Free Tutorials And Training For Beginning Adobe Photoshop Users
 | Just as a carpenter, a mechanic or a surgeon each have tools that are specific to the type of work they do, so to does Photoshop. Photoshop is often times referred to as a tool used by photographers, image editors, graphic designers, web designers, and other creative professionals, but really, it's not so much a tool itself as it is a collection of tools. There's a tool for dragging out a selection, a tool for making selections based on similar color and tonal values, a tool for adding type to a document, a tool for cloning one part of an image onto another part of an image, a tool for "healing" an image (which usually means removing wrinkles and various skin blemishes), a tool for zooming in and out of the document, a tool for dragging the document around inside the document window, and more. There's even tools which are variations of other tools, like how the Elliptical Marquee Tool is a variation of the Rectangular Marquee Tool. They both perform essentially the same task, which is to drag out a selection. They just drag out a different selection shape. There's a tool for grabbing the color from one part of an image, a tool for painting colors onto an image, a tool for erasing parts of an image, and yes, even a tool for removing red-eye from a photo, although for some strange reason, it took Adobe nine versions of Photoshop before they added a red-eye removal tool to their flagship professional-level image editing program. Before we can use any of Photoshop's tools though, we first need to know where they are, and where they are is in the Tools palette (often referred to as the Tool Bar), which is the vertical bar full of what seems like miscellaneous icons located by default on the left side of the screen. Those icons represent the various tools Photoshop gives us to work with. If you look closely at the Tools palette, or at the screenshot on the left, you'll notice thin horizontal lines running across the palette. If you've read through the section of the website on the Menu Bar, you'll recognize these lines as being there for a reason. Even though it may appear at first that the Tools palette is merely a random assortment of icons, it's actually divided up into several groups, with each group containing similar types of tools. |
The first group at the top of the Tools palette, which contains six icons, is commonly referred to as the "Selections Group". This is where you'll find the tools that allow to select parts of your image. The icon in the top left is the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Below it is the Lasso Tool, and below that is the Crop Tool. In the top right corner, we have the Move Tool, which is not a selection tool itself but what it does do is allows you to move your selections and selected areas around the screen. Below that is the Magic Wand Tool, which allows you to select parts of your image based on similar colors and tonal values. And below the Magic Wand is the Slice Tool, used for slicing up your image into various sections for optimizing them for the web.
The next group of tools is commonly known as the "Image Editing and Painting Group". Here, you'll find tools like the Healing Brush, commonly used for removing wrinkles and skin blemishes, the Clone Stamp Tool for cloning (basically copying) one area of an image onto another area, the Eraser Tool for erasing parts of an image, and the Brush Tool for painting colors onto an image. You'll also find tools here for lightening and darkening parts of your image, and blurring and sharpening them, plus several others.
The third group of tools in the Tools palette is your "Vector Group", commonly called that because it contains tools that allow you to draw, select and move vector shapes. This is also where you'll find Photoshop's Type Tool, since type in Photoshop uses vectors rather than pixels.
The fourth group is a much more generalized group of tools. Each tool found here is valuable in its own right, but was placed here because it really didn't belong with any of the more specialized tool groups. In this group, you'll find tools like the Eye Dropper, which allows you to sample colors from an image, but you'll also find the Zoom Tool which allows you to zoom in and out of the image, and the Hand Tool which allows you to drag the image around on the screen. There's even a Notes Tool here for leaving little notes on the document, either for yourself as reminders of what needs to be done or for someone else to read, perhaps your client. As you can see, they're all valuable tools, but they don't really belong together in any way except that they don't belong with any other tools, either.
The fifth group of icons in the Tools palette looks quite different from the ones above it. These icons represent your foreground and background colors. The large square in the top left of this group is your current foreground color, and the similar square which appears to be behind it represents your current background color. You can easily change these colors by clicking inside either square, which brings up Photoshop's Color Picker dialog box where you can select a new color. The icon in the top right corner of this group which looks like two arrows pointing at the large squares will, if you click on it, swap your foreground and background colors. And the icon in the bottom left corner of this group, which looks like two much smaller squares, will return your foreground and background colors to their default colors (which are black for the foreground and white for the background). You can also quickly switch back to the default foreground and background colors at any time by pressing "d" on the keyboard. Pressing "x" on the keyboard will swap the colors.
The sixth group in the Tools palette, containing two icons which side by side which look like circles inside of squares, are used for switching back and forth between Standard editing mode and Quick Mask mode. You can also switch between the two modes easily by pressing "q" on the keyboard.
Below that is our seventh group, with three icons side by side that are used to switch between Photoshop's three screen modes. The first icon on the left puts Photoshop in "Standard Screen Mode". The icon in the middle selects "Full Screen Mode with Menu Bar", and the icon on the right selects "Full Screen Mode". You can also cycle between these three modes easily by pressing "f" on the keyboard.
And finally, the bottom group in the Tools palette contains one icon (even though is sort of looks like two) which, if clicked, will allow us to edit our document inside ImageReady, Photoshop's web design companion.
0 comments:
Post a Comment