Adobe Photoshop Notes Adobe Photoshop CS3
Page 2 Introduction These notes have been put together for basic and advanced methods, features and language. I have also created notes on other Adobe products. These notes are primarily designed for the Apple Mac versions of Adobe Photoshop CS3, but the keyboard commands can be easily modified to work for Windows versions of the Adobe software. When the command or apple key is mentioned, simply change this to Control (Ctrl), and when the Photoshop Preferences dialog is mentioned, this is found under Edit > Preferences on windows. These notes have been designed in Adobe InDesign CS3. There are other notes available by me on the following: Apple Mac Basics These notes investigate the basics of the Apple Mac Operating System focusing on how to make the Apple experience, and learning curve easier to adjust to. Adobe Illustrator CS3 These notes investigates image types, the Illustrator interface, Illustrator tools, new features and methods to achieve specific effects. Adobe InDesign CS3 These notes investigate the InDesign interface, InDesign tools, useful tips and how to create interactive materials using Adobe InDesign. Adobe Bridge CS3 These notes investigate the Bridge interface, Bridge view modes, file organisation, renaming and file tagging and why you should use bridge over your operating systems file browser.
Page 3 Images Types: Bitmaps and Vectors There are two main ways of storing image data; vectors and bitmaps. Bitmaps store data as pixels. They are good for complex images such as photographs. When a bitmap images are blown up or magnified you can see each pixel making up the image (the squares of colour). There is only so far you can blow up a bitmap image before it becomes distorted, known as pixelation. See right for an example of this. Bitmaps are resolution dependent graphics. Resolutions sets the amount of detail an image and their size. Vector graphics use mathematical equations to store image data such as shapes, colours and locations. This method of storing images isn t suitable for photographs. Vector Graphics can be blown up a million times and still look the same as if they had been drawn in an the size of an A5 sheet. This makes them useful for logos, simple artwork, adverts etc. Vector Graphics are resolution independent graphics. This means they can be blown up with loosing quality. Photoshop is mainly a pixel based editor, but there are certain parts of Photoshop that use Vector Graphics such as shapes.
Page 4 Photoshop - The Interface The Photoshop CS3 Interface is very similar to previous versions of the Photoshop Creative Suite range, undergoing a slight face lift since Photoshop CS2, dumping a few features, and introducing a few new ones. 1 - Toolbox/Tool Panel The toolbox or tools panel contain all of your major work tools such as brushes, pen, pencil, spot heal etc. If you cannot find the toolbox or tools panel (as some people call it) go to Window > Tools. 2 - Option Bar The options bar can be made to float on the screen, or disappear all together, to find it go to Window > Options. The options bar s options will change according to what tool you are using. 3 - Floating Panels/Palettes You can customise this section of Photoshop s workspace completely to your requirements. If you want to add a panel find it under the Window menu and you can attach it to the panels dock.
Page 5 File Formats P S D - PhotoShop Document PSD stands for PhotoShop Document, and it is Photoshop s own format. The PSD format will save the image, paths, channels, notes/annotation and layers. Use PSD when working on an image to regain the best possible quality, and when you ve finished export to a suitable format (if required). G I F - Graphic Interchange Format GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format. It is most widely used for publishing images to the internet. To use, and optimise GIF settings, go to File > Save for Web & Devices. J P E G - Joint Photographic Experts Group JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the file format is most widely used to distribute images or archive images. Be warned at the lossy compression this format uses, this means that detail is lost every time you save an image as a JPEG file, however, it can create some good quality images with some careful setting tweaking. To save and optimise this format go to File > Save for Web & Devices. T I F F - Tagged-Image File Format TIFF stands for Tagged-Image File Format which is cross platform and application format for images. You can use this to share images with almost everyone, TIFF is a very good format as it can support layers and alpha channels from Photoshop. P D F - Portable Document Format PDF stands for Portable Document Format, and has been around for years created by Adobe, and can be opened with Adobe Acrobat Reader...and a few open source or free alternatives. When you save your image out as a PDF file, Photoshop saves your image as JPEG. A useful tip to reach the best print quality by setting the JPEG Quality to High. P N G - Portable Network Graphics PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics, it isn t very widely used in the industry as it has issues rendering correctly.
Page 6 Default Workspace There is a standard workspace that Adobe feel is the best layout to give all users, I suggest to make sure you use the default workspace icon, as most tools are available to launch from the various pallets (the boxes to the right of the Photoshop window) may not be available. To make the workspace act like it was just installed you can click Window > Workspace > Default Workspace. This will return the workspace to how it was when it had just been installed onto the computer. Photoshop has also given us the ability to save our workspace. It saves the locations of each panel and customisation of the Photoshop interface. You can save your workspace by going to Window > Workspace > Save Workspace. Once the workspace is saved you can alter it and re-save it, use a default workspace and re-load a custom work. There are also other Workspace modes customised for certain user groups, for instance, you are working with a young group of first time mac users, or young children and do not want to confuse them with loads of icons, panels and pallets, you can overcome this by going to Window > Workspace > Basic this interface and workspace provides less icons, but the features can still be called up by going to Window Menu and finding the panel, pallet or tool bar from that menu. Screen Modes The default view for Photoshop makes it very easy to fall out of Photoshop and landing you on the desktop (Finder) or any programs that are behind Photoshop. If you push the F Key you will cycle through the different views in Photoshop. Make sure that you are not active in tools such as the Type tool as you will have F typed into your text without you realising! The best view I find (personally) is where you have the image with a background, so you cannot click outside and land yourself outside of Photoshop, of course, when using multiple images, the default view with the images Windowed is best for this. Photoshop includes a black background for us to check our black colour, and make sure what we think is true black, really is, true black. If you open up Photoshop the icons are not displaying, apart from the standard Menu at the top of window try pressing the TAB key, and it should bring back all of your menus, pallets and toolboxes in the state that you left them in. Zooming There are a few different ways to zoom in on an image. You can go to the Navigator Panel over on the right hand side of the screen, and click the scroll bar at the bottom of the Navigator Panel and your view on the current image will zoom in and out depending on your user input. You can also use the keyboard shortcut Command + or -. This will zoom in and out respectively. You can also press Space +
Page 7 Command and add a mouse click to zoom in. To zoom out just add the alt key to that key combination and mouse click. And you can use Command + Space and use the mouse to click and drag an area to zoom into. Image History and Image Reverting Photoshop remembers the past twenty steps - however you can edit this in Photoshop s preferences go to Photoshop > Preferences > General. You can go back to undo any of these steps by clicking the history button by the navigator. You can also take a snapshot and if you decide that any changes after the snapshot are not good, or you want to undo them, you can reload the snapshot. There is also a single click way to make the image go back to how it was when it was opened in Photoshop. This is called Image Reverting. To revert your image, go to File > Revert. This will take the image back to its last saved state. You can also create a snapshot of the image and you can revert to this at any time. Window > History will reveal the History panel if it is hiding, and click on the History Panel sub-menu and click New Snapshot. Note, this snapshot will only last for the current session. Working with Digital Images There are times when you want to work from a digital image from your digital camera. The absolute first thing to do is to check what file type your camera has saved the images in. If the camera has saved the image in a jpeg or jpg format, you want to work on the best possible quality so you do not loose quality as you work on the image. Open the JPEG or JPG file in Photoshop and go to File > Save As and save the image as a PSD File. This will ensure that image is stored in a raw format that is compatible with Photoshop with layers etc. Remember that you must not make any changes to the file until it has been saved as PSD file! Of course, after you have finished your image and you are pleased with it you can export the image out to a format readable on multiple devices such as gif, jpg and jpeg. Remember, when using the JPEG or JPG format; adjust the compression level to make sure you get the best possible quality for your image, coupled with the smallest file size. Industry Printing and Screen Resolutions In an industry there are printing and screen resolutions considered the industry standard for each of the purposes. To change the resolution for an image you can go to Image > Image Size and go to the section where it says Resolution. If the document is for print change pixels per inch (PPI) to at least 300, but feel free to experiment with PPI value, you may find you can go as low as 200 on some standard printers to get decent quality. When sending files to be printed professionally by an external printer check with them what colour process they require, as you will be required to set this. They will ask for a three (RGB) or four (CMYK) colour process. Check what resolution and File Format they will require, and any additional details. Make sure you check what colour process, resolution and file formats are required for any external printing before you send it off.
Page 8 Photoshop Colour Modes There are a variety of different colour modes that we define inside of Photoshop. You can change these colour modes from the colour panel. Each mode has its own use except one which is called bitmap. Bitmap As I have just briefly mentioned, the bitmap colour mode isn t much use, and makes each pixel black, or white with no other colour in between. RGB RGB stands for Red Green Blue. This is used to scan and display images on monitors, and is usually the default colour mode used, and should be used for most of your normal colour work. RGB works by allocating brightness value of between 0 and 255 to each of the Red, Green and Blue colour channels to each pixel of the image. RGB is referred to as an additive colour. This means that the higher the value of the Red, Green and Blue channels, the closer to white they are. The value 0 would create a black pixel, and the value 255 a white pixel. Grayscale Grayscale works in a similar way to RGB by assigning each pixel to one of the 255 levels of brightness, ranging from black (value of 0 ), to white ( value of 255 ). Grayscale should be used for most of your normal black and white work including photographs and printing. CMYK CMYK stands for Cyan Magenta Yellow Black. CMYK is used throughout the printing industry into what is known as the four colour printing process. Changing the colour mode from RGB to CMYK for printing will create the separations that will be used for when your image is printed. When working on a document to be printed using the four colour process, work in RGB colour mode, and then as the last stage change to the CMYK. File Management With all of the Adobe CS3 Programs you get a component called Adobe Bridge which is a file management, that can be launched from Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. I have created a set of notes just for Adobe Bridge, to find these go back to where you found these notes and the Adobe Bridge notes will be in the same area.
Page 9 Incompatible Formats If you have a camera that gives you the option to save as a raw format it may not be a standard raw file. It may be specific to the camera make as many camera manufacturers want their format to be the be all and end all as far as raw file formats go. If you find these files will not open in any program you can open them inside an Adobe Software Plug in called Photo Raw. Proprietary formats will automatically open in Photo Raw if you are using Adobe Bridge to find and launch your files. Photo Raw uses the Adobe Updater. This can be annoying when it keeps disturbing you from your work it does do something good, it keeps the Photo Raw plug in up to date with all of the latest file extensions for each manufacturer. Selections There are a variety of tools that aid us in making selections. In Photoshop the selection tools all do the same thing in terms of selection, but they each have their own uses, functions and ways of making their selections. Photoshop s selection tools are as follows (hot keys included in square brackets): Marquee Tools Rectangular Marquee Tool [M] Elliptical Marquee Tool [SHIFT + M] Single Row Marquee Tool Single Column Marquee Tool With all of the Marquee tools you can draw from the entre of your selection by holding the alt key. And to constrain the properties to either square or circle hold the shift key. Lasso Tools Lasso Tool [L] Polygonal Lasso Tool [SHIFT + L] Magnetic Lasso Tool [SHIFT + L] Now, the standard cursor tool for the lasso set of tools is utterly useless, you do not know where you are drawing from unless you know from previous versions, experience or someone telling you. I find the best way to use the lasso tools (if you need to) is to first change the cursor to an easier tool to use. To change the tool cursor go to Photoshop > Preferences > Cursors and under Other Cursors select Precise, and click OK to confirm and exit the Photoshop Preferences dialog box. Lasso Tool - Use for freehand selections. Hold the ALT key, let go of the mouse and click to create a straight line. Polygonal Lasso Tool - Use for creating straight edged polygons, however, use the ALT key in the same way as the lasso tool, it allows you to make freehand selections (as if it was the lasso tool).
Page 10 Magnetic Lasso Tool - This tool only works well on high contrast images. This tool works by detecting the edges of contrast in an image and acting as a snap-to tool to those high contrast edges. Anchor points used, click on them to remove them, click where you want a new anchor point. Use the options bar to adjust the options such as width which will adjust how accurate you will need to be with your selection, high values allow for less accurate tracing. The frequency setting is how often Photoshop adds anchor points to the selection. And the contrast is the sensitivity to the image contrasts. Other Selection Tools Quick Selection Tool [W] Magic Wand Tool [SHIFT + W] Quick Selection Tool - The Quick Selection operates in a similar way to the Magic Wand Tool (see below), but could also be said to work like a brush. You simply paint your desired selection. You can adjust the size of the select tool like you would with the brush tool from the options bar. This tool is very smart as well, if you want to remove part of your selection that you didn t intend to select, either change the tool in the options bar to it s sub-tool, or hold the alt key and paintaway your desired area, giving you the choice to change brush size as well. Magic Wand Tool - The Magic Wand Tool isn t one of my particularly favourite tools from Photoshop for making selections. It operates by selecting all the pixels of the clicked on pixel, and this value is variable like most things in Photoshop from the options bar, you can choose from 256 brightness values, yes that is 0 to 255, however the value 255 isn t very useful - experiment to see why. When making a selection, it is very easy to get stuck inside of a selection, we have all done it, but there is a very simple way to get out of the selection. You can either use the keyboard command Command + D which will deselect, or you can also use the menu Select > Deselect. Another common occurrence is that you didn t mean to deselect what you had selected, and you were making a really difficult selection, Adobe have been very generous and given us a reselect command! To reselect an area (the previous selection) you can use Select > Reselect. To make our lives easier when you need to make a difficult selections, but there is an easier selection that you can make that you want to preserve you can use the invert selection feature. To invert any selection you can use the keyboard shortcut Command + Shift + I, or the menu command Select > Inverse.
Page 11 Quick Mask Mode When using the selection tools you can enter something called Quick Mask Mode. To enter this mode, tap the Q key on your keyboard, and tap Q again to exit Quick Mask Mode. I find this tool useful when using the Quick Selection Tool as I can modify the selection without getting really precise using a variety of different tools combined, when I can apply a mask. The important thing to remember with Quick Mask Mode is once you have entered it hit the D key on your keyboard, which sets your colours to default colours (foreground colour black, and background colour white). With this tool you use your brush tool (hot key B) and paint your selection (in a similar way to the Quick Selection Tool itself - but more precise). Painting in black (displays a translucent red) selects an area, and painting in white (removes the red, to produce the image without the translucent red overlay) removes it from the selection. Another important thing here is to set your brush opacity to 100%! You can also use the photo icon, the second to last icon on the tools panel to enter and exit quick mask mode, I personally find it easier to use Q. Add Layer Mask If you want to temporarily mask an area, basically, prevent it from showing without cutting bits out of your image you add a Layer Mask. To add a layer mask, go to the layers panel, and click the layer mask icon. The layermask icon looks like the front of a camera. You use this tool like the Quick Mask Mode tool. Simply paint in black the area you don t want to see, and if you make a mistake use white to bring that back into view. You will need to use the brush tool to achieve this, setting opacity to 100%. To change to the brush tool you can use the hot key B. Shapes With Photoshop you can create variety of shapes. The shapes themselves are pretty self explanatory in what they are. The Rectangle and Ellipse Tools are very straight forward. Well, the Rounded Rectangle, Polygon Tool and Line Tool can be customised using the Options Bar. The width is the width of the line or edge, the radius applies to the Rounded Rectangle to how rounded the corners are. The default for this is 10px. With the Polygon Tool you can control the amount of sides the shape has from the Options Bar, and the shape you draw with the Customer Shape Tool. Like all objects shapes can be grouped, properties constrained by using the shift key, and drawn from the middle using the alt key.
Page 12 Showing Perspective A tool that I found really useful inside of Photoshop is a way to show perspective. The tool is called the Vanishing Point Tool, and can be found under Filter > Vanishing Point... There are a few steps you have to take to be able to use this tool effectively and make it easier for editing. I am going to use the example of a cardboard box, and I want to place a logo onto this box, so I have opened my box in Photoshop, and this is on the background layer. The next step is to create a new layer, and make sure you are active inside of this layer. Make sure you have your image you wish to place on the object under your copy button, then go to Filter > Vanishing Point... The tools displayed to the right are tools you will be given once you enter the Vanishing Tool s filter dialog box. You will start off with the create plane tool. Draw your plane on the area you wish to place your graphic, in my case it is an Apple Mac Logo. Hit paste, scale down your image so it looks smaller (holding SHIFT to regain aspect ratio and proportion). You can then click on your image and move it about the plane, and resize to your desired size. Click OK to exit the dialog, and it will update the layer inside of Photoshop. Colour Warnings To resize your pasted image you will need to use the Transform tool. The transform tool is the 6th Tool down from the Vanishing Point s Toolbox. When choosing colours using the colour picker, you may notice that you get a warning sign above a mini swatch of your colour next to the RESET button from the colour picker. This warning sign means that your printer will find it difficult to print this colour. And if you click it, it will change it to a suggested colour that can be printed. You do not need to worry about this unless you intend to print your document.
Page 13 Blur, Sharpen and Smudge Tools The Blur, Sharpen and Smudge tools are very simple and easy to use, and can achieve some good effects when used correctly and not over used. The blur tool decreases contrast amongst pixels, the sharpen tool increases contrast between pixels and the smudge tool simply blends, or smears pixels together. To use the Blur, Sharpen or Smudge tools use the hot-key R, and add shift to toggle between the other tools in the tool set. Dodge, Burn and Sponge Tools Again, the Dodge, Burn and Sponge Tools are all very simple and easy to use. As long as they are used correctly, and not overused they can create some good effects. The dodge tool lightens pixels, the burn tool darkens pixels, the sponge tool desaturates or saturates an are of the image. The Dodge, Burn and Sponge Tools are all be customised using the options bar. The hot key for this set of tools is O, and add shift to toggle through the range of tools. Eraser, Background Eraser and Magic Eraser Tools The standard Eraser Tool will do one of two things. It will either paint in your background colour that you have selected in the colour panel, or if you are working on a layer (above the background layer) it will simply delete pixels. The Background Eraser tool uses a brush type tool. The cross hair is known as the hot spot and the circle represents the area of the tool. When you click the Background Eraser Tool it deletes all of the pixels in the eraser area that are the same colour as the hot-spot, and it will show the layers pixels for that area through a transparancy through the layer, if you change the layer underneath it will show through. The Magic Eraser Tool erases pixels based on their brightness value. This option is customisable from the Options Bar. Healing Tools In Photoshop there are a few tools that heal your images. They do a variety of things such as removing Red Eye s, spot healing, and patching areas from other areas of the image. The Spot Healing Brush basically does what it says on the tin. The Spot Healing Brush was originally designed to heal spots on photo models, you simply point and click at the spot and it averages the colours surrounding the area which is called the proximity in the Options Bar. You can alter your brush size, and paint over large areas. The Healing Brush Tool works in the same way to the Clone Stamp Tool, but does a better job leaving a
Page 14 better finish. The Healing Brush needs to be given a source like the Clone Stamp Tool. You can do this by using the alt key, and clicking your source. You can then begin to paint back in your image. Note, the two cursors, the cross-hair shows you where you are taking your source pixels from. The patch tool helps to repair large areas in images, such as tears in scanned photographs. Select the Patch Tool from the tool bar and make your selection that you want to repair, and then click and drag this area where you want to sample your pixels from. The red eye tool is very simple. If you select this tool, and click on the red eye you want to fix it automatically fixes the red eye. Very simple, but is useful to make pictures that little bit more attractive. Slice Tool The slice tool is used heavily when designing website layouts, especially when importing into Adobe Dreamweaver. The slice tool is very useful as it allows the selection of everything in the selection, on all layers of the document, without merging the layers. History Brush The History Brush is used to paint back through the steps from the History Panel. It will go back one step at a time as you paint over the image. Layers Layers are one of the most important things about any modern day image editor, old style editors you just had one layer which made organisation a huge problem when wanting to make complex artwork. Whenever you open a new blank document, you will be given the background layer, this is usually white. One thing that you will also notice is that it has a padlock symbol on the Background layer information in the layers panel. The padlock means that the layer is locked, you can draw and paint on the layer without any problems, but you will not be able to move anything. To unlock the background layer you can simply do the following: Control + Command + Double Click. As I have covered before, the camera like button allows you to add Layer Masks (see page 11). The black and white circle allows you to make Image Adjustments to individual layers, layer groups or selections of layers. The Fx button allows you to add different effects to a layer such as Strokes, Gradient Overlays and Drop Shadows. The folder button allows you to create Layer Groups which you can name, and drag layers into and organise your document well. The page icon allows you to add a New Layer, and the Bin allows you to delete layers. You can do this by selecting the layer and click the bin icon, or click and dragging the layer into the bin. When using layers you need to know that when you make a selection you select whatever pixels are on the currently active layer (whatever layer you have selected in the layers panel). If you want to select through all of the layers you can use the Slice Tool.
Page 15 The Layers Panel allows you to organise your work into groups which makes things very easy (especially for website designs and templates). In Photoshop you can drag and drop layers into what is known as a stacking order, this allows you to have certain elements showing on-top of each other. Optimising Images for Web and Devices Inside of Photoshop you can optimise images for Web and Devices, this means saving images out as JPEGs, GIFs and PNGs. Remember, when you save an image out as anything other than PSD or TIFF you will not be able to save layers and alpha channels. JPEG, GIF and PNG simply merge your image onto one layer. The good thing about the Save for Web and Devices dialog is that it allows you to compare the effect different types of file formats and settings. You can compare two, or four settings, and you can adjust the compression (for JPEGs) and the amount of colours for GIF and PNG, as well as other little things like transparency s. Another neat feature is the fact that it tells you how big it is going to be, and how long it will take to download at low speeds (usually 28, or 56k - dialup speeds). To save for web and devices you can go to File > Save for Web and Devices. Or use the keyboard command Control + Command + Shift + S. Don t be tempted to use the highest settings for all of your work, get the file as small as you can without compromising on quality, especially if you are using the image on the web - the larger the size, the longer it takes to download. Photoshop Filters Photoshop Filters are useful in places, the best way to get the best from them is to play with them, and find what applications (in terms of uses) they work best in. So, get playing with them! A side note on filters is to not use them on every layer/image and not to over emphasise the filters.