Overview
Note: This tutorial was done using Adobe Photoshop 7.0
This lesson is a brief introduction to Photoshop, I will not cover all the topics but I will cover enough of them so that you will be able to work with Photoshop yourself and edit images yourself without asking somebody else.
Adobe Photoshop maybe the singe image editing tool you need. It is a very comprehensive software that it can solve any problems or almost any problems you face with the images. You have been hearing about Photoshop all these while, everyday more and more, so here is your chance to get your hands on Photoshop. If you don’t have the software buy one, or download the trial version. Let’s get started!
Here is the screenshot from Photoshop
Tools and Options Panel
Open your Photoshop. If you don’t see Tools Toolbar already then go to Window > Tools
Below is the screenshot of the Tools. If the tool has a small trianlge at the bottom corner it means it has more than one options. To see these options just click and hold on the tool for few seconds, and you will see the options on the popup window as shown below.
Let’s go through one tool from each group and their functions. Letter inside the brackets will select the particular tool when you press.
 |
|
Options Panel
As you see below from the screenshot, Options Panel is highlighted with red. Whenever you switch from one tool to another Options Panel will be changed accordingly. Currently Brush Tool is selected, and in the Options Panel all the properties of the Brush Tool is displayed, such as: Brush Size (Type), Mode, Opacity and Flow.
Just remember to look up to the Options Panel when you choose a particular tool, because sometimes if something is selected or unselected in the Options Panel, you might not use the particular tool properly.
Working with Images
Cropping
Download this image or open any image in your Photoshop. Select the Crop Tool (Press ‘C’ to Select or Select it with your Mouse) and make a selection around the icon as shown below. (To make a selection click and pull with your mouse)
|
Make a selection
|
After you made your selection press Enter
|
Result
|
 |
 |
 |
Cropping images is actually that easy in Photoshop, just select the area you want to leave and press Enter, and you are done.
Copy & Paste
Download this image or open any image in your Photoshop. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and make a selection on the image as shown below.
|
Make a selection and press Ctrl + C or
go to Edit > Copy |
Presss Ctrl + N to open new window or |
And now press Ctrl + V to paste
or go to File > Paste |
 |
 |
 |
Whenever you make a selection and copy that area, Photoshop automatically saves the dimensions of that selection in its memory. Thus when you open a new window to paste your image, dimensions of the image already will be in the Width and Height fields.
Image Adjustment
I will not explain how to adjust images in this section, but will point out the tools that is used for image adjustment. You can find related tutorials for image adjustment in the Photoshop Tutorials section.
Go to Image > Adjustments. You will see the menu as shown below. Go ahead and try some of the effects on your photos, try to change the Brightness/Contrast, Auto Color…etc
Working with Text
Open a new window Ctrl + N (choose a bigger size window with the following dimensions; width 400 and height 300) and press OK
Select the Type Tool 
and click on the window that you just opened and type something.
If you want to make changes to your text that you just have typed, highlight it and change the properties from Options Panel
After you make your changes click on the Move Tool (V) 
to position your text on the top left corner of the window.
There is another way to change the properties of the Text in addition to the Options Panel we have discussed, it is using Character Panel. If you don’t see the Character Panel go to Windows > Character to bring up the Character Panel.
Below is the Character Panel, if you change any of the properties it should be reflected on the Text you have typed. Make sure the correct layer is selected otherwise you will not see any changes on the text. Layers will be our next discussion.
Working with Layers
Photoshop uses Layers for managing multiple (separate) objects in one window, to open your Layers panel go to Window > Layers. If you have used other image editing tools that use layers this should be familiar to you. But if you have not, just think of the Layers as Stack of books, and imagine yourself as looking at this stack of books from top. For example you can see the cover of the first book on top of the stack without a problem, however the cover of the books that are below cannot be seen that well, depending on how you have placed the books.
As you see from the image below, the Blue Circle is on Layer 2 (top) background being the Layer 0 (bottom) and Red Rectangle is on Layer 1 (middle). As I have said, layer that is on top (here it is – Layer 2) will cover the layers below (which is Layer 1 and Layer 0). Thus you see the Circle covering Rectangle. And our background is a white color which is visible from the sides of the circle and rectangle.
Here I have moved Red Rectangle to Top, as you see now Red Rectangle is the one covering Circle. To move the particular layer just click on it with your mouse and while still holding move it up or down.
Active Layer: Active layer is the layer which you are working on, for example from the image above we can see that Active Layer is the Red Rectangle (Layer 2) – how do we know it, because it is highlighted (selected).
And if you want to move particular object you should select it’s respective layer first, then only you can move it. Otherwise you will end up moving something else. The "Eye" icon on the left of the layers means they are currently visible, if you toggle them off then the object will dissappear (will become invisible) as shown below:
Save for Web
After you have completed your work I believe you would want to save it as .jpg or .gif (or any other format that Photoshop supports)
To save your image for web go to File > Save for Web or press Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S and you will see an identical window like this one.
From here you can change the image type to JPG, GIF, PNG and WBMP. You can change the quality of the image as well, the higher the quality the bigger the size will be, so take the size into account when saving big images. Because bigger the image slower it will be to download as a result it will eat up your bandwidth.
I believe here our lesson ends, I hope it helped you to start working with Photoshop. If you have any questions or comments do let me know. Good Luck!
If you found this post useful you may also want to check these out:
