Introduction to Adobe Photoshop – The Photoshop Workspace & Tools

Open Photoshop
Using the menu along the top of the work space go to WINDOW and untick all of the palettes except for OPTION and TOOLS

You will now open a new document. FILE > NEW > and have a look at the dialogue box. First of all give the document a name. Then select DEFAULT PHOTOSHOP SIZE from the Presets menu. Set the Colour Mode to RGB.

Place the mouse on the bottom right corner of the document. Click and drag on the small square to resize window.

Now have a look at the TOOLS palette to the left of the workspace. Holding the mouse over a tool should give you a TOOL TIP. Try it for each tool to see what they do. The TOOL TIP will also give you a keyboard letter. This is a KEYBOARD SHORTCUT. Try changing the tools by using the KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS.

Click the mouse on a tool with a black triangle in the bottom corner of the square. Hold the mouse down and a context sensitive menu will appear showing you more options for the tool.

Towards the bottom of the tools palette there should be a BLACK and a WHITE square. This represents the foreground and background colours, as they are currently set.

Double click the mouse on the top square. This will open a SWATCH palette. Using the mouse click in the coloured area to change the foreground colour. Experiment and see what colours you have available to you before you choose one. Then click the mouse on OK. Now you can see that the foreground colour square in the tools palette has changed colour.

Now find the BRUSH TOOL and click on it.
Notice the OPTIONS palette below the menu at the top of the workspace changes. From the OPTIONS palette you can change the brush attributes such as size, hardness and so on. Try painting in the canvas, first with one brush size then change to another. Try changing the foreground colour and the brush shape and draw an abstract design on the canvas.

When you drop down the BRUSH menu from the options palette you will notice a small black triangle to the right of the palette. Click on this triangle and you will drop down a menu of further choices. Try some SPECIAL EFFECTS brushes. What happens when you change the OPACITY of the brush from the options palette? Now you will select part of the image. Find the RECTANGULAR MARQUEE TOOL form the tools palette.

Click the mouse over the canvas and holding it down drag out a rectangle. This should appear as a dashed line around the area you have selected.

Changing the tool to the MOVE TOOL click on the area you originally selected and drag the selection to one side. Try this a few times.

Now use the UNDO command by going to the EDIT menu at the top of the workspace and dropping down to STEP BACKWARDS until the picture returns to how it was before you started using the select tool. Change the MARQUEE TOOL to an ELIPTICAL MARQUEE and make another selection. Use the CMD+C keyboard shortcut to copy the selection. Now use CMD+V to paste the selection. Changing the tool to the MOVE TOOL click on the area you originally selected and drag the pasted selection to one side.

Now go to the WINDOW menu at the top of the workspace and drop down the menu to LAYERS and make sure this item has a tick by it. Have a look at this palette. It is a very important palette that you will learn to use a lot. To understand LAYERS think of each layer as a sheet of glass laid over each other. At the moment you should have two sheets of glass, or layers in the LAYERS PALETTE. The bottom layer is named BACKGROUND and the top layer is called LAYER1.

Use ALT+CMD+Z keyboard shortcut to step backwards. The top layer will disappear. When you cut and paste from an object Photoshop will automatically paste the selection to a new layer, this is what you have just deleted. Now use the SHFT+CMD+Z to step forwards. The LAYER reappears. Put the mouse over layer 1, click and drag it down to the dustbin at the bottom of the layers palette. This is another way of DELETING LAYERS.

In a similar way you can create a NEW LAYER by clicking the mouse on the symbol of a turning page to the left of the dustbin in the layers palette.

Make sure the new LAYER 1 is selected. Now draw in the canvas as before. Click the mouse on the EYE symbol on the left of the Layer 1. This turns the layer off.

Now try using the OPACITY control in the layers palette. This changes the opacity of the layer you have selected. There are many other ways of changing the ways in which layers can be blended together. See if you can find some of them.

Create another layer as before and now paint in this one. Using the mouse drag the new top layer so it swaps places with Layer 1. In this way you can change the order of layers.

Close this document by using the CMD+W keyboard shortcut.