01 - Basics - Toolbars, Options and Panels

Transcription

1 Photoshop Manual 01 - Basics - Toolbars, Options and Panels st edition This Photoshop Manual is one of an introductory series specially written for the Arts and Humanities Students at UEA by the Media Suite Team.

2 Orientation After you have opened an image in Photoshop you will find the main toolbar on the left, the panels on the right and in the top bar above the canvas area, the options menu which changes according to what tool you have selected. File Menu As with all programs you have the file menu system toolbar at the top of the page. Options Menu As you select different tools from the left hand toolbar, this area will display different settings for that tool. Main Toolbar Panels The main toolbar has a wide array of tools you can select and adjust. Many of them have a small fly-out menu with more tools for you to choose from. As soon as you select a tool from this left hand menu, you will notice that the options menu changes. The panels can be closed and then fly out once clicked - as above - or they can be brought into the open panel section, letting you customise what you most see or use. Layers The layers panel is one of the most important as Photoshop works on a layers system - always make sure you keep an eye on this! The Canvas If your layer has a lock icon on it, you won t be able to edit that layer as it is locked. Double click the layer to activate it and make it editable. The Canvas is how we refer to the live area that we are working on, we can alter your canvas size -from the file settings - make it bigger or smaller dependent on what we are producing, but we cannot put anything outside of the canvas area, it would essentially be clipped off. Info The info at the bottom helps us see how big our file is, and at what percentage we are viewing the work at, it can be customised to show other information from the right arrow. PAGE 2 Layer Control This small menu hiding at the bottom of the layers panel has great short-cuts to most used items for layers, such as new layer, new folder to group layers, add adjustment layers and special FX with preset styles like Drop Shadow in. PAGE 3

3 Menu Orientation A closer look at the menus, this is also useful to see the short-cuts. File All of the usual items such as save and export are under the file menu, but you can also automate a batch process on many files at once from this menu. Use Revert to go back to the last saved version of the file you are working on. PAGE 4 Edit Transform items in the canvas with the variety of tools available and also the Purge tool which can speed up your machine as it deletes histories and clipboard content. Image Change the colour mode from RGB or CMYK to Grayscale/Duotone and adjust colours, invert or posterize them and alter the image/ canvas size itself. Layer There are many different ways of altering a layer and controlling layers, such as Flatten, Lock and Group within Photoshop. Use the rasterize option to convert smart layers/objects into pixel based items. Type Open up the character panels, convert the type to pixels, and you can warp the text here whilst still keeping it editable. PAGE 5

4 Menu Orientation A closer look at the menus, this also useful to see the short-cuts. Select You can select layers, masks and alter edges of selections. Most important is the Deselect option, and inverse selection. Filter This is where all of those painting effects and image filters live, if you re not sure what they do, use the Filter Gallery to see a preview representation of the final outcome. View 3D Proofing, guides, rulers and control your zoom from this view menu. The 3D menu is one of the newer additions, but once you convert your image to 3D you will be able to work in a pseudo 3D space. You can also bring in a pre-made 3D object that you can paint on. Window The window menu is where you can get Photoshop to show or hide any of the palettes/panels or options, plus organise how your windows display if working with multiple files. PAGE 6 PAGE 7

5 Putting the basics into action. Using some of the most popular tools, we are going to select, mask, transform, colour and overlay text using layers to composite two photos into a brand new image. Find 2 images (I used pixabay.com) one to be used as a foreground focus, an object or person is best for this, and a background image, such as a landscape. Click on the Mask mode again to come out of mask mode. Select the eraser tool and change the settings from the menu that now appears at the top of the window to a smaller circle with soft edges (hardness). scale tool (Edit>Transform>scale) I m going to shrink her slightly. Using the diagonal handles, and holding the shift key to constrain the proportions scale your item to better fit the new scene. Your image should now have a running marquee outlining your selection. Don t worry about any extra pixels outside of your figure as we will refine the edges when compositing the final image. Open both images in Photoshop. First we need to cut out the girl from her original background. So far we have actually selected the background which we don t want - so we need to inverse our selection. Being careful, start to rub out the pixels that you don t want, this can be a time consuming operation, but the result will be worth it. Keep zoomed in and use the spacebar to move around whilst working close-up. Let s use the magic wand to easily select the sky, then add the Shift key to click on more areas until we ve got a lot of the background selected, without selecting any of the colours within the girl. Don t try and delete too much in one movement, because if you make a mistake, you can always go a step back by using CMD & Z (undo). Now we have the girl selected we can press CTRL & X to cut the figure out of the background, then switch to your background image and CTRL & V to paste it into the new composite. Hair can be tricky, here we will need to change the opacity (in the top bar menu) on the eraser tool as well to make for a even more delicate result. You can also move the position of your figure by clicking and dragging anywhere inside the active handles of the box. Press the enter key to confirm the transformation. When you are happy with the size and position, it s time to think about levels, and colour. What we are trying to do is match the brightness and colour tone of the two images, to fool the viewer into thinking it is a real image. Levels are a combination of brightness and contrast, press CMD & L to view the levels controller. It should come into a new layer. Let s switch to the Mask Mode to see how much we ve selected. Firstly we are going to tidy up those messy edges. The red area shows what we have actually selected. Now let s use the lasso tool to draw around and then delete as much of the unwanted areas as possible, you will get this Fill box selection option, but just use the background colour to remove the red areas. This creates our loose selection. PAGE 8 Using the short-cut CMD & + we can zoom into the image to get a better look at those excess pixels. Once you have gone around the whole edge, it should be looking pretty good close-up, but once you zoom out, you will see how taking care on the clean up pays dividends at the end. In my scene I think that the girl is too big, so using the This graph is a histogram, plotting the black and white value for every pixel in the image. (0 is where all of the blacks in the image start from, 255 is for the whites). If you move the 0 point into the middle with the preview on you will see that more of the image turns black. We can also see, with the visual histogram, if our image has a balanced range of contrast. Small tweaks are usually best, unless you are going for quite a stylised effect. You also have a lot of choices to alter colour in the Image>adjustments menu, but for my image I m opting for the Hue/Saturation tool. PAGE 9

6 Top Tips I would like to make it just slightly less saturated in colour to make her blend in, so I m just going to move the saturation slider down a few stops, if you move the saturation all the way to the left, it will turn black and white as you will have desaturated the colour in the image. Crop Tool When you have got the text the right style, size and colour, let s add a simple effect to the type layer. Don t be afraid to play with different ways of altering the colour in the image, you can always return to an earlier stage by using the history tool, which keeps the last 50 steps saved. Simply double click to the previous stage you want to return to. Adding Text Simply click on the text tool icon on the left hand toolbar and then click onto the canvas where you would like your text to be positioned. As soon as you click you will see a new type layer appear in the layers menu, simple type in your preferred text and whilst your text is active, change the style, size and colour just as you would in any other programme using the character tool bar which has appeared above the canvas. Once finished with the options you can now move and transform your text like any other object in Photoshop. To reactivate the character properties, just double click on the T in the type layer. In the layers panel at the bottom there is a small layers menu, here you will find the FX icon, click on this and highlight Drop Shadow, make sure you have the type layer selected so that the effect is applied to the correct layer. In the options for a simple shadow choose normal, 70% opacity and size of 5. Just for fun I m going to choose a colour from the background image to be my shadow colour. Click on the colour swatch to the right of the Blend Mode and either select a colour from the mixer or use the eyedropper tool to pick a colour from the photo. This completes your first adventure in Photoshop, you ve selected, cut and copied, refined edges using the eraser tools, transformed and colour balanced two images to make a new composite and added coloured text onto a separate layer with effects, well done! Cropping in on your photos is an important artistic tool and a simple way to do that is to click on the crop tool and draw over the area you want to keep, you can also slightly adjust rotation if your image wasn t quite straight. Top Tip: You can also specify the exact dimensions you want your crop to be - very useful to set up photo sizes. Selection Tools History The history panel is a great tool, think of it as a supercharged undo, not only can you go back, step by step through filters or changes to the document that you might have applied, but you can take a copy of the document at any stage and open a new version in a new tab. Top Tip: If 50 undo s aren t enough you can increase it to but that s the Photoshop maximum. Repair There are a variety of selection tools, marquee, polygonal lasso, magic wand or quick selection, but all select an area of your canvas that you want to keep to work on or save from alteration. Top Tip: Use Quick mask mode to visually see exactly what you have selected Levels/Brightness Photoshop retouching is a common practice to clean up or repair damaged images, use a combination of the clone tool, heal and patch to perfect your image, but be careful not to overdo it. Top Tip: Red-eye reduction is a standard tool and is really quick to use. Layers Layers are the most important feature in Photoshop, they can help you work non-destructively and try different creative outcomes with the same focus. Top Tip: If something isn t working as expected make sure you are working on the right layer! Deselect Command Changing levels and brightness is the most simple way to enhance your images in Photoshop, the graph in Levels shows you the distribution of the tones in your images and quickly shows brightness problems Top Tip: Smaller tweaks are best in Levels. PAGE 10 Use CMD, SHIFT & D to deselect objects, marquees or areas of your image. Top Tip: Nothing working? Try a deselect command to make sure you have no stray pixels selected in your document that you can t see. PAGE 11

7 Photoshop Toolbar Showing the expanded fly-outs for each tool PAGE 12 Move Tool - Moves any items on the layers Artboard Tool - Create new artboards Rectangular Marquee Tool - Make Rectangular selections Elliptical Marquee Tool - Make Elliptical selections Single Row Marquee Tool - Create a single row selection Single Column Marquee Tool - Create a single column selection Lasso Tool - a quick way to select a freeform area Polygonal Lasso Tool - uses straight lines to select Magnetic Lasso Tool - snaps to areas as you select Quick Selection Tool - brush select areas Magic Wand Tool - The Magic Wand tool selects similarly coloured areas. Slice Tool - Make Slices Slice Select Tool - Select Slices Eyedropper Tool - Select a colour from an image 3D Material Eyedropper Tool - Select a colour from a 3D image Colour Sampler Tool - Records several colour samples Ruler Tool - Measure within your image Note Tool - Make notes within your artboard Count Tool - a helpful click and count tool Spot Healing Brush Tool - Fix those spots! Healing Brush Tool - paint with a sample to heal Patch Tool - draw areas to heal Content Aware Move Tool - Moves a whole selection repairing where its moved from Red Eye Removal Tool - remove redeye from images Brush Tool - Use a variety of brushes Pencil Tool - Draw with a pencil Colour Replacement Tool - Replace a colour Mixer Brush Tool - Blends chosen colour with image Clone Stamp Tool - replicate areas Pattern Stamp Tool - Preset pattern brushes History Brush Tool - Brush certain areas back to previous states Art History Brush Tool - uses a stylized brushstroke to revert to previous state Eraser Tool - Erase parts of the image with brushes Background Eraser Tool - remove to transparent Magic Eraser Tool - erases similar areas Gradient Tool - creates gradients 3D Material Drop Tool - Loads selected material from a 3D object Blur Tool - blurs edges Sharpen Tool - sharpens edges Smudge Tool - smudges the image Dodge Tool - intelligently lightens areas Burn Tool - intelligently darkens areas Sponge Tool - saturate or desaturate colours Pen Tool - Draw smooth paths with anchor points Freeform Pen Tool - freehand path drawing Add Anchor Point Tool - add points to an existing path Delete Anchor Point Tool - remove points to an existing paths Convert Point Tool - convert a corner point to a curved point or vice-versa Horizontal Type Tool - Create horizontal type Vertical Type Tool - Create vertical type Vertical Type Mask Tool - Make a selection mask with Vertical type Horizontal Type Mask Tool - Make a selection mask with Horizontal type Path Selection Tool - To select Paths Direct Selection Tool - to select anchor points on a path Rectangle Tool - Draw a rectangle filled with the foreground colour Rounded Rectangle Tool - Draw a rounded rectangle filled with the foreground colour Ellipse tool - Draw an ellipse filled with the foreground colour Polygon Tool - Draw a polygon filled with the foreground colour Line Tool - Draw a straight line Custom Shape Tool - Choose a predefined shape to add to your canvas Hand Tool - Move around the image Rotate View Tool - Rotate the image view Edit Toolbar - add or remove things to your toolbar Paint Bucket Tool - Fill similar areas with the foreground colour Crop Tool - Crop your image Note the letter next to the right of the tool text, you can use this as a keyboard short-cut for that tool.. PAGE 13

8 The UEA Media Suite Faculty of Arts and Humanities With State of the Art digitisation equipment the newly built Media Suite will allow researchers and postgraduate students to digitise, interpret and visualise materials using the recording studios, radio drama studio, a twenty workstation teaching suite, a digitisation lab, a breakout room and nine dedicated edit suites and will become a high quality focal point for digital humanities research at UEA.. This Photoshop Manual is one of an introductory series specially written for the Arts and Humanities Students at UEA by the Media Suite Team.