Lessons

Lesson Info

Photoshop: Quick Overview

let's just talk about an overview of photo shop how can we deal with some of the interface elements and work with that stuff so first off the interface it used to be that these little rectangles that contain settings and tools were called pallets just so you know a few years ago a dobie changed the terminology that they've been using for decades so instead of being called palates which is what he used to calm their called panels I think they're called panels in here anyway they're called panels so if I ever mention the word panel on your old school photo shopped person it's the same thing as a palate uh with these it's similar to what we're in bridge in that if you don't need one of these but you don't want to get rid of it you khun double click on the name and it will collapse it down to just its name double click again entered expanded and you could do that for any one of these two get them kind of out of the way uh double click on the names and just like when you're in bridge you co...

uld move your mouse in between two things and often pull on it but only when you see feedback if you watch my mouse on ly when I get over here and it changes to that not when I'm there not when I'm there on lee when it looks like that so then I could pull on this and make this area larger or make it take up less space and there's a limit there's you know they need a certain minimum outer space but I can usually come in here in some of these are not re sizeable like this one here there'd be no use for to be bigger because there's no more information that would show up so when you try to grab it it won't let you resize it just because there's there's no more information it could display uh only see if swatches community swatches you could show more so you can pull on its bottom edge but color when you get to it fixed size because there's no extra info that's being hidden so sometimes it won't let you drag the edge just because there'd be no use making that bigger but then these panels could be displayed in a couple different ways and you can control how their displayed by playing with these little icons you see the double arrow you're going to find it at the top of any groupings of those things not on the panels themselves necessarily but when they're docked to the edge of your screen and they're stacked like they are right now if I click that double arrow I'm in the upper right of my screen right now it will either collapse the panel down for expanded full size and there's even two versions of the claps down there's collapse down with names for people that aren't used to the icons yet but once you get used to what the icons mean you could grab this and pull the edge and make it just the icons so that it takes a very little space but if you're not used to what these little icons mean yet you might want to keep him spread out like that but those little double arrows means expanded out full size or collapse it down to the icons so that we can get it out of the way if you need to have your space your image take up more space when their collapse down and little icons then their pop up panels where you just click on it and it pops up when you're done with it click on it again it goes back to just being a nikon book book and if you want him all to be expanded click the double arrow so here's two of them that air stacked double arrow now I seem full size or just click the icon to get to it for a moment so I usually have missed those little icons for those things that I only need to use for a second and then get rid of on dh there's a lot of panel sir that way that'll stack in this little second row and then the first row that's here I'll end up uh putting the things that I always have open which is usually layers up here the settings for an adjustment in up here usually the info panel but we'll get to that when we go into tomorrow and working with adjustments all right then you can also drag ease out into other parts of your screen if I click on the name of any one of these I could drag it to an open area of the screen and let go and now it's just a floating little thing I could move around wherever I want I want to get it back into the grouping click always on the name and when you drag over wait until you see feedback so even though this looks like it's overlapping that area over there it's looking at where my mouse's if you look at the little arrow that represents my mouth it's not covering up that area I'm trying to move it to yet but when my mouse gets over there and I get up near the top I see feedback you see the blue rectangle on lee when I see the feedback in the right spot for alecko a lot of people just let go assuming it's going to be there look for the feedback and think about not where it shows the entire panel think about where your mouses so anyway I can rearrange these all I want so I uh by the way if you go to the window menu this will list all the panels you could have so if there's everyone I talk about you can't find it come up here to get to it I like having the info panel and I like taking it clicking it's name dragon it put it up here the top I used the info panel all the time when I'm making adjustments will use it a lot tomorrow uh below that I like having the properties for my adjustment that's where my actual adjustment shows up and that's this thing called properties I like having it right here in that my layers below that and therefore from making adjustments I can have my info panel which tells you what my adjustments doing and the actual adjustment itself here and when I'm not adjusting the image I can double click on those get him out of the way and I mainly see my layers but we'll do that more tomorrow I see a lot of people moving their panels around the screen all the time to get him out of the way I never do I militant about leaving them where they belong because it makes it so much more versatile let me see if I can give you an idea of what I'm talking about just going to open an image and if your panels were kind of their default locations then when I do things like there's a keyboard shortcut called command zero which means fit in window it's the same as double clicking on the hand tool um it's going to fit in window but it's not going to slide it underneath those panels the panels are going to cover it up but if I had one of those panel sitting out like this it ignores it so when I do command zero the picture is going to be sitting underneath that thing and it's going to not it's going to be in the way but if I leave them in this grouping over here then when I do command zero it always thinks that hey these groupings that are stuck to the edge of the screen let's not go underneath those and it makes it more convenient for me so if I need this to be out of the way I'll click the double arrow thing to get it over there snug it over but I never moved them by tool palate is never anywhere other than that left edge my screen and if I get used to that then I never have all these thes things covering up my picture and I find it to be more useful it's up to you though not everybody likes that then if I open more than one image you're going to find that those images appear as tabs here I'm going to open three images so I already have one open adding three mohr should give me a total of four and if you notice at the top of my screen is just like in a web browser where you could have more than one tab some people love tabs some people hate tabs I hated tabs when they introduced he did them so I want to show you how to turn them off and then I want to show you how to just work with them because if you hate tabs it's only because you're old school and you get used to him when you get usedto they're very convenient so first how do I turn off tabs well I go to the photo shop menu and go to preferences if I'm in windows remember you don't have a photo shop menu would be under the edit menu and in there it's either going to be under general or interface will find out it's one of those settings you rarely need to change you change it once and then uh you're done but let's see gets under interface yeah under interface there is a preference here called open documents as tabs if you hate tabs turnoff huh then when you open documents more than one appears separate windows like they do in other programs then there's another thing which is left the name of enable floating document window docking huh what that means is if I have a separate windows and I drag one near the other should they combine into tabs in a single window or should they just ignore each other brightness move this one where I want so if you hate tabs turn off both of those check boxes and then photoshopped will act like old old versions of photo shop did and you'll be like yes finally I know howto do that hey that's what I used to do all the time because I'm old school photo shop of use it for twenty years it's hard for me to make changes but I got used to taps I like tabs now I used to hate him now if I ever need to see two images because sometimes you need to compare images just click on the name of a tab and dragged down so you're away from the little bar where the tabs are let go it'll be appears a separate window then you do want to see another one click on its name dragged down so it's away from the tabs that were there just be careful when you click on the name of the top to move it around don't move it really close to those tabs remember feedback see the blue stuff unless you wanted to become a tab with those others don't let go right now make sure it doesn't have that feedback if I click on this one and I move it over here to watch the feed back if you get close to see the blue box around it it means it's about to combine these two so move away a little bit ah and you can get used to moving the windows around it's just before you let go look for the feed back see if you were about to combine them or not one of the reasons why a lot of people hate tabs is they just don't know how to deal with them one thing they don't know how to deal with this how to move a picture between two tabs usually move a picture with the move tool I'll click with it that this image I'll drag to another tab and I would think just let go would you go over there it's not going to in order to move something between two you clique within this one dragged to another tab and before you let go dragged down into that picture your mouse much speed in the picture both when you click and when you let go it shouldn't be on top of the tab we let go so tabs you can pull him out like this if you ever get one completely hidden behind another where you just can't get to it like if I click up here where this tab is see the other two pictures I don't know where they think they are you can go you've got a couple options one is the window menu at the bottom and list all your pictures and if you choose one here it would switch to it or control tab switches between documents control tab I'm mac or windows so I could get him back up there I present to you if you like tabs or not now you know how to turn them off so if you hate him you don't have to use him all right then once you get your panels set up the way you like him remember how I like my layers here I like my properties which is where I see my just and I like my info panel loved it like that when you're done with that go to the window menu there's a speck area called workspace and coming here and say you want a new workspace a workspace simply means remembering where all the panels are right now so if I ever screw it up and I want to get back to this I can so I'm going to say new workspace and I'll click safe so now if I ever screw it up if I move the panel's around if I get something floating on my screen and do all this stuff then all I need to do is actually in the upper right there's just a pop up menu these are all your work spaces you can save more than one maybe you like a different setup if you're painting retouching then you do if you're adjusting and so you come in here and just say hey this is text layout okay let's go back over here tio ben's faves you know and it will remember where they weren't in resettle you can also save him from this menu there's a choice there new work smith uh so set him up the way you like save them so that you can uh get to where you want and then it can be relatively simple working the other thing that I would suggest you do is there are some men you commands that you never use has anyone ever used print one copy does anybody know what print one copy does e tao it does anyone ever use where is that there's one called check in or someone one of these there's so many in here that no one ever uses that are overly obscure I would suggest you hide them to hide them you go to the edit menu and there's a choice called menus in here it's it's gonna list the menus that you find across the top of your screen here's the file menu hit the little triangle next to it to expand it you just go down and find command you absolutely never use she's our so many of the men you print one copy turn off the eyeball and what I'll do is for the handbook if you purchase the class I will list the ones that I think that ninety percent of the people would never use and I'll show you so you'd know which ones to turn off in therefore when you come to the menus the menus are going to be much shorter and you're going to get to the stuff you do use very quickly in at any time if you ever need the full menu because you're reading a magazine article and it's telling you to use an obscure command well all you do is hold down the command key control of windows if you have that key held down when you click on any menu it will always speed all the commands so therefore you can hide up a bunch of things you have to worry about it you just have to remember hold on the command key when you click on the menu and you always get the full one deserve saved ben is er safe preset for that yeah there is in fact your work spaces when you save a workspace I think one of them had the choice of menus or keyboard truck cuts within there and when you're in here menus there's this little thing looks is supposed to look like a hard drive with an arrow pointed at it where you could save all those changes and to the current menus and that kind of stuff you give those things named grace so yeah you could do that perfect thank you cool um all right any other questions um I don't know if he'll talk about this tomorrow but can you how do you change keyboard presets same place actually go to the edit menu the very bottom see it says keyboard shortcuts actually these two command send you to the exact same place if you look it's just two tabs at the top menu versus keyboard truck and in here I can go to any menu in it will list here's the menu command that would be there and there's the keyboard shortcut you can click on the keyboard shortcut and change it if you change it know that every keyboard truck that's already used so when you try to change it which I'll do here it will warn you at the bottom it says hey that's already used it's going to be removed if accepted and it says oh accepting goto conflict or undo you just click okay or click accept it will change it you know um so yeah you could do that so I mainly do that I look at the stuff that I hid the stuff I never use just take out a post it note right down the keyboard shortcuts for the stuff you absolutely never use then look at the stuff you do use that doesn't have keyboard truck us filters like sharpen you know that that kind of stuff the or blur that you might use all the time assigned those keyboard shortcuts you know which ones you've taken away then from commands he never used and then is it the same thing with tools as well can you hide tools can I hide too lt's not that I'm aware of okay yeah not that I'm aware we're looking for the paint bucket where is that what happened to some of the jewels in and since I used the paint bucket tool so often I will have to search for it but it's hidden in there that's one thing I should mention is a couple tiny little interface things that if you're new to photo shop are not very obvious if you ever see a tiny triangle it means there's something hidden so for instance if I open the info panel you see any tiny triangles if they're down pointing triangles it means just click to find hidden thing okay it's a menu that's hidden there if instead they're at an angle look over your tools hey they're not pointing down there pointing at an angle right that means click and hold to get to the hidden thing if you just click you're just going to get what's there if it's at an angle click and hold and you'll get to the hidden thing that's there okay so look for tiny little triangles they point down just click they pointed an angle click and hold and then one other thing is if you ever see three periods after something you see in this menu three periods three periods after something means there are more settings related to that and if you choose that particular item he will ask you for the settings so what that means is the command called invert has no settings it just does it without asking but the ones with all the periods at the end I will ask you for settings therefore when I got a filter and I choose blur I can look and tell which one of these can actually control compared to which one's air generic that just apply with no input