Photoshop Basics

Audience:Anyone who is willing to learn Photoshop.

Version:Adobe Photoshop 7.0

This tutorial has been written for Adobe Photoshop 7.0, although I assume it should be pretty similar to the earlier versions.

Navigation:Menu, Toolbox, Pelettes

Before we start modifying images, let's get comfortable with Photoshop. You will find that there are multiple
ways of doing things in Photoshop. You might want to get used to a particular style or use them all.

First thing first, the Menu.

The menu bar consists of nine menus: File, Edit, Image, Layer, Select, Filter, View, Window, and Help.
Take some time to get familiar with them. You will be using the File, Image, Layer menus a lot.

Quick Tips:

• Arrows indicate that there is a submenu following the menu. Hover the mouse over it to open the submenu.


• Ellipsis indicate that there is a dialog box following the menu item. Click the item to open the dialog box.


• Keyboard shortcuts are sometimes listed next to the menu items. Try to use them as they save a ton of time.

Toolbox:

When you first login to Photoshop, the toolbox is to the left. If it's missing, click on Window --> Tools Hover your mouse over the tool to get a tooltip. Take a few moments now to familiarize yourself with the tool names using the tooltips. At the bottom of the toolbox is the color swatch. You will be using this a lot to select colors for your images. The top swatch is for the foreground color and the back one is for the background color. The little arrow lets you inter-change them. The background color can be selected by rightclicking. It will open a color dialogbox, select your color and click ok. The color is now ready to be used.

Pelettes:
When you first login to Photoshop, the pelettes are to the right. You can find more pelettes by clicking Window --> History, Brushes, Layers, etc.

Take a few minutes and view a few pelettes. Click on the various tabs within the pelettes. You'll notice some have menu items.
If you'd like to return the palettes to the default locations after you finish experimenting,
go to File > Preferences > General and click the button to reset Palette Locations.

Images:Open, Save,Crop,Resolution

Resolution:
Let's talk about resolution for a minute. Resolution is pixels per inch. A pixel is a small colored or b&w dot on your screen.

Now, on to the fun stuff - Images.

Opening an image


To open an already existing image, click on File-->Open, or use the keyboard shortcut + O
This will bring up the Open Image dialog box. Select your image file and click open.

Saving an Image.


To save an existing image that you've just modified, click File --> Save. This will overwrite the existing image.
File --> Save As is used to save the image as a new image file in the same or different format. Pick a new format if you like. Save As does not overwrite your existing image.


Cropping an Image.

As you will learn, crop is a very powerful tool. You can use it to trim out excess whitespace, distractions, to focus
on an item, and more. Play around with it and save your image.













Next part of the tutorial will cover Image and Layer menu items.