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The Basics

Lesson 1 from: Adobe® Photoshop® for Beginners

Lesa Snider

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Lesson Info

1. The Basics

Find out exactly what Lesa will cover during the class and how to get started with Adobe® Photoshop®.

Lesson Info

The Basics

Let's go trot into Photoshopped. So let me tell you a little bit about how we're gonna structure today. I'm gonna give you a brief tour of the workspace, give you a few tips that I think might be really helpful in setting up your workspace like you like it. I'm also going to show you a little bit about just a tiny bit about bridge. When did brief overview on bridge and a brief overview on adobe camera Raw. So when you install Photoshopped doesn't matter what version you get to other programs that tag along with it. One is Adobe Bridge, and that is great for importing, sorting, rating. Reviewing your images, any images on your hard drive, you don't have to use it to import. And adobe camera raw is a great image color correction tool. Basically, if you're shooting in the raw format, so we're gonna talk a little bit about file formats in a bit. So we're gonna have a brief overview of those things, and I'm gonna hands pick the things that I think are the most practical for you. So we're no...

t going to sit here and talk to the whole dadgum tools menu, and I'm gonna show you what every single toll does. Boring. But what we are gonna do is cover the most practical beginner ish level items, little intermediate that I think that you're gonna use every single day. So that's how we're going to do it. And let's get started right now on that, Let me hide this guy and hide this guy. So here we are in the photo shop work space. This is a shot of the the Coliseum in Rome that I got last week, which is really weird. So just to kind of give you an overview of the workspace. So over here on the left hand side, we've got our tools panel, okay? And that's probably one of the panels that you'll use the most. A handy little thing for the Tools panel is to make it two columns. Okay, so sometimes people like to do that. The way you can do that is click this little double right facing triangle with the top left of the tools panel. And when you give it a click, the tools Palin becomes a double column instead. So that is sometimes helpful for customizing your your workspace. If you wanted to go back to single column, just give that same little double triangle a click. You'll also notice a little Siris of dotted lines. It looks like a pier towards the top. That's a handle. If you want to position that tools panel somewhere else on your screen, just click and drag in that little area right there and you can liberate it. Okay, so it's free floating. Then you can put it anywhere on your screen that you want. This is handy. Say, if you've got a to monitor set up okay, so you can position these panels, maybe on the other monitor, so that you've got one monitor just for image editing. So that's handy. If you want to re dock that panel to so that it, it moves around with your photo shop environment. Just click that little row of those little dark dashes, click it and then dragged back to the area that you want a docket in and see that little blue line that appeared on the left. When you see that blue line, then release your mouse button in that particular panel docks right back to that area. Okay, anywhere you see those little dotted lines. That means that you can liberate that panel and move it around on your screen if you want, which is nice. The other thing I want to mention here is the options bar. Okay, so this bar appears at the very top of your photo shot workspace, okay? And the settings that you see there change depending upon what tool is currently active in the tools panel. Okay, because each tool can be customized within an inch of its life. Right? So the options bar is what allows you to do that? So you're going to use that a lot. One of the biggest troubleshooting secrets that I can give you is to pay attention to what you've changed in the options bar. Because, for example, if a tool just goes haywire, it's not behaving like you expect. Nine times out of 10 you've changed something in the options bar, and you've forgotten to change it back. So the options bar settings or sticky, they stay changed until you change them back. So don't let that through you. For example. One time I was using the brush tool and I changed the mode in which the brush tool operates in. So the next time you know, a day later what have you I went back to use the brush tool in the darn thing wouldn't work. I tried trash and photo shops preferences. I did everything. I reinstalled the program. So don't do as I do. Do as I say. Check the options bar and make sure that all the settings are as you expect. So also back a little bit here, so you'll use the options bar up here. Quiet a bit. This button at the top, right lets you change workspaces. Now Adobe has built in quite a few very handy work spaces. So I invite you to take advantage of them. They're these guys right here, straight from the factory. It's set to essentials, which is kind of ah, basic set up. But if you want to see the new features in the new version, click on New and CS six and then in the menu, everything that's new will turn blue. So it kind of helps you get a leg up on the new features. So that's a handy little workspace that Adobe has built in for you and again, you click the button, the pop up menu to the far right, and it'll say new in whatever the current version is. So example. When Photoshopped CC comes out, it'll say New in C. C. If you do a lot of work in three D, then these other workspaces might be handy for you. Photography is in Iceland, so do experiment with those workspaces, and you can also save your own. When she get all your panels and everything set up and place the way you like, you can choose new workspace. Give it a name in that way, If you have several people using the same machine, you can swap back and forth between workspaces really easily. It's always going and go back to essentials. OK, another thing of note is that Notice how, when I grab the top, a bar of my foot of shop environment, see how I can drag the whole kit and caboodle around. Hey, that's because the application frame is turned on. You're either gonna love it or hate it. If you hate it, you can trot up to the window menu, go all the way down to application frame, so everything that is turned on or currently viewable on your screen, and this menu has a little check mark to its left. See how application frame has that little check mark? That means it's on. Watch what happens to my desktop when I turn it off. Now I don't have that little title bar. I can't move my photo shot workspace around, but what I can do my document windows become free floating, meaning I can scoot them around. And I can see what's behind Photoshopped, which happens to be Adobe Bridge, so there's no right or wrong way to use the program. If you like the application frame turning on. If you don't like it, turn it off. But that's where it lives in the window menu application frame. So I'm gonna go ahead and turn that back on. Another thing that's important to note are these two little black and white squares that we see at the very bottom of our tools panel. Okay, it's these guys right here, thes air, your foreground and background color chips. We're gonna use those a lot. Okay, so any of the tools that lay down paint let's say the brush tool, the paint bucket any time you use the fill command and things like that. They all draw off of this top color chips. You can see how ones on top in one's behind. So this is your foreground color and your background color. When we get into masking and we will, you're gonna use these a lot. Okay, so it's important to know where they are in your tools panel. If you want to change the color of one of these chips, let's say you want to fill your document with a red background. Then you single click one of these chips and the color picker opens. Okay, so I'll show you that in a second. And that's how you can change the color that you're painting with its that you are the color of your text before you type it. To reset these chips to the default of black and white, you can just press the D key K D for default. I'm a big fan keyboard shortcut, some aloe gel up with a slew of them. You can also reset your color chips to the default of black and white by clicking this little miniature of the chips Here. This is a button. So if these chips were any other color, you could reset them by clicking that and to flip flop the chips so that your foreground color becomes your background color. In your background, color becomes your foreground color, which is handy when we're masking as well as let's say, you're creating a Grady in, which is a soft fade from one color to another. Then you might want to flip flop those color chips. Then you just click this little curved arrow. So as I'm clicking it, you can see that those chips or flip flopping the keyboard shortcut for that is the X key. So that's real handy. Other things that I want to show you is that you can collapse or expand any of these panels that you see over here on the right hand side of your screen, which is handy. Let's say you're Layers panel has gotten a long in the tooth, and it will Then you might want to collapse these guys on top of it to make more room for it. And the way you do that is just double click each tab. Okay, so as I double click that one Tabal Zuman So now this whole panel set is collapsed like a window shade. If I want to expand it, just give it a double click again. Okay? Adobe has changed that behavior in just about every single version of the program. Which is how they keep us on our toes, Which is nice. Keeps it exciting. So if you're panels, if you don't see any of the settings, don't panic. Just give that tab double click to expand that panel again. Now, I'm going to give you a tip that is worth the price of this class. Arguably the entire week right here. Top of the morning down here in the layers panel, which we're gonna talk about in depth and get your really comfortable with layers. You get a little preview of what's on each layer. Okay, Is kind of microscopic. Really, really small. Well, in the layers panel options, you can make those thumbnails a lot bigger, so you can actually see them. So I'd advise you to do this and then leave it that way. Okay, So what we're gonna do is we're gonna click the little panel menu. Okay? So here you can see I've got the layers panel active, and we know it's active because of the tab structure kind of shows that shows us that it's in the forefront. We're gonna scoot over to this little down pointing triangle with four whores. Online's next to it. We're gonna give that a click, and we're going to cruise down two panel options. OK, do you do this in the Layers panel and in the channels panel? It's really handy. So let's go ahead and give that a click. Then I'll zoom back out. Here is where you can set the size of any of the little fund nail previews you're seeing over here in any of these panels. Let's say the swatches panel, the styles pale. Any panel that has an example of either what's going on on that layer or what you can do with that thing If you click it, you can change the size of those thumbnail. So let's go ahead and click the largest one. Now watch over here in my layers panel, collapse these guys so you can see it. Okay, so look how small these are now. Look how big they're going to get. That's good stuff right there. So that is very, very handy. So that really lets you see the little preview of what's happening in that area. Another handy thing to know is that you can make these panels wider or narrower. All you dio zoom in here is this position. Point your cursor to the dividing line where that panel stops and when it turns into a double headed arrow, this click and drag. Okay, so that's handy as well, so we can actually see what's going on. All right? Now, another panel that I want to show you that's movie import. Dante is the history panel. So you know, when you first get started, Really? Any time in your Photoshopped career knowing how do you undo what you've just done is really, really important. There's a keyboard shortcut for it. Okay, uh, the command lives in the edit menu, and it's right here. Undo. So any time you do something and you wanna undo it, you can simply press command Z on a Mac or control Z on a PC, and that will undo the last step that you did. If you want to go back more steps than that, add the option key on a Mac two that keyboard combo or ault on a PC. Okay. And if you forget those keyboard shortcuts at any time there, right here under the edit menu. Okay, so here's the undue command. You can see it's keyboard shortcut to its right. And here's the step backward command, and you can see it's keyboard shortcut as well. What the step back where command is really doing is trotting you through the history panel. Okay, so knowing how to undo is very, very important, because you won't panic If you do something that completely, you know, screws up your image, just know that you can undo it. No problemo. But let me show you the history Panelas Well, so we're going to come up to the window menu. This menu lists all the panels that you can open and photo shopping. There are oodles and gobs of them. You don't want all of them open on your screen unless you've got one of those big honkin 30 inch, you know, or larger monitors. So the history panel is not open automatically, but you can open it by choosing window and history, and what it does is it shows you everything you've done to the document, even including the opening the document step. So if I do something crazy to this image, let's say I come appear under the image menu adjustments and I go down and make a fake HDR, which is a fake multiple exposure meshing situation. And I come up here and I do crazy stuff like this. See how everything is happening in the history panel? I'll zoom in so you can see it. So here's where we Here's the file that's open. Here's our opening step. Here's where we flattens the image, and here's where we applied that adjustment that made it look very surreal. So if any point I want to jump back instead of going up to the edit minions using step backward, repressing command Option Z or control all to Z multiple times on a PC, you can simply tried appear to your history panel and just click the step that you want to go back to. So if we want to go back to the Coliseum, as it was when we opened it, all we have to do is click on the open steppe and the steps that are after that are still there. So then if I decide I really do like that, I simply click that other step and I'm back to that point. That's real handy. Okay, so all that is to say, Don't panic. You can always get out of it in that history panel. The history is going to hang around until you close the document. Okay, so it'll remember from the factory 25 steps. That's also a great way to kind of reverse engineer. Or let's take something that you've You've processed a file to the point where you like it and you wanna You kind of forgot what you did. But that document still open. You might even want to take a snapshot of that, even with your screen capture software so that you almost get a step by step by step of what you did to that image. So that could be handy as well. But that hangs around until you close the document. Okay, so that's a That's a handy deal. So, actually, let's go back to our history and let's go back to the open steppe. There we go. And last but not least, I want to show you how to zoom in and out of your images because you'll do that a lot, especially for doing detail work in kind of retouching. Ah, little quality bag zapping little wrinkle, reducing all that kind of gets tough little slimming. Then you might want to zoom in. So I'm a creature of habit. They're always six ways to do the same Deccan thing and Photoshopped, right? So the end all be all old old old keyboard Shortcut for zooming in and out is command plus on a Mac or Control plus on a PC, and you can either hold it down or just tap tap tap on the plus time, so to zoom back out its command or control minus. So those are pretty easy to remember. Okay, so Command plus does him in command minus dizzying back out. Once you are zoomed in, it can be difficult to orient yourself within the image. So there's a command called the Bird's eye view, which is really super handy. So let's say I'm zoomed so far into the Coliseum that I don't have a clue where I am. Another way to get around while you seem Dan is to press and hold the space bar, okay, and that gives you a little hand cursor that you can use to move around within your image while you're zoomed in. But if you need to reorient, there's a little magic keyboard shortcut, which is the H key. OK, and then what you do holding down the HQ? Okay, so keep it depressed. Then you just click on your image, and I wonder if you can see it. I think you see it on screen, in the studio, on it. See it, see what with hand cursor is, and there's a tiny little rectangle around it that is my zoom area. So if I release those keys, that little rectangle, the gray rectangle, shows exactly where I am within the image, so that could be handy again. You have to be zoomed in already for it to work. It's called a bird's eye view Press and hold the H key and then click, and you get kind of a bird's eye aerial view of where the heck you are in the image, so that's handy as well. Another handy thing while you're zoomed in is flick painting. So if I want to quickly zoom over to the left side of this image. I can press and hold the space bar, and then with my mouth, I click and I just flick it. Also a lot of fun sitting by yourself in your studio. Yeah, so that is also handy for moving around within the image. Another handy keyboard shortcut for you at Let's Say you wanna fill the available on screen space with your image is the fit to screen command, and that's command or control zero. And that's really, really handy. That particular keyboard shortcut is great when we get into re sizing things. And sometimes the re sizing handles will fall outside of the viewable area, which arguably makes them hard to grab. So if you press command zero or control their own on a PC, then photo shop will resize the image just enough where you can see those re sizing handles, which is nice

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Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

This is the first video of Lesa's I've used. My only complaint is that I didn't find her earlier. Absolutely love this video. Lesa's teaching style is clear, concise, consistent and entertaining. Currently I am using CS4 but have still learned so much. I plan to purchase other videos when this one has been committed to memory. Again it is amazing! Well worth the price.

a Creativelive Student
 

Definitely worth the price. Lesa's teaching style is very consistent and clear. She doesn't waste time chit-chatting and that keep my attention. Its great to have the exercise material. I'm on my second round through the videos and exercises. Practice is really key. Photoshop does more for me now than just beep at me. Based upon Lesa's topics I can now see examples and have a much better idea of how to achieve the same results.

a Creativelive Student
 

Definitely worth the price. Lesa's teaching style is very consistent and clear. She doesn't waste time chit-chatting and that keep my attention. Its great to have the exercise material. I'm on my second round through the videos and exercises. Practice is really key. Photoshop does more for me now than just beep at me. Based upon Lesa's topics I can now see examples and have a much better idea of how to achieve the same results.

Student Work

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