Photoshop Interface Tutorial: The Image Menu

Image Size, Canvas Size, Image Adjustments, Color Modes, And More

In this Photoshop tutorial, we'll look at the Image Menu, part of Photoshop's Menu Bar.

Photoshop's Image category in the Menu Bar is where you'll find options that have to do with things like the ever-popular cropping and resizing images, changing the canvas size, rotating the image, and changing the image's color mode. Let's take a closer look at the different sections under the Image Menu. Image Mode The first option under the Image Menu, "Mode", is in a group all by itself and is where you can change the image's color mode and bit depth. Available color modes include Bitmap, Grayscale, Index, RGB, CYMK, and Lab (pronounced "L-a-b", not "Lab). Bit depth, which has to do with how many colors are available in your image, can also be set here, with the choices being either 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit.

Image Adjustments

The second group under the Image Menu is where you'll find Photoshop's options and commands to fix up an image's tonal and color problems. The Levels and Curves commands, which are the main tone and color correction tools, are found here, along with plenty of other options to make their images look their best.

Duplicate, Apply Image and Calculations

The third group under the Image Menu contains one really simple option and two not-so-simple ones. The first one, "Duplicate", simply allows you to create a duplicate copy of your Photoshop document; useful if, for example, you want to try a different approach to color correcting your image and then compare the results of the two approaches side by side.

"Apply Image" and "Calculations" are two advanced topics which we won't get into for now.

Image Size, Canvas Size, and Resolution

The fourth group under the Image Menu is both simple and often times the most confusing part of Photoshop. The simple part is that here is where you can resize, crop, and rotate your images. The part a lot of people find confusing is that changing the image size brings up the topic of image resolution, which has to do with how many pixels you have in your image left-to-right and top-to-bottom, and how many of those pixels will print per inch when you go to print your image. We'll take a closer look at image resolution in another section.

Variable and Data Sets

This fifth group under Image has to do with creating data-driven graphics using variables and data sets, which will be familiar to you if you have any sort of programming background and completely unfamiliar to you if you don't. Variables and data sets have been around in ImageReady for several versions now, but they're brand new to Photoshop CS2.

Trap

The final group under the Image Menu contains the "Trap" option. Trapping is a printing term which has to do with preventing small gaps in your image when having it printed due to a slight misregistration on the printing press. It's not something you normally have to worry about unless you're having your images professionally printed at a print shop, in which case you'll need to ask someone there what trap value to enter in the dialog box, if anything.