Photoshop: Getting Started

Getting Started

As you know, Clemson students and employees have access to the Adobe Creative Cloud for free. Photoshop is Adobe's program for photo manipulation and digital drawing. It is a raster-based program and so should not be used for creating digital or printed graphics.

This part of the course will walk you through creating in Adobe Photoshop. Remember, you can always undo anything you did in Rush with Ctrl-Z on a PC or Cmd-Z on a Mac.

Downloading Adobe Photoshop

Go to creativecloud.adobe.com
Sign in with your Clemson email without the .g (example: user@clemson.edu)
In the top menu bar, select “Apps”
Scroll down to find InDesign, select the blue “Download” button, continue the rest of your computer’s download steps

Troubleshooting

Did you log-in using your Clemson email without the .g.?
How old is your operating system? Mac users, you need at least macOS v10.13 or later. Check your operating system by clicking the apple icon in the top left corner of your screen, and going to "About this Mac". 10.13 is High Sierra. Other, newer versions that will work include Mojave and Catalina.

Getting Started

Open image

Open Photoshop, and click on File > Open and then navigate through the file browser to your desired image

Image size

Access image size by going to: Image > Image Size

The image size menu shows you how large, and what resolution your image is. Its always a good idea to take a look at the size of your image before you get started. From here you can change the size and resolution of your image to better suit your needs.

Resolution can be a tricky thing to get a handle on, but suffice to say that generally higher resolution is better. The images above are all zoomed in 500% and this is where you can really tell where the big difference is. The lower your pixel/inch ration is, the larger your individual pixels will be. This means less of them will fit in the image. This directly effects how crisp your image is/can be. So when you are looking for (or taking) images to use, go big.

Crop

Grab the Crop Tool and resize the photo to a more standard ratio. In the context menu you can click on Ratio to constrain your crop.

Working with layers

When you start a new project, the only layer you'll have is a background layer. This layer by default is locked and you can't work on it.

If you're working with a blank canvas then you can add a new layer by clicking on the square with a plus sign in the bottom right.

If you have an image already open then right-click the background layer and duplicate it.

Keep in mind, whatever layer is on top will be visible over everything below it. You can think of these like onion or paint layers.

The second image labels all of the icon tools in the layers panel.

Adjustment Layers

Adjustment layers function much like Instagram filters.

Click on the Adjustment Layers icon in the bottom of the layers menu, which looks like a + in a square. This will bring up the list of adjustments that you have to work with.

Brightness and Contrast: Brightness and Contrast is one of the most basic adjustment layers. This is a very rudimentary adjustment. It can be very helpful but it does not leave much room for subtle manipulation.
Levels: Levels is a fairly robust system for effecting the appearance of a photo. Bring up the properties window for your levels adjustment. You can achieve the same effect of the Brightness/Contrast adjustment by simply moving the outside sliders under the histogram. Give this a shot. You should notice that you can push these effects much further than you could with Brightness/Contrast.
Hue and Saturation: Hue and Saturation gives you the ability to dramatically change the appearance of color in our photos. Notice that you can change the opacity of the layer for an even different result.
Black and White: This adjustment simply turns your photo into a grayscale image; however, it provides a number of options for however you want the colors of your photo to be interpreted. Play with these values and notice the wide range of results that you can achieve.
Color Balance, Photo Filter, Selective Color: These are three adjustments that are particularly helpful for making dramatic or targeted color effects.. The best way to get a handle on what they can do is to just play with them. There are also many more adjustments available, some of them are more useful than others.

Making selections

The most common selection tools in photoshop are displayed in the image provided here.

Magic Wand: This tool lets you select a consistently colored area without having to trace its outline. You specify the selected color range relative to the original color you click.
Quick Selection: Auto selects what it thinks you want when you click and drag over an object.
Polygon Tool: Creates a shape with an arbitrary number of sides as a markup. The shape created can be filled.
Lasso Tool: Drag a freehand selection around the object or area you want to select, in a similar way to how you would outline something on a piece of paper with a pen or pencil.
Magnetic Lasso: Creates selections, automatically clinging to edges of contrast objects.
Single Row & Column: Defines the border as a 1‑pixel‑wide row or column. Click near the area you want to select, and then drag the marquee to the exact location. If no marquee is visible, increase the magnification of your image view.
Elliptical & Rectangular Marquee: Both of these tools function the same way by selecting an area in their respective shapes. Hold shift for a square or circle.

Layer masking

Once you've made a selection the easiest way to cut it out of a background is to click the layer mask icon pictured here.

You can create two types of masks:

Layer masks are resolution-dependent bitmap images that are edited with the painting or selection tools.
Vector masks are resolution independent and are created with a pen or shape tool.

Layer and vector masks are nondestructive, which means you can go back and re‑edit the masks later without losing the pixels they hide. In the Layers panel, both the layer and vector masks appear as an additional thumbnail to the right of the layer thumbnail.

The Properties panel provides additional controls to adjust a mask. You can change the opacity of a mask to let more or less of the masked content show through, invert the mask, or refine the mask borders, as with a selection area.

Retouching tools

The Spot Healing Brush and the Healing Brush both allow the user to replace unwanted items.

The Healing Brush allows the user to choose a particular Source to transfer. The Spot Healing Brush does not. The Spot Healing Brush looks outside the brushwork, analyzes the shapes there and interprets them into the retouching along with colors and values – with varying degrees of success based upon the data in the surrounding areas.

The Patch Tool is primarily used to repair larger areas of an image, or get rid of any distractions or blemishes. You can make a lasso-like selection around the problem area and then drag the selection to an area you want to use to cover the original selection.

The Content Aware Move Tool in Photoshop lets you select part of a picture and move it to a new position. Photoshop fills in the area that is left behind by matching elements from the photograph.

The Red Eye Tool is self explanatory. Create a selection around the red pupil and hit enter.

Shape tools

From the toolbar, right-click the Shape tool icon to bring up the various shape tool options — Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Triangle, Polygon, Line, and Custom Shape. Select a tool for the shape you want to draw.

Text tools

You can add text and shapes of different color, styles, and effects to an image. Use the Horizontal Type and Vertical Type tools to create and edit text. You can create single-line text or paragraph text.

Saving

Access saving options by going to: File>Save As

.PSD This is Photoshop’s project file format. This means that a .psd saves all of your layers, edits, and resources at the highest possible quality.
.JPEG you are probably familiar with .jpg as it is the most standard format for compressed photos.
.PNG These are uncompressed images, which means that the files will be larger than a .jpg, but they preserve every detail, including transparency. Use .png for graphics, high-quality printing, and preserving transparency. Avoid this file format for photos that you are going to post online.

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