Lessons

Lesson Info

Tour of Photoshop Interface

So now let's jump into Photoshopped in Give you a general introduction. I've just reset my preference of phone photo shop so it should act in general like it would if he just installed Photoshopped. And this is the screen I see. To begin with, you should know that there is too general views in federal shop. There's this screen, which will usually list your most recently accessed documents. And then there is the main photo shop interface, where you see all the tools and panels. Well, you can switch between those two views using the icon in the upper left of your screen. There's a letters PS that stands for photo shop, and if I click that now in in the main area photo shop, I see all the tools that I could use. I just happened and not have a document open. That's all. When I'm in the main interface of federal shop, I have an icon in the upper left that looks like a home icon, and if I click that, it'll bring me right back to this screen, and this would usually show my most recently used ...

documents. This is also where you could create a new document with this button were open an existing document with the button below. If you choose, create new, then that does. The exact same thing is going to the file menu in choosing new and if you dio, you get this screen. Now let's go over what's found in here so you have a good feeling for how to create new documents and what settings are important. All right, let's take a look at that screen we saw when we went to the file menu and chose new. Any time you do that, what's really important is the settings that are found on the right side of your screen. Those are the sightings that actually define the size of document. You'll end up with another important settings, so those might be the settings that make up my screen. But then, just a moment here realized I need one particular panel to help me go through a little slide show. All right, so up here at the top, we have presets, and all there is across the top is a bunch of categories of presets. And so let's look at what's unique about each category, because there are some reasons why you don't want to use certain categories that are found up here. First, we have a section that will be the default, and that's your most recent created documents. So if you've created five or six documents in the past, the last few sizes will be listed here. Now there is a special choices in here, and that is if you've ever copied a picture in photo shop. If you ever selected area to say maybe I don't want to copy the whole thing, you go to the edit menu and choose copy, then the very first choice it'll be here. It will be called clipboard. That's the default in all that Means is, if you were working in a document and you grab a certain section of it and copied it, you could create a brand new document. Ignore the settings that are in here and hit the create button, and you'd have a document perfectly sized for whatever it was you last copied. And so I use that quite frequently when I need to move things into various documents. Then here we have saved, and when you go to the Save section, this will start off being empty. But if you have standard sizes like you always make business cards, that's part of what you do. Then you could save a preset here so you can quickly access it later. Now, too, create a preset. All you need to do is set up the settings on the right side of your screen for whatever size document you'd like. And once you get it set up, there is an icon that looks like it's supposed to go into like an inbox or something, and by clicking their, you'll create a new preset. When you dio, all you have to do is enter a name, and then you'll have the choice of save preset, and you'll add to this list. Now, if you go through the other categories that are found at the top of your screen here we have one called photos. In there, you'll find kind of standard photo print sizes, and also the resolution, which means how find the detail is in your picture will be appropriate for a high quality photograph. Then we have settings for print, and that's for a different page sizes. So if you want to buy paper of a particular size in prints on it, you're gonna find it in the section called Print Under Art and Illustration. You're going to find kind of standard sizes for various projects, like posters and postcards. But all you're doing when you're clicking on any of these presets is it's just loading up settings that are found on the right. If I come to the section called Web, then it's going to give me. Size is based on different screen sizes. So if I want to see what would fill a 15 inch MacBook Pro 27 inch IMac, and I want to create an image that would precisely filled that screen, I can choose one of the options here. Or, if I move over one more section, there's a choice called Mobile. In here. I can create documents their size for a mobile device like an IPhone, IPad or other type of tablet. Now, this section called Film and Video, is where you gonna find sizes that are typical to for HD TVs. But in general, I would stay away from these choices unless you're creating a project very specifically for a professional level video. Why would I say that? That's because there are settings over on the right side of your screen That will be a little bit unusual for some of these settings that you wouldn't want to use if you were doing something that wasn't for video. And so you're gonna find this choice called 10 80 p, which is what you would think of for a normal HD television. Ah, you're gonna find it on more than one of these headings that are up here. And I would only choose the one under film and video if you're really going to do a project for professional video because there are settings on the right side of your screen, like for your color profile that are not settings you would usually use for other types of work. So let's look at the settings that are found on the right side of the screen. Because any time we load a preset, all it's doing is changing up the settings that have found their. So what are the settings that air there, and how should I think about first up here at the top? You can name a file as you create it. Not really important, though, because if you create a brand new file and you later on try to save it and it doesn't have a name attached is gonna ask you for a name. He will bring you to the save as screen where you can type in the name when you save it. But you're more than welcome to type it up there if you want. Then up here are the dimensions of the picture, the width and height. You could do it in inches, centimeters or even pixels if you're not thinking about a printed size. Instead, you're thinking about a screen size below that we have a setting called resolution. Resolution is generally Onley important when you plan to print an image. If you plan to use it on screen, then you could have any number typed in there, and it wouldn't radically change how big of a picture here you have. It all depends on what you have. The top settings set to we have. This is set two inches. Then you should be thinking about printing. Then this number is important. If you're thinking about creating image for on screen, use instead. Well, you don't usually think about the width and height of a screen and inches. Instead, you can look up on manufacturers websites exactly how many pixels there are in the width or height in. So if this menu up here is set to pixels and therefore you're not thinking about printing, this number is not all that important. But when you're thinking about printing, then you want to know what settings to type in there. And here are general guidelines that you might want to use. You notice that each one of these settings has a range. It's not just a single number, and that's because you could get away with lower numbers, which will produce smaller file sizes. If you have a photographic looking image that doesn't have certain qualities if it's ah, landscape photograph, for instance, you can usually end up with a lower range that's here. And if you do, you'll get a smaller file size. Well, when do you want to end up going for the higher end of the range? When would that be important? Any time you have extremely high contrast lines with you in your picture, that means you have a picture of, let's say, a skyscraper in the rectangular windows that make up the side of the building have really high contrast edges. Maybe there's a black frame around the window, and then there's really bright blue sky right next to it. Well, it's when you have almost straight high contrast lines that you might start seeing the little bits bit of jag. Ease on the edge, where you can actually see the squares that make up your image, and this number controls. How big are those squares when they're printed? So the higher the number we go through to the smaller those pixels become because it's saying how many pixels fit in each inch. And so if you have a picture of a skyscraper, higher numbers. If you have a picture of anything that has text, then you're gonna have high contrast lines that have a lot of straight segments. Then you want to go for the higher end. Other things would be like sailboats, the masts of sailboats or straight lines that are high contrast. Usually, their son is catching the metal of the massed in. Therefore, it'll make it much brighter than its surroundings, or if you have things like guitar strings that are have light catching them. Straight lines again. That's when you're going to be able to see JAG ease if you end up with too low oven setting. So if you have more of, ah, landscape with no man made straight lines in it, you can get away with lower numbers, smaller file sizes. As you get more man made objects, you get more straight lines, crisp edges, and you need to go for the higher end of the range. But this is only important when you're printing your image, and this should give you a general idea of what to use. Then below that we have a setting for color mode and that determines what your images made up behind the scenes. And so let's look at the options that are there and what to use. Well, the default for most of these things will be RGB mode. RGB stands for red, green and blue light. That's what your computer's display uses to display your picture. It's what your phone uses to display a picture. Any digital device that has a screen on it. If you were to look really, really close at it with a microscope, you'd see it's actually made out of little red green and blue lights that are creating all that you see on your screen. And so if you ever plan to have an image displayed on a device like your laptop or your phone, then you want to be an RGB mode. Also, you want to use that mode any time you're gonna print to a desktop printer, and that's because there'll be some settings that relate to printing. But they all relate to commercial printing on a large printing press, not a little desktop printer that most people would have at home. So rgb motives what I'm gonna use for the vast majority of what I do. But then you're gonna find a few other settings that I would use what I'm gonna print on a printing press. And what are those? Well, there's a choice in their cold bit map bit map will allow your image to Onley be pure black in pure white, no shades of gray, no colors. And therefore, if I had a logo that therefore to call it a graphic, that was solid black and a solid white background, and I plan to print it on a printing press bit map mode is where I'd want to go. But if that same image was gonna be used on a computer screen, I wouldn't need to be in bit map mode. RGB mode would be just fine. Then we have gray scale, and that's what I would use for a black might photograph if I was gonna printed on a printing press. But if I'm gonna display it on my phone on the Internet, we're on my laptop. I don't really need to be in grayscale mode. I could just be an RGB. And then finally, there's a choice of C M. Y que, and that would be for a color image that's gonna be printed on a printing press. And so those are the various settings that I'd use, but you'll see it for the vast majority of what we're gonna do. RGB mode is all we need below. That or to the right of it, I should say, is a choice known as bit depth. Bit depth determines how much information your file can contain. It really defines how maney shades are there, between black and white in an image. Are we gonna have just shades between black and white. That's enough to make more image looks smooth on screen. That's what the eight bit setting would do, and it would allow us to have a relatively small file size that would look fine on screen. The problem with eight bit is if we needed to make any radical changes to the way the image looked. We needed to make it a lot writer a lot darker or maybe add contrast to it. Well, we'd have just the right amount of information to make the image look on screen look good, but we wouldn't have any extra. That would give us a smoother looking on result if we manipulate the picture. So the choice, called 16 Bit, lets us have thousands and thousands of shades between black and white. It doesn't mean that weaken suddenly see brighter and darker information or anything. It just means in between black and white. There's more stuff, So if we end up adjusting the picture to brighten or darken it, we have a bunch of bonus data that'll give us a smoother looking and result. So if you plan and making dramatic changes to a picture, then that's when I would choose 16 bit. But if the image looks find to begin with overall and you only need to make small changes, I'd rather choose eight pit when you go to 16 that your file size doubles and if you happen to use layers than against even bigger cause, each layer is double its normal size, so I only use 16 bit when I plan to do radical changes below that we have a setting is just called background contents, and that means what should the documents start out with for the empty area you can have. The choice of getting document full of white, full of black or full of transparent in transparent just means you have an empty document with nothing in it whatsoever. Below that you have something called the color profile. The color profile determines how vivid could the colors within your image be? You can choose a choice in there that would make the colors be able to be so vivid that they wouldn't be viewable on my computer screen. My computer screen would limit the how vivid the colors aren't because what we've chosen from that menu would be able to do sums that are even theoretical colors that are beyond our printers in our screens. So in there the choices that you would use the most R s rgb and that's what ID use. If you're new to photo shop, all the images you see on the Internet are in s RGB mode. So if you see how saturated the colors could be online, that's fine. And then I might want to get better at Photoshopped Progress into using adobe RGB Adobe RGB ends up allowing you to create more vivid colors within your picture than s RGB would. But then you have to think more about it and be careful when you give your files to other people. You have to make sure that if they don't know how to deal with color properly, that you make some changes to your file before you send it out. And therefore I don't suggest Dobie RGB If you're brand new to photo shop in salad, you get comfortable with concept of what a color profile is. So s RGB if you're nude photo shop and you want just things to be simple and easy in adobe RGB, especially if you have your own printer at home and you have a high quality color printer at home because you're gonna be able to get more vivid colors out of that printer. Finally, here at the bottom is what shape are the little elements that make up your image? Notice pixels. And for just about everything except for certain video applications. You want the pixels that make up your image to be square, and so you'll see. I'll have that set to square all the time. But in certain video applications, they use rectangular pixels. And that's one of the reasons why I said, to not use the presets under the film and video category unless you're doing professional video, because one of the things that might change is that setting down the bottom and it would make its your images made out of rectangles and set of squares squares is what most programs expect. And so it's what you want to use the vast majority of the time. So I showed you what's available in here, but the vast majority of the time, what I do is I just go over here to a preset, and I find the one that's closest to what I need and then if I don't need exactly what it had in the preset, I'll come over here and I'll find Tune it customize. It may be changing the width or height just a little bit. And then if that's the size I'm going to use on regular basis, I'll come up here and click on the icon That would save it is a preset so I can get to it later. And if I did that, I'd find it under the heading Cold saved. But that should give you some sense for the settings that are used when you create a document. So I'm gonna create a document. I'm gonna come up here and choose new from the file menu, and I'm gonna goto a print related size. And why don't I create a letter sized image 8.5 by 11 and I'll just hit, create