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Teach Yourself Photoshop® in 14 Days - Introduction
 
Teach Yourself Photoshop® in 14 Days
Bront Davis
Carla Rose
Steve Mulder
Trademark Acknowledgments
All terms mentioned in this book that are known to be trademarks or services marks
have been appropriately capitalized. Hayden Books cannot attest to the accuracy of
this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting
the validity of any trademark or service mark. Photoshop is a trademark of Adobe
Systems, Inc.
Notice: The GIF Construction Set software included with this publication is provided
as shareware for your evaluation. If you try this software and find it useful, you
are requested to register it as discussed in its documentation and in the About screen
of the application. The publisher of this book has not paid the registration fee
for this software.
About the Authors
Bront Davis currently works for the Peirce Edition Project in Indianapolis,
IN. There he helps create the Critical Editions of Charles Peirce's writings.
Carla Rose is graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
She has been a TV news photographer and film editor, as well as advertising copywriter
and graphic artist. She has written all or part of about 20 computer books, including
Maclopedia, The Whole Mac, PageMaker 6.5 Complete, It's a
Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Mac, Turbocharge Your Mac, Everything You Ever Wanted
to Know About the Mac, and the forthcoming Teach Yourself Photoshop in 24
Hours. She lives near Boston, MA with her husband, audio guru Jay Rose, two sons
(both away at college), and a fluctuating number of cats.
When not scouring used bookstores in search of gorgeous, musty-smelling old media,
Steven Mulder delights in cavorting in the electronic fields of new media.
In his non-spare time, Mulder manages the online bookstore and toils over the design
of ZDNet University in Cambridge, MA, where computer classes are served web-style.
He is also author of Web Designer's Guide to Style Sheets.
http://ziff.shore.net/~courses/mulder/
Dedication
For Carol...this one and all the rest, forever.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to thank the people at Hayden books, especially
my astute Copy/Production Editor, Mr. Michael Brumitt, my alert and ever cheerful
Acquisitions Editor, Rachel Byers, my taskmaster Development Editor, who kept me
from writing in circles, Jim Chalex, and last, but certainly not least, I would like
to thank our Technical Editor, Bill Vernon, for doing a great job. Next, I would
like to thank my colleagues and co-authors who stepped in when the deadlines loomed
and threatened the completion of this book. They are my all-time favorite computer
book authors, Carla Rose and Steve Mulder. Many thanks to all. Without you guys,
it would not have happened.
Lege, lege, lege, ora et labora, relege.
Hayden Books
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Introduction
Welcome to Photoshop 4
Adobe Photoshop is without a doubt one of the most powerful image editors on the
market today, if not the most powerful. It offers professional-level capabilities
in print and electronic media. The trick is to learn how to put it to use, maximizing
its power and capabilities, yet minimize the time it takes to accomplish what you
need to do. And that's just what you are going to learn in this book.
Teach Yourself Photoshop in 14 Days is going to be your help and your guide--at
least to start. The stated goal is to make you not only proficient in the basics
of Photoshop, but to create a learning environment in which you feel comfortable
enough to experiment, test, and develop your own tips, tricks, and ultimately, skills.
This book will show you everything from the basics of opening files, manipulating
selections, and working with layers all the way to creating images for publishing
on the World Wide Web.
The skills build from chapter to chapter, starting at the basics and moving on
to more complex techniques, but I have tried to make each day modular enough so that
you can dive in and pick up a skill or technique no matter what day you are currently
working on. And if you are having problems, consult the index for an answer.
The CD-ROM that accompanies this book contains all the files used in the tutorials.
The files are at all stages of completion so that you might get a better sense of
what is really happening as we examine different processes.
Notes are scattered throughout the chapters. These focus on higher-level techniques,
tricks, and information that is not essential but useful. Use them to supplement
your understanding of Photoshop.
Without further discussion, let's begin our 14-day journey through the basics
of this fascinating and incredibly powerful software.
Understanding Photoshop
As a computer professional, the one thing I have noticed that hinders a beginner's
progress is a lack of understanding of what I call the application's metaphor,
which is to say, what the software designers were thinking when they programmed the
application. All that the beginner sees is the mountain, not yet aware of what can
be seen from the top of the mountain. Believe me, there was a lot of thought that
went into Photoshop, and not just programming thought. The designers tried, and in
large measure succeeded, in creating a very powerful, yet very intuitive, interface
for Photoshop. In a few brief paragraphs before we begin, I hope to enlarge your
perception of what Photoshop is--and perhaps what it is not.
Photoshop is foremost what you might call a digital darkroom, hence the
name Photo-shop. It can open and edit a wide variety of digital images--images
created in Photoshop or another software or traditional photographs that have been
scanned (a technique that creates a digital image of physical images). What
was once accomplished with chemicals in the photographer's darkroom is now accomplished
in the computer by manipulating pixels.
Pixel is short for picture element. In computer terms, it refers to a square
of light that comprises your screen. Take, for instance, the following image. In
the first one (upper-left corner), I created an image with the dimensions of 1 pixel
by 1 pixel. In the second (upper-right corner), 2 by 2 pixels. In the third (lower-left),
3 by 3. And the final image is 4 pixels by 4 pixels.
Figure I.1
Demonstration of pixels.
There are two ways in which computers can create graphics. One is with vectors
and the other is with bitmaps or raster images. Vectors use mathematical
formulas to define shapes onscreen. Adobe Illustrator uses this method. For us, however,
all we need to be concerned about is the raster image, which is an image that is
made up of pixels--not governed by mathematical formulae.
These images are greatly magnified (see Day 1, "Photoshop Basics," for
a discussion of views and magnification). Indeed, a pixel without magnification is
barely visible. There are 72 pixels square, for example, in every square inch of
your monitor.
This is important because this is how Photoshop creates images. In fact, this
is how all digital images are created, viewed, and edited. So, as you can imagine,
Photoshop has enormous power for editing images on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Day 1
will cover more information about creating new files.
Photoshop is also a power application for creating images. With its Paintbrush
tool, Airbrush tool, Pen tool, and Pencil tool, you can draw, paint, and airbrush
images from the ground up. These tools are all configurable to your preference--widths,
wet edges, hardness, and softness (see Day 3, "Painting and Drawing Tools,"
for a full discussion of the Painting tools).
Arguably the most powerful feature of Photoshop is the Layering feature. This
enables you to combine images and create collages by working on one part of an image
at a time. Each layer is totally separate from the others, thus enabling you to change
its opacity and edit to your heart's content without ever touching a single pixel
in the other parts of the image. We'll discuss layering on Day 8, "Layers."
And finally, the "greatest" feature of Photoshop is Undo. This
enables you to take some chances, go out on a limb and try something, then Undo and
go back to the image with which you started. And if you go too far, because Photoshop
only enables one step backward, you can choose File+Revert. This command will take
you back to the last saved version of your image.
With all of this in mind, the power and great ideas that the software designers
at Adobe Systems put into Photoshop, let's take a trip through the interface and
menus.
A Brief Overview of the Photoshop Interface
Photoshop is organized in a logical manner. When you first open the application,
it will, by default (meaning the way the program is set up to run before you change
any Preferences) open as seen in Figure I.2.
Figure I.2
The default screen arrangement for Photoshop 4.
The menus across the top of the screen contain the commands that enable you to
open and manipulate files. They are accessed by simply clicking and holding the mouse
and dragging down to the desired command. These menu commands are indicated throughout
the text as follows:
- Menu+Command+Subcommand, or
- File+Preferences+General
When you see an arrow or an ellipsis off to the right of a menu command, that
indicates that there is either a subcommand, in the case of the arrow, or a dialog
box, in the case of the ellipsis.
NOTE: The menus are handy, but time-consuming. Every time that you
have to move the mouse pointer up to one is a distraction from the work at hand.
To speed your work there are keyboard equivalents to the menu commands. These shortcuts
are presented for easy reference in Appendix A.
The Toolbox
To the left of the screen you will see a rectangular box, as shown in Figure I.3.
This is the toolbox.
Figure I.3
The toolbox.
The toolbox is command central for Photoshop. It is where you select the tools
you will use to edit images. It should always be open and available for you to access.
To select a tool, simply click it. If the toolbox does not appear on your screen,
select Windows+Show Tools.
The toolbox has more to it than meets the eye. Notice the tiny arrows at the lower
right of some of the tools buttons. This indicates that if you click and hold your
mouse button a roll-out menu will appear with other variations on the tool.
NOTE: For a full discussion and reference of the toolbox, including
shortcut keys for the tools, see Appendix A.
Summary
If you are new to the program, be prepared to be amazed. If you are somewhat familiar
or have used similar editing programs, I hope that this book helps you to further
develop your skills.
Please remember, as you read and follow the tutorials, that some of the best learning
is going to come when you take it upon yourself to try something new. Let the spirit
of experimentation guide you through these pages. Take the ideas and processes discussed
herein and make them your own by pushing beyond, trying new steps and new ideas.
With Photoshop, there is always something new to learn, and a different, perhaps
easier way, to accomplish a task.
And finally...have fun!
© Copyright, Macmillan Computer Publishing. All
rights reserved.
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