Getting to know the work

area of adobe Photoshop

Lesson overview
In this lesson, you’ll learn how to do the following:
• Open Adobe Photoshop files.
• Select and use some of the tools in the Tools panel.
• Set options for a selected tool using the options bar.
• Use various methods to zoom in on and out from an image.
• Choose commands in panel and context menus.
• Open and use a panel in the panel dock.
• Undo actions to correct mistakes or to make different choices.
 starting to work in adobe
Photoshop
• The Adobe Photoshop work area includes menus, toolbars, and panels that give you
quick access to a variety of tools and options for editing and adding elements to your
image
• Photoshop works with bitmapped, digitized images (that is, continuous-tone images
that have been converted into a series of small squares, or picture elements, called
pixels). You can also work with vector graphics, which are drawings made of smooth
lines that retain their crispness when scaled. You can create original artwork in
Photoshop, or you can import images from many sources, such as:
• Photographs from a digital camera
• Commercial CDs of digital images
• Scans of photographs, transparencies, negatives, graphics, or other documents
• Captured video images
• Artwork created in drawing program
 starting Photoshop and opening
a file
• To begin, you’ll start Adobe Photoshop and reset the default preferences.
1.. On the desktop, double-click the Adobe Photoshop icon to start Adobe
Photoshop, and then immediately hold down Ctrl+Alt+Shift (Windows) or
Command+Option+Shift (Mac OS) to reset the default settings.
If you don’t see the Photoshop icon on your desktop, choose Start > All Programs >
Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows) or look in either the Applications folder or the
Dock (Mac OS).
2.. When prompted, click Yes to confirm that you want to delete the Adobe
Photoshop Settings file
• Note: Typically, you won’t need to reset defaults when you’re working on your
own projects. However, you’ll reset the preferences before working on each lesson
to ensure that what you see onscreen matches the descriptions in the lessons.
• The default workspace in Photoshop consists of the menu bar and options bar at
the top of the screen, the Tools panel on the left, and several open panels in the
panel dock on the right. When you have documents open, one or more image
windows also appear, and you can display them at the same time using the
tabbed interface. The Photoshop user interface is very similar to the one in
Adobe Illustrator®, Adobe InDesign®, and Adobe Flash®—so learning how to
use the tools and panels in one application means that you’ll know how to use
them in the others.
Using the tools
• Photoshop provides an integrated set of tools for producing sophisticated graphics
for print, web, and mobile viewing. We could easily fill the entire book with
details on the wealth of Photoshop tools and tool configurations. While that would
certainly be a useful reference, it’s not the goal of this book. Instead, you’ll start
gaining experience by configuring and using a few tools on a sample project.
Every lesson will introduce you to more tools and ways to use them. By the time
you finish all the lessons in this book, you’ll have a solid foundation for further
explorations of the Photoshop toolset.
 selecting and using a tool from the tools panel
• The Tools panel is the long, narrow panel on the far left side of the work area.
• It contains selection tools, painting and editing tools, foreground- and background
color selection boxes, and viewing tools.
• You’ll start by using the Zoom tool, which also appears in many other Adobe
applications, including Illustrator, InDesign, and Acrobat
1.. Click the double arrows just above the
Tools panel to toggle to a double-column
view. Click the arrow again to return to a
single-column Tools panel and use your
screen space more efficiently.
2.. Examine the status bar at the bottom
of the work area (Windows) or image
window (Mac OS), and notice the
percentage that appears on the far left.
This represents the current enlargement
view of the image, or zoom level.
3.. Move the pointer over the Tools panel,
and hover it over the magnifying-glass
icon until a tool tip appears. The tool tip
displays the tool’s name (Zoom tool) and
keyboard shortcut (Z).
• Now the view zooms out to a lower preset magnification, so that you can see
more of the image, but in less detail.
8.. If Scrubby Zoom is selected in the options bar, click anywhere on the image
and drag the Zoom tool to the right. The image enlarges. Drag the Zoom tool to
the left to zoom out. When Scrubby Zoom is selected, you can drag the Zoom
tool across the image to zoom in and out.
• Note: You can use other methods to zoom in and out. For example, when
the Zoom tool is selected, you can select the Zoom In or Zoom Out mode
on the options bar. You can choose View > Zoom In or View > Zoom Out.
Or, you can type a new percentage in the status bar and press Enter or
Return
• he image enlarges so that the area you enclosed in your rectangle now fills
the entire image window.
• You have now used four methods with the Zoom tool to change the
magnification in the image window: clicking, holding down a keyboard
modifier while clicking, dragging to zoom in and out, and dragging to
define a magnification area. Many of the other tools in the Tools panel can
be used with keyboard combinations and options, as well.
selecting and using a hidden tool
• Photoshop has many tools you can use to edit image files, but you will probably
work with only a few of them at a time. The Tools panel arranges some of the
tools in groups, with only one tool shown for each group. The other tools in the
group are hidden behind that tool.
• A small triangle in the lower right corner of a button is your clue that other tools
are available but hidden under that tool