Getting to Know the Work Area (Chapter 1, Adobe Photoshop CC2018 Classroom in a Book)

Tools

Click the double arrow just above the Tools Panel to toggle to a double-column view. Click the double arrow again to return to a single column.

Use the 01Start.psd file from the Lesson01 files in the Photoshop section in Canvas. psd is the native file format in Photoshop just as .fla is the native file format in Animate.

Zoom (pp. 14-16)

Zooming in and out is important - zooming in allows you to see portions of the image more clearly and to do some operations more accurately; zooming out allows you to see more of the image.

With a file open in Photoshop, the status bar at the lower left hand corner will show a percentage which is the current zoom level. A value of 100% means you are viewing the image at its natural size.

Select the Zoom Tool (looks like a magnifying class, at the bottom of the second column of Tools) or press Z to select it. At the top of the screen, right below the menu, you will see two magnifying glasses, one with a plus sign and one with a minus sign. Which button is highlighted (with the dark rectangle) will indicate whether clicking on the photo will increase the magnification or decrease it.

You can change whether magnification will occur or not by clicking on the appropriate button at the top before clicking on the image. If the current state is to magnify, you can change to decreasing magnification by clicking on the image while holding down the Alt key. Similarly, if the current state is to decrease magnification, clicking on the image while holding down the Alt key will magnify the image.

If the Scrubby Zoom checkbox is selected in the options bar at the top, then dragging to the right in the image will increase the magnification whereas dragging to the left will decrease it.

Deselect Scrubby Zoom

Options at the top

"Fit Screen" - the largest magnification where the entire image will be visible on the screen
"Fill Screen" - the entire screen will be filled with the image

If the "plus" Zoom is currently active, you can use the Zoom tool to drag a rectangle across part of the image - this results in magnification so that the enclosed area now fills the entire image window (this will only work if "Scrubby Zoom" is not checked)

Zooming and Scrolling with the Navigator Panel

To open the Navigator Panel, choose Window>Navigator.
Dragging the slider under the image thumbnail to the right enlarges the image and reduces it when you drag to the left.
The red rectangle represents the area of the image that appears in the image. You can drag the red outline to see other areas of the image.

Brightening An Image (pp. 16-18)

Choose Window>Adjustments to open the Adjustments panel if it is not already open. Click the Brightness/Contrast icon (the first one, that looks like a sun) to display the Brightness/Contrast settings. Move the Brightness slider to 98; as you move the slider, notice how the image changes. Move the Contrast slider to 18, again noticing how the image changes.

The former change here seems to have a major effect, whereas the latter has a minor effect. The order in which these two changes were done does not seem to matter in terms of the amount of the effect.

In the Layers panel, click the eye icon for the Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer to hide its effect and then click the icon again to show the effect.

Adjustment layers let you make changes without affecting the actual pixels; you can disable the edit by hiding or deleting the adjustment layer.

The use of layers is fundamental to Photoshop.

Save the file under a new name

Sampling a Color (pp. 18-19)

Using the same file, in the Layers panel, display the Ribbons layer and click in the visibility column so that the layer is visible.

Select the Ribbons layer in the Layers panel so that it is the active layer. (this step is important for the deletion of the triangle that occurs several steps below)
Select the Eyedropper tool in the Tools panel (3rd down in the second column).
Click the blue area in the Happy Birthday ribbon to sample a blue color.

The foreground color changes in the Tools panel at the left and the Color panel.

Working with Tools and Tool Properties

Using Context Menus (pp. 19-21)

Context menus are short menus that contain commands and options appropriate to specific elements in the work area and are accessed by right-clicking. The commands are also available in panel menus but using the context menus can save time.

An example:

Select the Rectangular Marquee tool in the Tools Panel - the top tool in the second column.
Drag the rectangular marquee tool to create a selection about 3/4 inch tall and 2 1/2 inches wide, ending at the right end of the image. As you drag the tool, Photoshop displays the width and height of the selected area.
Select the Brush Tool (4th down in second column) and right click anywhere in the image to open the Brush tool context menus.
Select the first brush (Soft Round) under the General Brushes category and change the brush size to 65 pixels.
Click anywhere outside the selection to close the panel.
Drag the cursor across the selected area until it's fully painted - you don't need to worry about staying inside the selection; you can't affect anything outside the selection as you paint. (an important point)
When finished, chose Select>Deselect to that nothing is selected.

Selecting and Using a Hidden Tool (p. 21-22)

A small triangle in the lower right hand corner of a button indicates that other tools are available under that tool.

An example:

1. Position the pointer over the Lasso Tool (2nd tool from the top in the first column). The Polygonal Lasso is hidden underneath the Lasso Tool. To select the hidden tool, use one of the following methods:

Press and hold the mouse button over the Lasso tool tool to open the pop-up list of hidden tools.
Alt-click the tool button to cycle through the hidden tools
Press Shift-L which cycles among the Lasso tools. (the letter used would be different if you were cycling in a different tool group)

2. To draw a triangle at the left edge of the blue rectangle, using the Polygonal Lasso tool, click at each corner of the triangle (Every time you click will add a side to the polygon).

3. Press the Delete key on your keyboard to delete the selected areas from the colored bar.

4. Choose Select>Deselect to deselect the area you deleted..

Setting tool properties in the option bar (pp. 22-23)

Select the Horizontal Type tool (the capital "T", the eighth tool from the top in the second column. In the Options bar at the top, select a font and a font-size of 32 pt. Click at the left side of the colored bar and type some name; don't worry about the positioning of the text or the fact that the text is the same color as the bar you typed it on. We'll fix those next.

Incidentally, you can place the pointer over most of the labels of most numeric settings in panels and in dialog boxes in Photoshop to display a scrubby slider - dragging the slider to the right increases the value, dragging it to the left decreases the value.

Using panels and panel menus (p. 24-25)

The text color is the same as the Foreground Color swatch in the Tools panel.

To change the color of existing text

Drag the Horizontal Type tool across the text to select it.
Open the Swatches panel and select a color.
Click the check mark in the options bar at the top to commit the change.

If the layer with the text is not the top layer, you may not see the change.

In the swatches menu, you can click on the menu button at the far top right section of the panel and choose, e.g. Small List. You can then use the Type Tool to reselect the text, as before, and then use the drop down list in the Swatches panel to change the color.

The swatches menu will remember your choice in the menu bar, so if you want something other than Small List, you can click on the menu bar to make another choice.

Use the Move tool (top tool in the first column) to move the text as desired.

Undoing Actions in Photoshop (p. 25-26)

Edit>Undo ... or Ctrl-Z allows you to undo the last action. This isn't available if you have saved your changes.
Edit>Redo ... or Crtl-Z reapplies the last action if you have undone it
Undo only reverses one step (unlike Dreamweaver where you can undo many steps by using Ctrl-Z)
Edit>Step Backward (Alt-Ctrl-Z) and Edit>Step Forward (Shift-Ctrl-Z) allows you to move through multiple steps as does the History Panel (covered in Chapter 9).

More about panels and panel locations

Expanding and collapsing panels (p. 28)

To collapse open panels to icons, click the double arrow at the right side of the title bar. To expand it, click its icon or the double arrow
To change the height of a panel, drag its bottom edge

Revised: November 4, 2019. Comments to Bill Pegram, wpegram@nvcc.edu