool is dragged will be erased. The eraser will convert the pixels to transparent,
unless the background layer is selected. The size and style of the eraser can be selected in the
options bar. This tool is unique in that it can take the form of the paintbrush and pencil tools. In
addition to the straight eraser tool, there are two more available options background eraser and
magic eraser. The background eraserdeletes any part of the image that is on the edge of an object.
This tool is often used to extract objects from the background. The magic eraser tool deletes based
on similar colored pixels. It is very similar to the magic wand tool. This tool is ideal for deleting areas
with the same color or tone that contrasts with the rest of the image. [34]