PHOTOSHOP

What you should already know:
This lesson is a brief introduction to Photoshop, I will not cover all the topics but I will cover enough of them so that you will be able to work with Photoshop yourself and edit images yourself without asking somebody. Adobe Photoshop maybe the image editing tool you need, I don't know about you but it is if you ask me. Go to http://www.adobe.com and see for yourself. And it is so comprehensive that it can solve any problems you face with the images. You have been hearing about Photoshop every day more and more, so here is your chance to get your hands on Photoshop. If you don't have the software buy one, or download the trial version before you buy it. Let's get started. Open your Photoshop. If you don't see Tools Toolbar already then go to Window > Tools Below is the screenshot of the Tools. If the tool has a small triangle at the bottom corner it means it has more than one options. To see these options just click and hold on the tool for few seconds, and you will see the options on the popup window as shown below.

A Tool at a time and their functions. Letter inside the brackets will select the particular tool when you press. Move Tool (V): Is used to select and move images (objects) on any active layer. Rectangular Marquee Tool (M): It is used for making selection on the image (objects) on any active layer. Magic Wand Tool (W): Used for making selection (similar colours at once for example) Polygonal Lasso Tool (L): Used for making free selection as you go Slice Select Tool (K): Used for selecting slices Crop Tool (C): Used for cropping images Patch Tool (J): Used for correcting images Brush Tool (B): Used for drawing freehand History Brush Tool (Y): Used for restoring specified history state Clone Stamp Tool (S): Used for selecting a source and copying (drawing) it in another place Gradient Tool (G): Used for making gradient effect on images Eraser Tool (E): You are right; this tool is used for erasing. Dodge Tool (O): Used for making images lighter (And Burn tool makes the opposite - darker) Horizontal Type Tool (T): Yes used for inserting text to image Path Selection Tool (A): Used for selecting the active path Custom Shape Tool (U): Used to insert pre-specified (ready) shapes to image Pen Tool (P): Used for creating vector shapes Eyedropper Tool (I): Used for selecting colour Notes Tool (N): Used for inserting notes on the image Zoom Tool (Z): Yes used for zooming in or out Hand Tool (H): Used for dragging image when you are in the zoom in state.

Options Panel
As you see below from the screenshot, Options Panel is highlighted with red. Whenever you switch from one tool to another Options Panel will be changed accordingly. Currently Brush Tool is selected, and you see in the Options Panel all the properties of the Brush Tool, such as: Brush Size (Type), Mode, Opacity and Flow. Just remember when you choose a particular tool look out for the Options Panel to see the properties.

Working with Images
Cropping Open any image in your Photoshop. Select the Crop Tool (C) and make a selection around the icon as shown below. (To make a selection click and pull with your mouse) Make a selection After you made your selection press Enter Result. So now you can crop your images, be it a not-so-nice-scanned image or from digital camera that you want to crop out the edges. Copy & Paste Open any image in your Photoshop. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and make a selection on the image as shown below. Make a selection and press Ctrl + C or go to Edit > Copy Press Ctrl + N to open new window or go to File > New and Press OK And now press Ctrl + V to paste or go to File > Paste.

Image Adjustment
I will not explain how to adjust images in this section, but just point out the tools that is used for image adjustment. You can find related tutorial in the tutorials section. Go to Image > Adjustments. You will see the menu as shown below. Go ahead and try some of the effects on your photos, try to change the Brightness/Contrast, Auto Colour, and so on.

Working with Text
Open a new window Ctrl + N (choose the size bigger like width 400 and height 300) and press OK Select the Type Tool and click on the window that you just opened and type something. If you want to make changes to your text that you just have typed, highlight it and change the properties from Options Panel. After you make your changes click on the Move Tool (V) so that you can move your text to anywhere you like. There is another way to change the properties of the Text addition to the Options Panel, it is called Character Panel. If you don't see the Character Panel go to Windows > Character Below is the Character Panel; if you change any of the properties it should be reflected on the Text you have typed.

Working with Layers
Photoshop uses Layers for managing multiple (separate) objects in one window, to open your Layers panel go to Window > Layers. If you have used other image editing tools that use layers this should be familiar to you. But if you have not, just think of the Layers as Stacks of books, and you are looking at this stack of books from top. For example if the top book is about Photoshop then for sure it will be the most visible and the books below it should be somehow visible depending how straight your stack is. Just remember the top stack will cover the other stacks below it. As you see from the image below, the Blue Circle is on Layer 2 background being the Layer 0 and Red Rectangle is on Layer 1. As I have said, layer that is on top (here it is Layer 2) will cover the layers below it (which is Layer 1 and Layer 0). Thus you see the Circle covering Rectangle.

Active Layer:
Active layer is the layer, which you are working on, for example from the image above we can see that Active Layer is Rectangle (Layer 2) - how do we know it, because it is highlighted. And if you want to move particular object you should select it's respective layer first, then only you can move it. Otherwise you will end up moving something else. The "Eye" icon on the left of the layers means they are currently visible, if you toggle them off then the object will disappear (will become invisible)

Save for Web
After you have completed your work I believe you would want to save it as .jpg or .gif (or any other format that Photoshop supports) To save your image for web go to File > Save for Web or press Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S and you will see an identical window like this one. From here you can change the image type to JPG, GIF, PNG and WBMP. You can change the quality of the image as well, the higher the quality the bigger the size will be, so take into account when saving big images in high quality for web. Because it will be slower to download and it will take lots of bandwidth.