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Learn the Basics of Photoshop
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Learn the Basics of PhotoshopPosted:
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Status: Offline
Joined: Feb 01, 201113Year Member
Posts: 5,618
Reputation Power: 279
Learn the Basics of Photoshop in Under 25 Minutes
Photoshop is an incredibly powerful but also intimidating application. If you've wanted to start using Photoshop but didn't know where to start, Well READ THIS
Requirements:
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A Brain
Ready? Let's get started.
The Toolbar
We're not going to take a look at every single tool but we are going to look at almost every one of them. While this overview will give you an idea of what each tool does, go find yourself a photo and start playing around with them.
Move Tool (Keyboard: V):
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The move tool simply lets you move objects in a given layer around the Photoshop canvas. To use it, click anywhere on the canvas and drag. As you drag, the Photoshop layer will move with your mouse.
Marquee (Keyboard: M)
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The marquee lets you select part of the canvas in a specific shape. By default you get a rectangular (or perfect square if you hold down shift while selecting), but you can also select in the shape of an ellipse (or a perfect circle if you hold down shift while selecting).
Lasso (Keyboard: L)
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The lasso is a free-form selection tool that lets you drag around the canvas and select anything the lasso'd area covers. Within this tool you also have access to the polygonal lasso, which lets you create a selection by clicking around on the canvas and creating points, and the magnetic lasso, which works the same as the regular lasso but attempts to detect edges for you and automatically snap to them.
Magic Wand (Keyboard: W)
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Clicking an area with the magic wand will tell Photoshop to select the spot you clicked on and anything around it that's similar. This tool can be used as a crude way to remove backgrounds from photos.
Crop Tool (Keyboard: C)
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The crop tool is used to (surprise!) crop your pictures. You can specify the exact size and constrain the crop tool to those proportions, or you can just crop to any size you please.
Eyedropper (Keyboard: I)
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The eyedropper tool lets you click on any part of the canvas and sample the color at that exact point. The eyedropper will change your foreground color to whatever color it sampled from the canvas.
Healing Brush (Keyboard: J)
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The healing brush lets you sample part of the photograph and use it to paint over another part. Once you're finished, Photoshop will examine surrounding areas and try to blend what you painted in with the rest of the picture.
Paintbrush and Pencil (Keyboard: B)
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The paintbrush is a tool that emulates a paintbrush and the pencil is a tool that emulates a pencil. The paintbrush, however, can be set to many different kinds of brushes. You can paint with standard paintbrush and airbrush styles, or even paint with leaves and other shapes as well.
Clone Stamp (Keyboard: S)
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Like the healing brush, the clone stamp lets you sample part of the photograph and use it to paint over another part. With the clone stamp, however, that's it. Photoshop doesn't do anything beyond painting one area over a new area.
History Brush (Keyboard: Y)
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The history brush lets you paint back in time. Photoshop keeps track of all the moves you make (well, 50 by default) and the history brush lets you paint the past back into the current photo. Say you brightened up the entire photo but you wanted to make a certain area look like it did before you brightened it, you can take the history brush and paint that area to bring back the previous darkness.
Eraser Tool (Keyboard: E)
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The erase tool is almost identical to the paintbrush, except it erases instead of paints.
Paint Can and Gradient Tools (Keyboard: G)
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The paint can tool lets you fill in a specific area with the current foreground color. The gradient tool will, by default, create a gradient that blends the foreground and background tool (though you can load and create preset gradients as well, some of which use than two colors).
Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge Tools (Keyboard: None)
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All three of these tools act like paintbrushes, but each has a different impact on your picture. The blur tool will blur the area where you paint, the sharpen tool will sharpen it, and the smudge tool will smudge the area all around the canvas. The smudge tool is very useful in drawing for creating nicely blended colors or for creating wisps and smoke that you can add to your photos.
Burn, Dodge, and Sponge Tools (Keyboard: O)
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The burn, dodge, and sponge tools are paintbrush-like tools that manipulate light and color intensity. The burn tool can make areas in your photo darker. The dodge tool can make them lighter. The sponge tool can saturate or desaturate color in the area you paint with it. These are all very useful tools for photo touch ups.
Pen Tool (Keyboard: P)
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The pen tool is used for drawing vector graphics. It can also be used to create paths that can be used for various things that we'll discuss
Type Tool (Keyboard: T)
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The type tool lets you type horizontally. Tools hidden beneath the horizontal type tool will let you type vertically and also create horizontal and vertical text masks.
Path Tool (Keyboard: A)
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The path tool lets you move any created paths around. It's like the move tool, but for paths.
Shape Tool (Keyboard: U)
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The shape tool lets you create vector rectangles, rounded rectangles, circles, polygons, lines, and custom shapes. These tools are very useful when designing or when creating shape masks for photos.
3D Tools
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These are the 3D tools. We're not going to be dealing with 3D stuff in this explanation so all you really need to know is that these exist. If you're curious, theres videos lying around on youtube. maybe some tutorials as well
Hand Tool (Keyboard: H)
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The hand tool allows you to click and drag around the Photoshop canvas. If the entire canvas currently fits on the screen, this tool won't do anything. This tool is for easily navigating around when you're zoomed in, or a picture is simple too big to fit on the screen at 100%.
Zoom Tool (Keyboard: Z)
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The zoom tool lets you zoom in and out of the Photoshop canvas by clicking on a given area. By default, the zoom tool only zooms in. To zoom out, hold down the option key and use the zoom tool as you normally would.
Color Selection Tools (Keyboard: D for defaults, X to switch foreground and background colors)
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These tools let you manage the colors you're using. The color on top is the foreground color and the color in back is the background color. The foreground color is what your brushes will use. The background color is what will be used if you delete something from the background or extend it (although now, Photoshop CS5 will give you the option for using your foreground color instead in some circumstances). The two smaller icons up top are shortcut functions. The left one, showing a black square on a white square, will set your foreground and background colors to the defaults (Keyboard: D). The double-headed curved arrow will swap your foreground and background color (Keyboard: X). Clicking on either the foreground or background color will bring up a color picker so you can set them to precisely the color you want.
Palettes
Palettes are the things that you see sitting over on the right side of your screen. They make it easy for you to navigate through your document, add adjustments, switch modes, and other things.
Layers
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The layers palette lets you see all the layers in your document. As you start getting to know Photoshop, you'll find yourself in this palette more than any other. It'll let you organize and arrange your layers, set blending modes, set visibility and opacity of layers, group and merge layers, and a bunch of other neat things
Adjustments
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Your adjustments panel is where you can easily create and edit adjustment layers. Adjustment layers are non-destructive image alterations that affect all the layers below them and can easily be turned on and off. Their most common use is for color correction (namely the Levels and Curves adjustments, but there are many different kinds of adjustments you can perform that can dramatically alter the look of your image.
Color Channels
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The color channels palette will let you look at the specific colors that make up your picture. If you're in RGB mode you'll get red, green, and blue. These color channels will differ if you're in a different color space (such as CMYK or LAB). When you choose a specific color, you'll notice you'll be shown your image in different versions of black and white. This is because each color channel is simply a monochromatic images representing the light in each channel (e.g. the red channel is just a look at the red light in your photo). Switching between these different channels is useful for making color channel-specific touch ups, overall contrast enhancements, and also for converting your photo to black and white in a compelling way. T
Color Picker
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This palette will let you easily alter your foreground and background colors using sliders.
Color Swatches
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The color swatches palette is a set of pre-defined colors you can quickly choose from. You can load in several other pre-made swatch collections or create your own, too.
History
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The history palette lets you go back in time to undo any previous alterations. The standard undo command (in the edit menu) will simply toggle between undoing and redoing the latest action performed on your image. The history panel is where you can go back much further (50 actions by default).
Text
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The text palette, and the paragraph palette below it, let you make all sorts of adjustments to any text you create with the type tool. These options are very similar to what you'll find in a word processing, but you can also specify things like character width and spacing which are more useful in design.
Menus
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Most of what you'll find in Photoshop's menus can be found using the previously discussed tools. Nonetheless, we're going to take a quick look at some notable items in each of the menus.
File
File, as usual, handles opening, saving, and closing operations. Towards the end of this we'll be taking a look at your different saving options (namely Save for Web).
Edit
Edit, as usual, brings you copy, cut, and paste. In Photoshop, it's also where you transform layers and set your color spaces.
Image
Image brings you canvas and image adjustments, including destructive effects that you'll also find in your adjustments palette. Options in this menu are designed to affect the image as a whole, although many adjustments are applied to only a single layer.
Layer
Layer lets you do all of the things you can do in the layer palette with a few more options. This menu also lets you create adjustment layers and smart objects (a group of layers treated as a single object).
Select
While the marquee and lasso tools will be your main means of selecting things, the select menu can help you refine that selection or create entirely new selections based on certain criteria (such as color range and luminosity).
Filter
Filter brings you a wealth of built-in (and, if installed, third-party) Photoshop filters that can blur, sharpen, distort, and alter your image (or layers of the image) in many different and unique ways. The best way to get acquainted with these filters is to try them all. That can take a little time, but it's fun to play around with them and see what they do.
Analysis
Analysis provides you with measurement tools. There will be times when you need them to make accurate alterations to your images.
3D
As previously noted, we're not covering 3D. If you decide to learn more about 3D later, you may want to explore this menu on your own at some point.
View
View provides you with various view options, lets you hide and show line guides you've created and make Photoshop snap (or not snap) to corners, edges, and to the grid on the canvas. Viewing of this invisible grid can also be turned on and off in the View menu.
Window
Window lets you hide and show certain windows and palettes. You can also arrange your Photoshop windows and palettes however you want and save them as a window preset.
Photoshop is an incredibly powerful but also intimidating application. If you've wanted to start using Photoshop but didn't know where to start, Well READ THIS
Requirements:
[ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
A Brain
Ready? Let's get started.
The Toolbar
We're not going to take a look at every single tool but we are going to look at almost every one of them. While this overview will give you an idea of what each tool does, go find yourself a photo and start playing around with them.
Move Tool (Keyboard: V):
[ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
The move tool simply lets you move objects in a given layer around the Photoshop canvas. To use it, click anywhere on the canvas and drag. As you drag, the Photoshop layer will move with your mouse.
Marquee (Keyboard: M)
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The marquee lets you select part of the canvas in a specific shape. By default you get a rectangular (or perfect square if you hold down shift while selecting), but you can also select in the shape of an ellipse (or a perfect circle if you hold down shift while selecting).
Lasso (Keyboard: L)
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The lasso is a free-form selection tool that lets you drag around the canvas and select anything the lasso'd area covers. Within this tool you also have access to the polygonal lasso, which lets you create a selection by clicking around on the canvas and creating points, and the magnetic lasso, which works the same as the regular lasso but attempts to detect edges for you and automatically snap to them.
Magic Wand (Keyboard: W)
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Clicking an area with the magic wand will tell Photoshop to select the spot you clicked on and anything around it that's similar. This tool can be used as a crude way to remove backgrounds from photos.
Crop Tool (Keyboard: C)
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The crop tool is used to (surprise!) crop your pictures. You can specify the exact size and constrain the crop tool to those proportions, or you can just crop to any size you please.
Eyedropper (Keyboard: I)
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The eyedropper tool lets you click on any part of the canvas and sample the color at that exact point. The eyedropper will change your foreground color to whatever color it sampled from the canvas.
Healing Brush (Keyboard: J)
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The healing brush lets you sample part of the photograph and use it to paint over another part. Once you're finished, Photoshop will examine surrounding areas and try to blend what you painted in with the rest of the picture.
Paintbrush and Pencil (Keyboard: B)
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The paintbrush is a tool that emulates a paintbrush and the pencil is a tool that emulates a pencil. The paintbrush, however, can be set to many different kinds of brushes. You can paint with standard paintbrush and airbrush styles, or even paint with leaves and other shapes as well.
Clone Stamp (Keyboard: S)
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Like the healing brush, the clone stamp lets you sample part of the photograph and use it to paint over another part. With the clone stamp, however, that's it. Photoshop doesn't do anything beyond painting one area over a new area.
History Brush (Keyboard: Y)
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The history brush lets you paint back in time. Photoshop keeps track of all the moves you make (well, 50 by default) and the history brush lets you paint the past back into the current photo. Say you brightened up the entire photo but you wanted to make a certain area look like it did before you brightened it, you can take the history brush and paint that area to bring back the previous darkness.
Eraser Tool (Keyboard: E)
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The erase tool is almost identical to the paintbrush, except it erases instead of paints.
Paint Can and Gradient Tools (Keyboard: G)
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The paint can tool lets you fill in a specific area with the current foreground color. The gradient tool will, by default, create a gradient that blends the foreground and background tool (though you can load and create preset gradients as well, some of which use than two colors).
Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge Tools (Keyboard: None)
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All three of these tools act like paintbrushes, but each has a different impact on your picture. The blur tool will blur the area where you paint, the sharpen tool will sharpen it, and the smudge tool will smudge the area all around the canvas. The smudge tool is very useful in drawing for creating nicely blended colors or for creating wisps and smoke that you can add to your photos.
Burn, Dodge, and Sponge Tools (Keyboard: O)
[ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
The burn, dodge, and sponge tools are paintbrush-like tools that manipulate light and color intensity. The burn tool can make areas in your photo darker. The dodge tool can make them lighter. The sponge tool can saturate or desaturate color in the area you paint with it. These are all very useful tools for photo touch ups.
Pen Tool (Keyboard: P)
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The pen tool is used for drawing vector graphics. It can also be used to create paths that can be used for various things that we'll discuss
Type Tool (Keyboard: T)
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The type tool lets you type horizontally. Tools hidden beneath the horizontal type tool will let you type vertically and also create horizontal and vertical text masks.
Path Tool (Keyboard: A)
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The path tool lets you move any created paths around. It's like the move tool, but for paths.
Shape Tool (Keyboard: U)
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The shape tool lets you create vector rectangles, rounded rectangles, circles, polygons, lines, and custom shapes. These tools are very useful when designing or when creating shape masks for photos.
3D Tools
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These are the 3D tools. We're not going to be dealing with 3D stuff in this explanation so all you really need to know is that these exist. If you're curious, theres videos lying around on youtube. maybe some tutorials as well
Hand Tool (Keyboard: H)
[ Register or Signin to view external links. ]
The hand tool allows you to click and drag around the Photoshop canvas. If the entire canvas currently fits on the screen, this tool won't do anything. This tool is for easily navigating around when you're zoomed in, or a picture is simple too big to fit on the screen at 100%.
Zoom Tool (Keyboard: Z)
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The zoom tool lets you zoom in and out of the Photoshop canvas by clicking on a given area. By default, the zoom tool only zooms in. To zoom out, hold down the option key and use the zoom tool as you normally would.
Color Selection Tools (Keyboard: D for defaults, X to switch foreground and background colors)
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These tools let you manage the colors you're using. The color on top is the foreground color and the color in back is the background color. The foreground color is what your brushes will use. The background color is what will be used if you delete something from the background or extend it (although now, Photoshop CS5 will give you the option for using your foreground color instead in some circumstances). The two smaller icons up top are shortcut functions. The left one, showing a black square on a white square, will set your foreground and background colors to the defaults (Keyboard: D). The double-headed curved arrow will swap your foreground and background color (Keyboard: X). Clicking on either the foreground or background color will bring up a color picker so you can set them to precisely the color you want.
Palettes
Palettes are the things that you see sitting over on the right side of your screen. They make it easy for you to navigate through your document, add adjustments, switch modes, and other things.
Layers
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The layers palette lets you see all the layers in your document. As you start getting to know Photoshop, you'll find yourself in this palette more than any other. It'll let you organize and arrange your layers, set blending modes, set visibility and opacity of layers, group and merge layers, and a bunch of other neat things
Adjustments
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Your adjustments panel is where you can easily create and edit adjustment layers. Adjustment layers are non-destructive image alterations that affect all the layers below them and can easily be turned on and off. Their most common use is for color correction (namely the Levels and Curves adjustments, but there are many different kinds of adjustments you can perform that can dramatically alter the look of your image.
Color Channels
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The color channels palette will let you look at the specific colors that make up your picture. If you're in RGB mode you'll get red, green, and blue. These color channels will differ if you're in a different color space (such as CMYK or LAB). When you choose a specific color, you'll notice you'll be shown your image in different versions of black and white. This is because each color channel is simply a monochromatic images representing the light in each channel (e.g. the red channel is just a look at the red light in your photo). Switching between these different channels is useful for making color channel-specific touch ups, overall contrast enhancements, and also for converting your photo to black and white in a compelling way. T
Color Picker
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This palette will let you easily alter your foreground and background colors using sliders.
Color Swatches
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The color swatches palette is a set of pre-defined colors you can quickly choose from. You can load in several other pre-made swatch collections or create your own, too.
History
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The history palette lets you go back in time to undo any previous alterations. The standard undo command (in the edit menu) will simply toggle between undoing and redoing the latest action performed on your image. The history panel is where you can go back much further (50 actions by default).
Text
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The text palette, and the paragraph palette below it, let you make all sorts of adjustments to any text you create with the type tool. These options are very similar to what you'll find in a word processing, but you can also specify things like character width and spacing which are more useful in design.
Menus
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Most of what you'll find in Photoshop's menus can be found using the previously discussed tools. Nonetheless, we're going to take a quick look at some notable items in each of the menus.
File
File, as usual, handles opening, saving, and closing operations. Towards the end of this we'll be taking a look at your different saving options (namely Save for Web).
Edit
Edit, as usual, brings you copy, cut, and paste. In Photoshop, it's also where you transform layers and set your color spaces.
Image
Image brings you canvas and image adjustments, including destructive effects that you'll also find in your adjustments palette. Options in this menu are designed to affect the image as a whole, although many adjustments are applied to only a single layer.
Layer
Layer lets you do all of the things you can do in the layer palette with a few more options. This menu also lets you create adjustment layers and smart objects (a group of layers treated as a single object).
Select
While the marquee and lasso tools will be your main means of selecting things, the select menu can help you refine that selection or create entirely new selections based on certain criteria (such as color range and luminosity).
Filter
Filter brings you a wealth of built-in (and, if installed, third-party) Photoshop filters that can blur, sharpen, distort, and alter your image (or layers of the image) in many different and unique ways. The best way to get acquainted with these filters is to try them all. That can take a little time, but it's fun to play around with them and see what they do.
Analysis
Analysis provides you with measurement tools. There will be times when you need them to make accurate alterations to your images.
3D
As previously noted, we're not covering 3D. If you decide to learn more about 3D later, you may want to explore this menu on your own at some point.
View
View provides you with various view options, lets you hide and show line guides you've created and make Photoshop snap (or not snap) to corners, edges, and to the grid on the canvas. Viewing of this invisible grid can also be turned on and off in the View menu.
Window
Window lets you hide and show certain windows and palettes. You can also arrange your Photoshop windows and palettes however you want and save them as a window preset.
Files Meaning:
PSD- Photoshop Document
PSD is the standard file type output for Adobe Photoshop. It is a layered file, meaning each element of the file can be individually moved and edited. PSD's are raster based. Because of this documents must be originally created at the size they are intended to be viewed at. So if we have a logo that we want displayed at 3 x 5 inches on a Web page then the PSD must be designed at 3 x 5 inches or larger. The dimensions of a raster graphic can be sized down without losing quality but sizing up will cause the graphic to look blurry and pixelated.
AI - Adobe Illustrator Document
AI is the standard file type output for Adobe Illustrator. It is a vector file. Vector files have the advantage of being able to scale in size both larger and smaller without losing quality. If you need a logo design the best format to build your logo in is AI. This will allow you to easily send one small fize which can always be resized according to your needs. While .AI is the standard working file type for Adobe Illustrator, .PDF and .EPS are more common outputs for files being sent to a client or printer.
PDF - Portable Document Format
PDF's are a flexible type of document that many programs are capable of outputing. The file will contain varied ammounts of information depending on what program the PDF was saved from. For instance, if you saved a logo in PDF format from Adobe Illustrator then it would remain in vector format. If you saved out a PSD to file to PDF it will still remain as a raster graphic. The most common programs to open a PDF in are Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat and Preview (on a Mac).
8bi File:
Adds additional features, such as extra filters or extra format support, to Adobe Photoshop; should be placed in the Plug-ins Folder within the Photoshop application folder.
Some examples of 8bi plugins are the ICOFormat.8bi plugin, which enables Photoshop to open and save Windows Icon (.ICO) files, and the Camera Raw.8bi plugin, which allows Photoshop to read multiple RAW image formats.
8BF File:
8BF, sometimes known as a Photoshop plugin, is a file format for plugins used by many raster graphics editors including Adobe Photoshop, Helicon Filter and Corel Paint Shop Pro. 8BF files can be opened with these programs and act like mini-editors which can modify images for use in the parent program.
ASL File:
ASL stands for A. dobe (photoshop) S.Style L.Layer. The style can be applied to an object or layer in a Photoshop document and may include effects like a bevel, drop shadow, color overlay, or border. Something that enhances the original object or layer.
8BA File:
.8BA is a plugin file which exactly means a software addon that extends the functionality for the application program.
The Custom Shape Tool Tut:
GFX Resources:
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Tutorials You Should Really Look Over:
basic forum sig knowledge tutorial
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Extras:
Game Renders:
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GFX Packs:
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Hope It Helps Thank The Topic!
PSD- Photoshop Document
PSD is the standard file type output for Adobe Photoshop. It is a layered file, meaning each element of the file can be individually moved and edited. PSD's are raster based. Because of this documents must be originally created at the size they are intended to be viewed at. So if we have a logo that we want displayed at 3 x 5 inches on a Web page then the PSD must be designed at 3 x 5 inches or larger. The dimensions of a raster graphic can be sized down without losing quality but sizing up will cause the graphic to look blurry and pixelated.
AI - Adobe Illustrator Document
AI is the standard file type output for Adobe Illustrator. It is a vector file. Vector files have the advantage of being able to scale in size both larger and smaller without losing quality. If you need a logo design the best format to build your logo in is AI. This will allow you to easily send one small fize which can always be resized according to your needs. While .AI is the standard working file type for Adobe Illustrator, .PDF and .EPS are more common outputs for files being sent to a client or printer.
PDF - Portable Document Format
PDF's are a flexible type of document that many programs are capable of outputing. The file will contain varied ammounts of information depending on what program the PDF was saved from. For instance, if you saved a logo in PDF format from Adobe Illustrator then it would remain in vector format. If you saved out a PSD to file to PDF it will still remain as a raster graphic. The most common programs to open a PDF in are Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat and Preview (on a Mac).
8bi File:
Adds additional features, such as extra filters or extra format support, to Adobe Photoshop; should be placed in the Plug-ins Folder within the Photoshop application folder.
Some examples of 8bi plugins are the ICOFormat.8bi plugin, which enables Photoshop to open and save Windows Icon (.ICO) files, and the Camera Raw.8bi plugin, which allows Photoshop to read multiple RAW image formats.
8BF File:
8BF, sometimes known as a Photoshop plugin, is a file format for plugins used by many raster graphics editors including Adobe Photoshop, Helicon Filter and Corel Paint Shop Pro. 8BF files can be opened with these programs and act like mini-editors which can modify images for use in the parent program.
ASL File:
ASL stands for A. dobe (photoshop) S.Style L.Layer. The style can be applied to an object or layer in a Photoshop document and may include effects like a bevel, drop shadow, color overlay, or border. Something that enhances the original object or layer.
8BA File:
.8BA is a plugin file which exactly means a software addon that extends the functionality for the application program.
The Custom Shape Tool Tut:
ok it seems you got the tools down. now lets start a basic Tutorial
You'll find the Custom Shape Tool nested in with Photoshop's other Shape tools in the same spot in the Tools panel. By default, the Rectangle Tool is the tool that's displayed, but if you click on it and hold your mouse button down, a fly-out menu will appear listing the other tools that are available in that spot. The Custom Shape Tool is at the bottom of the list:
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Click and hold on the Rectangle Tool, then select the Custom Shape Tool from the fly-out menu.
If you already have one of the other Shape tools selected, you can quickly grab the Custom Shape Tool from the Options Bar. You'll see a series of six icons, each representing a different Shape tool. The Custom Shape Tool is the last icon on the right (it's the icon that looks like a blob):
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If another Shape tool is already active, the Custom Shape Tool can be selected from the Options Bar.
Choosing A Custom Shape
Once we have the Custom Shape Tool selected, we need to choose the shape we want to draw. A shape preview thumbnail will appear in the Options Bar to the right of the Custom Shape Tool icon. The thumbnail displays the custom shape that's currently selected:
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To choose a different shape, click on the preview thumbnail. This will open the Shape Picker which displays all of the shapes we currently have to choose from. Photoshop actually comes with many more shapes than the limited number we're presented with at first. We'll see how to load in the other shapes in a moment:
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To choose a shape, simply click on its thumbnail, then press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to close the Shape Picker. Or, double-click on the thumbnail, which will select the shape and close the Shape Picker for you. I'll choose the Heart shape:
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Choosing A Color For The Shape
Once you've chosen your shape, select a color for it by clicking on the color swatch to the right of the word Color in the Options Bar:
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Photoshop will pop open the Color Picker so we can choose the color we want. Since I selected a heart shape, I'll choose red for my color. Click OK when you're done to close out of the Color Picker:
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Select The "Shape Layers" Option
Photoshop lets us draw three very different kinds of shapes with the Shape tools. We can draw vector shapes, which are resolution-independent and fully scalable without any loss of image quality (the same type of shapes we'd draw in a program like Illustrator). We can also draw paths, which are just outlines of shapes, or we can draw pixel-based shapes where Photoshop fills the shape with colored pixels. In most cases, we want to be drawing vector shapes, and to do that, we need to have the Shape Layers option selected in the Options Bar. It's the left icon in a group of three icons near the far left of the Options Bar:
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To draw the shape, click inside the document to set a starting point, then keep your mouse button held down and drag away from the starting point. As you drag, Photoshop displays an outline of what the shape will look like:
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Release your mouse button to complete the shape, at which point Photoshop fills it with the color you chose in the Options Bar:
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Drawing A Shape With The Correct Proportions
Notice, though, that my heart shape looks a bit distorted. It's wider and shorter than I was expecting it to be. That's because by default, Photoshop makes no attempt to keep the correct proportions or aspect ratio of the shape as we're drawing it. I'll press Ctrl+Z (Win) / Command+Z (Mac) on my keyboard to undo the shape so I can try again.
To draw a custom shape with the correct proportions, click in the document, keep your mouse button held down and begin dragging out the shape as you normally would. Once you begin dragging, press and hold your Shift key on your keyboard and continue dragging. As soon as you press (and hold) the Shift key, you'll see the outline of the shape snap into its proper aspect ratio:
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When you're happy with the size of the shape, release your mouse button, then release your Shift key (make sure you release the Shift key after releasing your mouse button). Photoshop again fills it with color:
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Credits To LifeHackers
You'll find the Custom Shape Tool nested in with Photoshop's other Shape tools in the same spot in the Tools panel. By default, the Rectangle Tool is the tool that's displayed, but if you click on it and hold your mouse button down, a fly-out menu will appear listing the other tools that are available in that spot. The Custom Shape Tool is at the bottom of the list:
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Click and hold on the Rectangle Tool, then select the Custom Shape Tool from the fly-out menu.
If you already have one of the other Shape tools selected, you can quickly grab the Custom Shape Tool from the Options Bar. You'll see a series of six icons, each representing a different Shape tool. The Custom Shape Tool is the last icon on the right (it's the icon that looks like a blob):
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If another Shape tool is already active, the Custom Shape Tool can be selected from the Options Bar.
Choosing A Custom Shape
Once we have the Custom Shape Tool selected, we need to choose the shape we want to draw. A shape preview thumbnail will appear in the Options Bar to the right of the Custom Shape Tool icon. The thumbnail displays the custom shape that's currently selected:
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To choose a different shape, click on the preview thumbnail. This will open the Shape Picker which displays all of the shapes we currently have to choose from. Photoshop actually comes with many more shapes than the limited number we're presented with at first. We'll see how to load in the other shapes in a moment:
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To choose a shape, simply click on its thumbnail, then press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to close the Shape Picker. Or, double-click on the thumbnail, which will select the shape and close the Shape Picker for you. I'll choose the Heart shape:
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Choosing A Color For The Shape
Once you've chosen your shape, select a color for it by clicking on the color swatch to the right of the word Color in the Options Bar:
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Photoshop will pop open the Color Picker so we can choose the color we want. Since I selected a heart shape, I'll choose red for my color. Click OK when you're done to close out of the Color Picker:
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Select The "Shape Layers" Option
Photoshop lets us draw three very different kinds of shapes with the Shape tools. We can draw vector shapes, which are resolution-independent and fully scalable without any loss of image quality (the same type of shapes we'd draw in a program like Illustrator). We can also draw paths, which are just outlines of shapes, or we can draw pixel-based shapes where Photoshop fills the shape with colored pixels. In most cases, we want to be drawing vector shapes, and to do that, we need to have the Shape Layers option selected in the Options Bar. It's the left icon in a group of three icons near the far left of the Options Bar:
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To draw the shape, click inside the document to set a starting point, then keep your mouse button held down and drag away from the starting point. As you drag, Photoshop displays an outline of what the shape will look like:
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Release your mouse button to complete the shape, at which point Photoshop fills it with the color you chose in the Options Bar:
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Drawing A Shape With The Correct Proportions
Notice, though, that my heart shape looks a bit distorted. It's wider and shorter than I was expecting it to be. That's because by default, Photoshop makes no attempt to keep the correct proportions or aspect ratio of the shape as we're drawing it. I'll press Ctrl+Z (Win) / Command+Z (Mac) on my keyboard to undo the shape so I can try again.
To draw a custom shape with the correct proportions, click in the document, keep your mouse button held down and begin dragging out the shape as you normally would. Once you begin dragging, press and hold your Shift key on your keyboard and continue dragging. As soon as you press (and hold) the Shift key, you'll see the outline of the shape snap into its proper aspect ratio:
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When you're happy with the size of the shape, release your mouse button, then release your Shift key (make sure you release the Shift key after releasing your mouse button). Photoshop again fills it with color:
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Credits To LifeHackers
GFX Resources:
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Tutorials You Should Really Look Over:
basic forum sig knowledge tutorial
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Extras:
Game Renders:
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GFX Packs:
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Hope It Helps Thank The Topic!
Last edited by Perverse ; edited 21 times in total
The following 5 users thanked Perverse for this useful post:
Sonic21 (11-02-2011), OnlyHax (09-17-2011), Meg (09-16-2011), SneakyPlatypuss (09-16-2011), Blending (09-11-2011)
#2. Posted:
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nice post, bet this took awhile, +rep for u
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#3. Posted:
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great tut should be the stickied right away
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#4. Posted:
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GyPsY_UNKNOWN wrote great tut should be the stickied right away
Thanks Man. ikr it should
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#5. Posted:
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This should be a sticky for sure no questoins asked keep up the hard work
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#6. Posted:
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Thanks for the tut. It should really help some people
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#7. Posted:
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SneakyPlatypuss wrote Thanks for the tut. It should really help some people
im sure it will especially the beginners
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#8. Posted:
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Without a question, a simple sticky.
Nuff Said :badger:
Nuff Said :badger:
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#9. Posted:
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This Post Should Be Stickied! It Is SUPER Helpful! I Knew The Basics But The Links Were Superb I Made My Own Iphone and LOTS of other cool stuff Thanks Bro <3
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#10. Posted:
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FusionxViRaL wroteLearn the Basics of Photoshop in Under 25 Minutes
Photoshop is an incredibly powerful but also intimidating application. If you've wanted to start using Photoshop but didn't know where to start, Well READ THIS
Requirements:
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A Brain
Ready? Let's get started.
The Toolbar
We're not going to take a look at every single tool but we are going to look at almost every one of them. While this overview will give you an idea of what each tool does, go find yourself a photo and start playing around with them.
Move Tool (Keyboard: V):
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The move tool simply lets you move objects in a given layer around the Photoshop canvas. To use it, click anywhere on the canvas and drag. As you drag, the Photoshop layer will move with your mouse.
Marquee (Keyboard: M)
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The marquee lets you select part of the canvas in a specific shape. By default you get a rectangular (or perfect square if you hold down shift while selecting), but you can also select in the shape of an ellipse (or a perfect circle if you hold down shift while selecting).
Lasso (Keyboard: L)
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The lasso is a free-form selection tool that lets you drag around the canvas and select anything the lasso'd area covers. Within this tool you also have access to the polygonal lasso, which lets you create a selection by clicking around on the canvas and creating points, and the magnetic lasso, which works the same as the regular lasso but attempts to detect edges for you and automatically snap to them.
Magic Wand (Keyboard: W)
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Clicking an area with the magic wand will tell Photoshop to select the spot you clicked on and anything around it that's similar. This tool can be used as a crude way to remove backgrounds from photos.
Crop Tool (Keyboard: C)
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The crop tool is used to (surprise!) crop your pictures. You can specify the exact size and constrain the crop tool to those proportions, or you can just crop to any size you please.
Eyedropper (Keyboard: I)
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The eyedropper tool lets you click on any part of the canvas and sample the color at that exact point. The eyedropper will change your foreground color to whatever color it sampled from the canvas.
Healing Brush (Keyboard: J)
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The healing brush lets you sample part of the photograph and use it to paint over another part. Once you're finished, Photoshop will examine surrounding areas and try to blend what you painted in with the rest of the picture.
Paintbrush and Pencil (Keyboard: B)
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The paintbrush is a tool that emulates a paintbrush and the pencil is a tool that emulates a pencil. The paintbrush, however, can be set to many different kinds of brushes. You can paint with standard paintbrush and airbrush styles, or even paint with leaves and other shapes as well.
Clone Stamp (Keyboard: S)
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Like the healing brush, the clone stamp lets you sample part of the photograph and use it to paint over another part. With the clone stamp, however, that's it. Photoshop doesn't do anything beyond painting one area over a new area.
History Brush (Keyboard: Y)
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The history brush lets you paint back in time. Photoshop keeps track of all the moves you make (well, 50 by default) and the history brush lets you paint the past back into the current photo. Say you brightened up the entire photo but you wanted to make a certain area look like it did before you brightened it, you can take the history brush and paint that area to bring back the previous darkness.
Eraser Tool (Keyboard: E)
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The erase tool is almost identical to the paintbrush, except it erases instead of paints.
Paint Can and Gradient Tools (Keyboard: G)
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The paint can tool lets you fill in a specific area with the current foreground color. The gradient tool will, by default, create a gradient that blends the foreground and background tool (though you can load and create preset gradients as well, some of which use than two colors).
Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge Tools (Keyboard: None)
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All three of these tools act like paintbrushes, but each has a different impact on your picture. The blur tool will blur the area where you paint, the sharpen tool will sharpen it, and the smudge tool will smudge the area all around the canvas. The smudge tool is very useful in drawing for creating nicely blended colors or for creating wisps and smoke that you can add to your photos.
Burn, Dodge, and Sponge Tools (Keyboard: O)
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The burn, dodge, and sponge tools are paintbrush-like tools that manipulate light and color intensity. The burn tool can make areas in your photo darker. The dodge tool can make them lighter. The sponge tool can saturate or desaturate color in the area you paint with it. These are all very useful tools for photo touch ups.
Pen Tool (Keyboard: P)
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The pen tool is used for drawing vector graphics. It can also be used to create paths that can be used for various things that we'll discuss
Type Tool (Keyboard: T)
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The type tool lets you type horizontally. Tools hidden beneath the horizontal type tool will let you type vertically and also create horizontal and vertical text masks.
Path Tool (Keyboard: A)
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The path tool lets you move any created paths around. It's like the move tool, but for paths.
Shape Tool (Keyboard: U)
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The shape tool lets you create vector rectangles, rounded rectangles, circles, polygons, lines, and custom shapes. These tools are very useful when designing or when creating shape masks for photos.
3D Tools
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These are the 3D tools. We're not going to be dealing with 3D stuff in this explanation so all you really need to know is that these exist. If you're curious, theres videos lying around on youtube. maybe some tutorials as well
Hand Tool (Keyboard: H)
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The hand tool allows you to click and drag around the Photoshop canvas. If the entire canvas currently fits on the screen, this tool won't do anything. This tool is for easily navigating around when you're zoomed in, or a picture is simple too big to fit on the screen at 100%.
Zoom Tool (Keyboard: Z)
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The zoom tool lets you zoom in and out of the Photoshop canvas by clicking on a given area. By default, the zoom tool only zooms in. To zoom out, hold down the option key and use the zoom tool as you normally would.
Color Selection Tools (Keyboard: D for defaults, X to switch foreground and background colors)
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These tools let you manage the colors you're using. The color on top is the foreground color and the color in back is the background color. The foreground color is what your brushes will use. The background color is what will be used if you delete something from the background or extend it (although now, Photoshop CS5 will give you the option for using your foreground color instead in some circumstances). The two smaller icons up top are shortcut functions. The left one, showing a black square on a white square, will set your foreground and background colors to the defaults (Keyboard: D). The double-headed curved arrow will swap your foreground and background color (Keyboard: X). Clicking on either the foreground or background color will bring up a color picker so you can set them to precisely the color you want.
Palettes
Palettes are the things that you see sitting over on the right side of your screen. They make it easy for you to navigate through your document, add adjustments, switch modes, and other things.
Layers
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The layers palette lets you see all the layers in your document. As you start getting to know Photoshop, you'll find yourself in this palette more than any other. It'll let you organize and arrange your layers, set blending modes, set visibility and opacity of layers, group and merge layers, and a bunch of other neat things
Adjustments
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Your adjustments panel is where you can easily create and edit adjustment layers. Adjustment layers are non-destructive image alterations that affect all the layers below them and can easily be turned on and off. Their most common use is for color correction (namely the Levels and Curves adjustments, but there are many different kinds of adjustments you can perform that can dramatically alter the look of your image.
Color Channels
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The color channels palette will let you look at the specific colors that make up your picture. If you're in RGB mode you'll get red, green, and blue. These color channels will differ if you're in a different color space (such as CMYK or LAB). When you choose a specific color, you'll notice you'll be shown your image in different versions of black and white. This is because each color channel is simply a monochromatic images representing the light in each channel (e.g. the red channel is just a look at the red light in your photo). Switching between these different channels is useful for making color channel-specific touch ups, overall contrast enhancements, and also for converting your photo to black and white in a compelling way. T
Color Picker
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This palette will let you easily alter your foreground and background colors using sliders.
Color Swatches
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The color swatches palette is a set of pre-defined colors you can quickly choose from. You can load in several other pre-made swatch collections or create your own, too.
History
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The history palette lets you go back in time to undo any previous alterations. The standard undo command (in the edit menu) will simply toggle between undoing and redoing the latest action performed on your image. The history panel is where you can go back much further (50 actions by default).
Text
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The text palette, and the paragraph palette below it, let you make all sorts of adjustments to any text you create with the type tool. These options are very similar to what you'll find in a word processing, but you can also specify things like character width and spacing which are more useful in design.
Menus
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Most of what you'll find in Photoshop's menus can be found using the previously discussed tools. Nonetheless, we're going to take a quick look at some notable items in each of the menus.
File
File, as usual, handles opening, saving, and closing operations. Towards the end of this we'll be taking a look at your different saving options (namely Save for Web).
Edit
Edit, as usual, brings you copy, cut, and paste. In Photoshop, it's also where you transform layers and set your color spaces.
Image
Image brings you canvas and image adjustments, including destructive effects that you'll also find in your adjustments palette. Options in this menu are designed to affect the image as a whole, although many adjustments are applied to only a single layer.
Layer
Layer lets you do all of the things you can do in the layer palette with a few more options. This menu also lets you create adjustment layers and smart objects (a group of layers treated as a single object).
Select
While the marquee and lasso tools will be your main means of selecting things, the select menu can help you refine that selection or create entirely new selections based on certain criteria (such as color range and luminosity).
Filter
Filter brings you a wealth of built-in (and, if installed, third-party) Photoshop filters that can blur, sharpen, distort, and alter your image (or layers of the image) in many different and unique ways. The best way to get acquainted with these filters is to try them all. That can take a little time, but it's fun to play around with them and see what they do.
Analysis
Analysis provides you with measurement tools. There will be times when you need them to make accurate alterations to your images.
3D
As previously noted, we're not covering 3D. If you decide to learn more about 3D later, you may want to explore this menu on your own at some point.
View
View provides you with various view options, lets you hide and show line guides you've created and make Photoshop snap (or not snap) to corners, edges, and to the grid on the canvas. Viewing of this invisible grid can also be turned on and off in the View menu.
Window
Window lets you hide and show certain windows and palettes. You can also arrange your Photoshop windows and palettes however you want and save them as a window preset.
Files Meaning:
PSD- Photoshop Document
PSD is the standard file type output for Adobe Photoshop. It is a layered file, meaning each element of the file can be individually moved and edited. PSD's are raster based. Because of this documents must be originally created at the size they are intended to be viewed at. So if we have a logo that we want displayed at 3 x 5 inches on a Web page then the PSD must be designed at 3 x 5 inches or larger. The dimensions of a raster graphic can be sized down without losing quality but sizing up will cause the graphic to look blurry and pixelated.
AI - Adobe Illustrator Document
AI is the standard file type output for Adobe Illustrator. It is a vector file. Vector files have the advantage of being able to scale in size both larger and smaller without losing quality. If you need a logo design the best format to build your logo in is AI. This will allow you to easily send one small fize which can always be resized according to your needs. While .AI is the standard working file type for Adobe Illustrator, .PDF and .EPS are more common outputs for files being sent to a client or printer.
PDF - Portable Document Format
PDF's are a flexible type of document that many programs are capable of outputing. The file will contain varied ammounts of information depending on what program the PDF was saved from. For instance, if you saved a logo in PDF format from Adobe Illustrator then it would remain in vector format. If you saved out a PSD to file to PDF it will still remain as a raster graphic. The most common programs to open a PDF in are Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat and Preview (on a Mac).
8bi File:
Adds additional features, such as extra filters or extra format support, to Adobe Photoshop; should be placed in the Plug-ins Folder within the Photoshop application folder.
Some examples of 8bi plugins are the ICOFormat.8bi plugin, which enables Photoshop to open and save Windows Icon (.ICO) files, and the Camera Raw.8bi plugin, which allows Photoshop to read multiple RAW image formats.
8BF File:
8BF, sometimes known as a Photoshop plugin, is a file format for plugins used by many raster graphics editors including Adobe Photoshop, Helicon Filter and Corel Paint Shop Pro. 8BF files can be opened with these programs and act like mini-editors which can modify images for use in the parent program.
ASL File:
ASL stands for A. dobe (photoshop) S.Style L.Layer. The style can be applied to an object or layer in a Photoshop document and may include effects like a bevel, drop shadow, color overlay, or border. Something that enhances the original object or layer.
8BA File:
.8BA is a plugin file which exactly means a software addon that extends the functionality for the application program.
The Custom Shape Tool Tut:
ok it seems you got the tools down. now lets start a basic Tutorial
You'll find the Custom Shape Tool nested in with Photoshop's other Shape tools in the same spot in the Tools panel. By default, the Rectangle Tool is the tool that's displayed, but if you click on it and hold your mouse button down, a fly-out menu will appear listing the other tools that are available in that spot. The Custom Shape Tool is at the bottom of the list:
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Click and hold on the Rectangle Tool, then select the Custom Shape Tool from the fly-out menu.
If you already have one of the other Shape tools selected, you can quickly grab the Custom Shape Tool from the Options Bar. You'll see a series of six icons, each representing a different Shape tool. The Custom Shape Tool is the last icon on the right (it's the icon that looks like a blob):
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If another Shape tool is already active, the Custom Shape Tool can be selected from the Options Bar.
Choosing A Custom Shape
Once we have the Custom Shape Tool selected, we need to choose the shape we want to draw. A shape preview thumbnail will appear in the Options Bar to the right of the Custom Shape Tool icon. The thumbnail displays the custom shape that's currently selected:
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To choose a different shape, click on the preview thumbnail. This will open the Shape Picker which displays all of the shapes we currently have to choose from. Photoshop actually comes with many more shapes than the limited number we're presented with at first. We'll see how to load in the other shapes in a moment:
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To choose a shape, simply click on its thumbnail, then press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to close the Shape Picker. Or, double-click on the thumbnail, which will select the shape and close the Shape Picker for you. I'll choose the Heart shape:
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Choosing A Color For The Shape
Once you've chosen your shape, select a color for it by clicking on the color swatch to the right of the word Color in the Options Bar:
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Photoshop will pop open the Color Picker so we can choose the color we want. Since I selected a heart shape, I'll choose red for my color. Click OK when you're done to close out of the Color Picker:
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Select The "Shape Layers" Option
Photoshop lets us draw three very different kinds of shapes with the Shape tools. We can draw vector shapes, which are resolution-independent and fully scalable without any loss of image quality (the same type of shapes we'd draw in a program like Illustrator). We can also draw paths, which are just outlines of shapes, or we can draw pixel-based shapes where Photoshop fills the shape with colored pixels. In most cases, we want to be drawing vector shapes, and to do that, we need to have the Shape Layers option selected in the Options Bar. It's the left icon in a group of three icons near the far left of the Options Bar:
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To draw the shape, click inside the document to set a starting point, then keep your mouse button held down and drag away from the starting point. As you drag, Photoshop displays an outline of what the shape will look like:
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Release your mouse button to complete the shape, at which point Photoshop fills it with the color you chose in the Options Bar:
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Drawing A Shape With The Correct Proportions
Notice, though, that my heart shape looks a bit distorted. It's wider and shorter than I was expecting it to be. That's because by default, Photoshop makes no attempt to keep the correct proportions or aspect ratio of the shape as we're drawing it. I'll press Ctrl+Z (Win) / Command+Z (Mac) on my keyboard to undo the shape so I can try again.
To draw a custom shape with the correct proportions, click in the document, keep your mouse button held down and begin dragging out the shape as you normally would. Once you begin dragging, press and hold your Shift key on your keyboard and continue dragging. As soon as you press (and hold) the Shift key, you'll see the outline of the shape snap into its proper aspect ratio:
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When you're happy with the size of the shape, release your mouse button, then release your Shift key (make sure you release the Shift key after releasing your mouse button). Photoshop again fills it with color:
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GFX Resources:
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Tutorials You Should Really Look Over:
basic forum sig knowledge tutorial
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Hope It Helps Thank The Topic!
this post deserves a sticky!
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