Getting Started with Photoshop

The Photoshop Desktop | Getting Images into Photoshop | Moving Around an Image | Tips for using Photoshop

This section provides an brief introduction to the Photoshop desktop, how to bring images into Photoshop, and some tips for working in Photoshop. For more detailed information about working in Photoshop, see the other sections of this module.

Photoshop is a complicated program and can seem intimidating at first. But you don't need to know everything about Photoshop in order to use it productively. Learn how to do one task, and then you can add to your knowledge as you go along. Good luck!

The Photoshop Desktop

When you open Photoshop, the Photoshop desktop appears.

Components of the Photoshop desktop include the title bar, menus, options bar, status bar, toolbox, image window, and palettes.

Title, Menu, and Options bars

At the top of the Photoshop desktop includes the title bar, menu bar, and options bar.

Options bar

The title bar includes the label "Adobe Photoshop" and, in brackets, the current filename (in the above example, Waterfall.psd) the current view (50%), and the color mode and bits per channel (RGB/8#).
Menus (File, Edit, Image, Layer, Select, Filter, View, Window, and Help) appears right below the title bar. Click on a menu name and its menu items will appear.
The options bar appears below the menus. Options appear for the tool that is currently selected in the toolbox. The above example shows options for the Type tool.

The Toolbox

The toolbox contains tools for working with images in Photoshop. Only one tool is selected at any given time. To select a tool, click on its icon in the toolbox.

Some important tools are briefly described below. Toolbox tools are used for most Photoshop tasks, so more detailed explanations of how to use particular tools appear throughout this module.

Some Important Tools (To access a tool, click its icon in the toolbox.)
Tool	Name	Purpose / how to use
	Marquee	Click and drag to select part of the image
	Move	Click and drag to move a selected area or an entire layer.
	Crop	Click and drag to specify area to crop. Press Enter key to crop or Escape key to cancel.
	Type	Click the image with the type tool where you want to add type. Then start typing.
	Zoom	Click or drag to zoom in (to zoom out, press the Alt key)
	Hand	Drag with the hand tool to move around an image

Palettes

Palettes enable you to perform a wide variety of tasks in Photoshop. To display or hide particular palettes, go to the Window menu and choose a palette name.


Window menu	Palettes

Palettes are usually organized into groups. In the above example, Layers, Channels, and Paths are a group. You can easily move a palette group by dragging its blue bar (at the top of the group). To shrink a palette group, double-click on its blue bar. To hide a palette group, click its close box (the "X" on the right side of the blue bar).

You can drag the tabs of palettes to move them around, or to combine them into other groups.

To reset palette locations to the default, choose Window>Workspace>Reset Palette Locations.

Rulers

To display or hide rulers, choose Ctrl-R or View>Rulers.

Rulers show the size of your image. For example, the above image is 192 pixels wide by 128 pixels high. To change the unit of measurement (such as from pixels to inches), double click on the ruler, or go to Preferences (Edit>Preferences>Units & Rulers). If you are creating an image for the Web, use pixels as the unit of measurement.

The Status Bar

The status bar at the bottom of the Photoshop desktop provides information about your current view, file and currently selected tool (in this example, the view is now 50%, the file size is 804K, and the move tool is currently selected.

Getting Images into Photoshop

When you first launch Photoshop, the Photoshop desktop (described above) appears. But in order to do anything, you need to have an image. There are three main ways you can bring an image into Photoshop:

You can open an existing image file by choosing File > Open or File>Browse. Photoshop can open most image file types.
If you computer is connected to a scanner with a Photoshop plug-in that has been properly installed, you can scan an image into Photoshop by Choosing File > Import. (For more information on this, see the Scanning section.)
You can create a new Photoshop file from scratch. To do this, choose File > New. Give your file a name, and then choose a preset from the Preset dropdown menu, or enter information for width, height, resolution, and color mode (usually RGB). (For more information on these variables, see Imaging Concepts.) Then click OK.

Moving Around An Image

When editing images in Photoshop, you can do many tasks more effectively if you zoom in and move around the image. You can zoom in close to make adjustments to small areas, then zoom back out to see how your edits have affected the overall image.

The main tools for zooming and moving around an image are the zoom tool, the hand tool, and the navigator palette.

To zoom in, choose the Zoom tool ( ) and then click or click and drag in the image.

When you zoom in, the zoom percentage (or view size) increases. The current zoom percentage is shown in the status bar and at the top of the image window. The zoom percentage shows the magnification at which you are viewing the image (not the actual size of the image).
A quick way to go to 100% view size is to double-click on the zoom tool icon in the toolbox.
To zoom out, press the ALT key while you click with the zoom tool.
Use the Hand tool () to move around the image in the window when you are zoomed-in.
When using another tool, you can press the spacebar to temporarily access the hand tool. You can then drag to move around the image. When you stop pressing the spacebar, you will return to using the other tool.
To zoom and move around the image with the Navigator palette, choose Window>Show Navigator. The navigator palette will appear:

You can use the navigator palette to zoom in or out of an image (by dragging the navigator slider) or to move around the image by dragging the view box (when you are zoomed in). The view box shows the part of the image that is currently being displayed in the main image window.

For multiple windows of an image, choose Window>Arrange>New Window. This way you could zoom in very close to part of an image, while also displaying the entire image on your screen in another window at the same time.

Tips for using Photoshop

Displaying and hiding palettes and the toolbox

Press Tab to hide palettes and toolbox.
Press Shift-Tab to hide palettes.

Correcting mistakes

Choose Edit-Step Backward to undo your last action.
Choose Window-Show History to view the History palette. Then you can click on a previous history state to undo one or more of your actions.
Choose File-Revert to return to last saved version of file.

Getting Help

To access online help from within Photoshop CS, press the F1 key or choose Help > Photoshop Help. .