Photoshop for Beginners 1-78106-128-9

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for Be ginne rs The easy w ay to get started w ith Adobe Photoshop

Learn the interface • M aster the tools • Transform your photo s zyxwv

Photoshop for Beginners

W elcom e ...

E

veryone knows

Photoshop to improve your

you're using you'll find all the

something about Photoshop. For

own pictures. We'll walk you

information you need to get started right away.

through the most compelling

some itzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA w ill be Littlemore Learning to use a new features and show you how than the name. Others will application can feel Like you can pick the right tool understand that it's used in

for any job, tweak the way it

a daunting prospect, but

the production of pretty much

works, and put it to use in your

approach Photoshop with an

every professionally-produced newspaper and magazines

day-to-day image editing. We've approached the

open mind and you'll find that it's actually a lot of fun.

around the world, somewhere along the line. Others will

subject from the point of view of an absolute beginner, so

You'll be learning by playing with your photos, and rather

have experienced first hand

we don't expect you to have

than ending up with a dry

the power of its advanced

any previous experience of

spreadsheet or a letter to your

tools, and understand the

using the software. We have

bank, you'll be knocking your

radical difference it can make

also written it with both

pictures into shape. By the end,

to anything from a mundane

Windows and Mac users in

you may just want to find some

holiday snap to a campaign-

mind, so whichever platform

space for them on your wails ...

winning political poster. We live in a visual world, and we're bombarded from all sides by pictures designed to sell us something - either a physical product or an ideology. Without Photoshop, the job of those salespeople would be far harder. It's not an exaggeration to say, therefore, that Photoshop may be the most influential application ever in the history of modem computing. In this guide we'll look at how you can join them, and use the power of 3

Photoshop

for Beginners

WRITTEN BY Nik Rawlinson

DENNIS PUBLISHING LTD GROUP MANAGING DIRECTOR' Ian Westwood MANAGING DIRECTOR' John Garewal MD OF ADVERTISING' Julian Lloyd-Evans NEWSTRADE DIRECTOR· David Barker CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER' Brett Reynolds GROUP FINANCE DIRECTOR· Ian Leggett CHIEF EXECUTIVE· James Tye CHAIRMAN' Felix Dennis PUBLISHING AND MARKETING MAG BOOK PUBLISHER· Dharmesh Mistry· 020 7907 6100 MARKETING EXECUTIVE' Paul Goodhead • 020 7907 6012

The 'Mag Book' brand is a trademark of LICENSING AND REPRINTS Dennis Publishing Ltd, 30 Cleveland Street, Londonzyxwvutsrqponmlk Material inzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Beginners' G uide to Adobe Photoshop wn 4JD. Company registered in England. All material may not be reproduced in any form without the © Dennis Publishing Ltd, licensed by Felden 2013, publisher's written permission. It is available for and may not be reproduced in whole or part without the licensing overseas. consent of the publishers. Beginners' G uide to Adobe Photoshop is an independent journal, not affiliated For details about licensing contact with Adobe. All trademarks are the properties of their Carlotta Serantoni, +44 (0) 20 7907 6550 respective owners. carlotta [email protected] To syndicate this content, contact Anj Dosaj-Halai, +44 (0)20 7907 6132, anj dosaj-halaj@dennjs,co uk

Printed in England by Polestar, Bicester.

LIABILITY

While every care was taken during the production of this MagBook, the publishers cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the information or any consequences arising from it. Dennis Publishing takes no responsibility for the companies advertising in this Mag Book.zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfed The paper used in this magazine is produced from sustainable fibre, manufactured with a valid chain of custody.

P hotoshop for B eginners

Contents Section I: Getting started lQ _

!.§_

.!!!. 22 27 32 34 38

Which Photoshop is right for you? Photoshop through the ages, its versions and changes A beginners' guide to the Photoshop interface Photoshop tools in brief How to choose colours __ .... ~~ Photoshop settings and options Starting work: opening files Using Adobe Camera Raw to work with your photos

Section 2: Photoshop tools in depth 46 50 54 56 58 60 64 68 Zl.. ll_

74 76 78 84 85 86

Choosing and cllstomising brushes Selecting and shifting objects with the Move tool Making selections with the Marquee The Lasso tool Magic Wand and Quick Selections Using the Crop tool Quick fixes with the Healing tools Stamp tools Erase tools Filling with gradients and the Paint Bucket Blur, sharpen and smudge Dodge, burn and sp-onge Bezier curves and the Pen tool Direct selection and Pa th selection tools Shape tool Add!ng_~pe_with the Text tool

Section 3: Layers 94 Working with layers and masks 100 Adjusting layers with blend modes 109 Ai2elying non-destructive effects with adjustment layers ill Playing with light using Layer Styles

Section 4: Savingand printing .!l§_

Understanding the file settings

.L!..2.. Choosing a file format ill Optimising images for the web 128 Printing YOllr work

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Photoshop

for Beginners

Before we begin...

Photoshop runs on both the Mac and the Pc. On each platform they share a common interface. The panels look very similar, the tools work in an identical manner, the files they create can be opened on either platform without issue, and the menus contain the same options in the same positions. However, in one respect, the Mac and Windows platforms differ significantly, and that's where keyboard shortcuts are concerned. Rival keyboard layouts On the Mac, most shortcuts make use of the 'command' key. There are two of these; one either side of the space bar. To open a new document, therefore, a Mac user would press command-no The shortcut to save it would be command-so Windows users, who don't have a command key, would more often use control, with the two options mentioned above defaulting to the shortcuts control-n and control-so Although Macs have a control 6

key, too, it's not used in this manner. Neither can Mac users employ the alt key to pull down menus, so while alt-f would open the file menu on Windows it wouldn't do anything of the sort on the Mac. A further confusion can be caused by the very name of this key. Recent Mac keyboards mark this button 'alt', but older ones call it' option' (some sport both names). Some software, including some produced by Apple, still uses 'option' to describe this key, even though recent converts to the platform may find this confusing. This guide is designed to be read by both Windows and Mac users. We shall therefore avoid using keyboard shortcuts that are specific to just one platform. Where shortcuts are

used, we will explain how they are employed on both Windows and the Mac, but wherever possible we will work through menus pulled down using the mouse. Mouse conventions

Pretty much every mouse connected to a Windows PC has two buttons, usually configured so that the left button performs the primary selection and clicking function, while the right button calls up context sensitive menus that change depending on what you're clicking. Although two-buttoned mice work in the same manner on a Mac, fewer Mac users have one. If you're using an Apple Mighty Mouse or Magic Mouse

APPLE MAGIC MOUSE zyxwvutsrqpon

Photoshop for Beginners

and haven't changed

the way it

works you will have only one button available to you. When we talk about right-clicking, therefore, you should hold the control button and click the mouse as usual. The result will be the same as it would have been if you had been using a two-buttoned

mouse in your left hand, when we talk about clicking an on-screen element, then use

on a Mac, but Adobe's unified interface looks almost identical on the PC, and so Windows

whichever button you have set up as the primary controller on your device, and when we talk

users should have no difficulty in finding their way around their own particular installation

about right-clicking, use the secondary button, irrespective of their positions in your hand.

with reference to these images. We shall also be using the latest version of Photoshop. At the time of writing that would be Photoshop CS6. Although,

mouse.

Photos hop interlace

If you have swapped the operation of your mouse buttons on either platform to take account of using the

as we will explain in the buying We will be taking the screen choices section, this includes grabs throughout this book many new features that are not present in previous versions of Photoshop, much of what APPLE KEYBOARD we cover here will be just as relevant to eS5.5 and earlier. Where possible, we will make it clear if a particular feature we are covering is not applicable to earlier releases.zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZ If you don't have your own copy Photoshop eS6 and would like to follow along p 0 0 with this book, then you can MICROSOFT KEYBOARD zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA 5 download a trial version from zyxwvutsrqponm y ... Q w 0 a dobe.comldoumloa ds. This will u

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Photoshop

for Beginners

O ptim ising im ages for use on the web

S

everal years ago

Fireworks. Fireworks still exists

your work in a second tool to

Adobe produced a

as part of Creative Suite and

format it for lise on the web;

companion application

over time its focus has changed

you can do that directly within

called Image Ready that was

slightly to encompass a more

the application in which it was

used specifically to reduce the

universal web content creation workflow.

created.

size of files so that they were

Save for web

more appropriate for use on the

Image Ready, on the other

web. At the same time its major

hand, disappeared a while back

competitor, Macromedia, which

and its features were rolled

The tool that does this is called,

it has since acquired, produced

into Photoshop itself. Now it's

quite logically, Save for Web

a rival application called

no longer necessary to reopen

and you'll find it on the File

» zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA The best sta rting point when sa ving ima gesfor the web is to use one of the presets on the drop-down

menu, with J P EG, GIF a nd P NG a ll suita ble sta rting points for genera l web use.

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connection types. Tr y to keep the r esult a s low as possible for a nimble, r esponsive site. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUT

menu or by pressing shiftcontrol-alt-S on the PC or shiftcommand-alt-S on the Mac. At its most basic it allows you to reduce the file size of your image using a range of presets for JPEGs, GIFs and PNG files, and your choice of format will be determined largely by the content of your document. Photos, for example, are usually best served by the JPEG format. Business and vector graphics, on the other hand, are more suited to being saved as GIF or P G files, as you can see 122

Save for Web interface from the example images on the opposite page where the more You can select a preset using efficiently-compressed linage the Preset control at the top of on the left is quite mucky, while the Save for Web dialogue or the less compressed one to the using the drop-down menu right is fairly clean. The one below it to pick a file format. to the right might therefore Using this secondary file format represent your brand values menu also gives YOll the option more effectively, but it would of saving as a WBMP file, take a long time to download, which was a popular format for thus slowing down your site use in the early days of mobile and undoing any of the good phone Internet access. you have done by keeping The Save for Web interface your production quality high, is designed to make it easy as your visitors may give up for you to see what effect waiting for the data to appear your changes will have on the and look elsewhere.zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDC

Photoshop for Beginners

Y ou can save titJ1e and get started quickly by picking a preset frotJ1 the drop-dow n tJ1enu at the top of the sidebar

like with the settings selected in actions wherever possible while quality of your image, as any the right-hand sidebar applied. form of compression for web Simultaneously making the With any luck you won't see use inevitably requires that biggest difference to the file too much difference between certain data is removed from size. the two, but take a look at the your image to make is smaller. At the top of the main file size information below the This can manifest itself as noise part of the interface you will image. This is an indication of along sharp contrasts in a JPEG therefore see four tabs marked how much space your image file (see below) or a reduction Original, Optimised, 2-Up and will consume on the server in the number of colours in 4-Up. Click Original and you'll once uploaded to your website, a GlF file. Successfully resee your image in its current and will also give you an idea purposing your image for use state without any compression of how long it will take to on the web requires that you applied. Click Optimised and download. The line below it minimise the impact of yourzyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA you'll switch to what it looks » zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA Both of the ima ges below ha ve been compressed a s J P EGs. However,

the one zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPON 011 the left ha s been hea vily compressed to produce a sma ller file size while the one on the right ha s been lightly compressed. The difference is clea r, with a noticea bly dirtier result in the left ha nd ima ge.

P hotoshop

P hotoshop

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Photoshop

for Beginners

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