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Adobe Photoshop
INTRODUCTION
 THE BASICS
 THE MAIN MENU
 LAYERS
 PHOTO MANIPULATION
 BLENDING

Adobe Photoshop Basics

Elementary Terms



Before you get acquainted with the work area, you should learn a couple of terms:

Layers - layers are different levels of an image. Consider a pizza. The whole thing is one pizza, but it has layers of crust, then sauce, then cheese and toppings. In the same way, you can take parts of an image or copy and paste images onto one another, and Photoshop will treat these as separate layers. Although they eventually boil down to one image, they can be edited independently of one another.

Resolution - Resolution is the amount of detail in your image, measured in pixels per inch. The more detail is available in your image, or the higher your resolution, the less factors like size change matter in the image's overall appearance. However, a higher resolution image takes up more space than a lower resolution image.

Brush - In Photoshop, brushes can be used to draw on your image, just as a paintbrush would. They can be set to varying shapes, sizes, colors and even images.

Opacity - The opacity of something in Photoshop is how transparent it is; something with 0 Opacity is completely transparent, while something with 100 Opacity is completely opaque.

Your basic work area has several windows and menus filled with image editing options.

The Toolbox (on the left)


Marquee - The Marquee tool allows you to select a particular part of your image. Holding down the Marquee tool will allow you to choose different shapes for selection.

Lasso - The Lasso tool allows you to freehand a selection instead of obeying pre-defined shapes. Other Lasso tool options include the Polygonal and Magnetic Lasso tools, which allow you to click points and lasso around them to make a selection instead of holding down and dragging the mouse around the image.

Crop - The Crop tool isolates a selected part of your image. If you only want one corner of your image, you can crop out that corner; the rest of the image disappears.

Airbrush - The Airbrush tool allows you to draw with a brush resembling an airbrush on your image. The airbrush takes the color of the foreground image and is useful for covering blemishes and smoothing discolorations.

Clone Stamp - The Clone Stamp tool allows you to select a small piece of your image and duplicate those pixels elsewhere on the image. Clone Stamp can be very useful for covering up mistakes or blemishes in your image. Holding down the Clone Stamp tool produces the Pattern Stamp tool, which lets you draw with a patterned brush on your image.

Eraser - The Eraser tool does exactly what it says - erases your image wherever you choose to erase. The Magic Eraser and Background Eraser tools help erase background color while preserving text. The difference is that the Magic Eraser automatically erases one color completely within a border, while Background Eraser is manual.

Blur, Sharpen and Smudge - The Blur, Sharpen and Smudge tools can clarify or smooth your image wherever you use them. Blurring reduces clarity, sharpening increases clarity, and smudging mixes the colors in an area.

Color Selector - The Color Selector is used to choose foreground and background colors. Foreground colors are usually used by your drawing tools, while background is usually used when you open a new Photoshop document to color the new document.

Screen Views - You can choose to work in your work area as a normal program, your work area with just the Photoshop menus and your work area without any menus at all, only the Toolbar.

Zoom - The Zoom tool allows you to look closely at your image or observe it from far away as necessary.

Eyedropper - The Eyedropper tool is useful for color matching. Using the Eyedropper tool on your image will allow you to select the color of one particular pixel - if you are trying to match one color in your image, click the Eyedropper over that space and the color will automatically become your Foreground color.

Rectangle - The Rectangle, or Shape, tool creates shapes on your image. Shapes can be chosen by holding down the Rectangle tool, which is default.

Text - The Text tool writes words on your image. Text is usually created as a separate layer, and the Text tool must be chosen to edit that layer.

Dodge, Burn and Sponge - The Dodge, Burn and Sponge tools make colors lighter or darker when you click them on a part of your image. Dodge fades the color to white, Burn darkens to black and Sponge makes the original color brighter.

Gradient and Paint Bucket - The Gradient and Paint Bucket tools are used to add large amounts of color to your image. The Gradient tool will make a gradient of color over your entire image, while Paint Bucket fills in an area (restricted by the edges within the image) with a color.

Paintbrush and Pencil - The Paintbrush and Pencil tools are the most basic drawing tools in Photoshop. Both the Pencil tool and the Paintbrush tool can use brushes.

Magic Wand - The Magic Wand tool selects all pixels of the same color or a similar color, depending on how high the tolerance level is. A higher tolerance selects a wider color range of pixels.

Move - The Move tool is for moving selections around - it serves as the mouse for Photoshop, as well.

Sources

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