(upbeat electronic music)
- [Gareth] Hello and welcome to first video
in this beginner's guide to Adobe Photoshop.
In this tutorial we are going to kick things off
from the very start.
In this video we are going to take a look
at the Adobe Photoshop interface.
Now the first version of Photoshop was released
in the late 1980s.
With all the innovations and new features
that have been introduced over the years,
up until now the interface itself
has not changed all that much.
For those of you that are completely new to Photoshop,
I'm going to show you around and introduce you to some
of the things you need to be aware of.
Now I'm currently using Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 for Mac.
If you're using an earlier version or Windows,
some things may be a little different in parts
but in principle it should be the same.
So if you have Photoshop open and wish to follow along,
you will need to first come up to Window,
scroll down to Workspace
and scroll down and select Essentials.
Then to make sure we all have the same setup,
we must again go to Window, Workspace,
and then scroll down and select Reset Essentials.
This will then set the interface
to the Essentials default layout
and you should have something that looks like this.
Now don't worry if your setup
is not exactly the same as mine here,
what you should have is the default settings.
Just follow along and you should be fine.
What you will come to learn later on is
that you can customize this layout
but what would help right now is for you to have the same
or similar layout so you can follow along with me.
Now one other thing you need to make sure you have active
is the application frame.
The application frame is the gray space
you see here in the background.
If we come again to Window and scroll down to the bottom,
we have the Application Frame here.
So if I click this to turn it off, we can see the desktop.
Now we can work like this but I find it must easier
to work with the application frame on.
So for the duration of this course,
we will need the application frame on.
So I'll come back to Window, scroll down
and click to activate it there, perfect.
So this is Adobe CC
and with CS6 and CC we have this dark interface.
If you're using an earlier version,
you'll be looking at the light interface.
Now if for whatever reason you wish
to toggle the interface color,
if you come to Photoshop on the top toolbar,
I believe this is in Edit for Windows,
scroll down to Preferences and select Interface.
It's here you can toggle the lightness and darkness
at the top of this menu.
I like it dark so I'm going to select the darkest option
and click OK.
So to begin, I'm going to open up a document,
this document is going help me demonstrate
various functionality of the program
which we are going to be covering
a little later on in this video
so be sure to open this up and follow along.
Now this document can be found in the introduction folder
in the project folder.
Now you can download this project folder for free.
The download link is in the description.
So with the project folder open,
click on Introduction, Interface Introduction
and open the Interface Introduction file
and you should have something that looks like this.
Okay so let's take a closer look at the interface.
So on the far left we have this tall, slim panel.
This is the tools panel and contains all the tools
that can be used in Photoshop.
As you can see, we have lots of icons here.
To activate the tool, we simply click it
or press one of the many shortcut buttons on the keyboard.
We know which tool is active
because it will have a highlight square behind it
on the tools panel.
In Photoshop we will be using many tools
and most tools have their own unique mouse-cursor icon.
You will notice that as we use the tool,
the mouse cursor will change,
indicating which tool we have activated.
So if we look carefully,
we can see that almost all the icons
have a little white arrow in the bottom right corner.
If we click and hold an icon with a white arrow,
this will reveal more tools in that set.
For example, if I click and hold on the pen tool,
we can see an extra four tools within that set.
If I click and hold on the shape tool,
we can see a variety of tools
that can be created very easily.
So keep in mind that some tools work in sets.
Now if we take a closer look at the bottom of this panel,
we can see two overlapping squares.
Now if you're new to Photoshop,
you may not be familiar with this.
What this represents is a foreground color
and a background color.
The top square is the foreground
and the bottom square is the background color.
So right now we can see that the foreground color
on the top is black and the background color is white.
Now if you look closely, just above the foreground
and background color in the tools panel,
we have this little button
called swap foreground and background.
And if I press this, it's going to swap the foreground
and background color like so.
So very easily, we can swap the foreground color
and the background color.
Now to the left of the swap foreground and background
we have another little button
and this is the Default Foreground and Background.
If I press this, it's going to set the foreground
and background squares to black and white.
Now we can't really see this happening at the moment
as our colors are already black and white,
though should the foreground
and background color be set to other colors,
clicking this will set them to black and white.
So as you can see, the tools menu
is currently in one column.
If we look closely up to the top left of the tools panel,
we can see these little arrows pointing right.
If I come and click this once,
we can change the panel to a double column
and if we press this again,
we can go back to the single column.
For the duration of this course,
I'm going to click and set my tools panel to a single row.
Now if we move to the top of our window,
we can see the standard toolbar across the top.
From here we can access various properties, controls,
and initiate some of the creative features in Photoshop.
But we're not going to go into this too much right now.
Just under the top bar, we have the control panel.
The control panel spans the entire width of the screen,
just under the main menu at the top.
Now this control panel is really useful
as this will display various properties and options
of a particular tool you have selected at any given time.
You will soon realize that this is one
of the most key panels in the program
and as you use Photoshop,
you will be referring to this panel a lot.
So if I move down through the tools menu
and click on each tool,
notice how the control panel changes.
This is displaying all the various tools
and options of that tool
that can be toggled and used accordingly.
Later in the course you will be learning
how we will use this panel
as we start to use the various tools in the tools panel.
So keep in mind, as you use your tools, keep an eye
on the control panel as this is really useful.
Moving over the the right-hand side,
we have some panel visible
and another slim panel with icons.
These icons represent panels that can be made visible
by clicking on them.
Here we have history and properties.
If I click on the icon once, the panel will snap out.],
if I click the icon below,
this will snap to reveal that panel.
If I click the icon again, the panel will snap back in.
Next to this we have some panels that are already visible.
Here we can currently see the layers, libraries,
and color panel.
Now if you look carefully,
these panels also include other panels as tabs.
For example, on this layers panel,
we also have the channels panel and the paths panel.
What you will soon discover is that these panels,
like the control panel, are essential
in order to produce work in Adobe Photoshop.
In order to have a swift workflow in this program,
it will help to have a comfortable setup of these panels.
Now in Photoshop you can arrange
and customize these panels in various ways.
I'll be demonstrating how to do this in the next episode
and I'll be recommending an effective setup
though what you see here is a default setup.
Now if I come to the very bottom of the window,
we have this thin strip.
This also contains some useful tools and visual aids.
If we look over on the far left,
we have the magnification of our document.
This will give you an indication, at a glance,
of what percentage we are looking
at the artwork in, the canvas area.
We can also use this to zoom in and out
of our document precisely.
We can do this by clicking in the box
and typing in a specific value.
For example, I can type in 50 and press enter
and I will see my artwork at 50%.
To the right of this, we have a visual aid box.
To the right of this, we can see a little white arrow.
Now if I click this, we can choose from a list
of what we want to display in this box,
for example, I'm going to choose Document Dimensions.
In here I can see the size of my document.
If I click and hold on this box,
it will also give me a quick glance at the width, height
and resolution of my document, convenient.
So next I want to touch on document tabs.
Now what are document tabs?
Well currently we have this document open
and if we look carefully
in the top left corner just under the control panel
we have a tab that shows the document name.
Now sometimes you may find yourself
using multiple documents at any time.
In Photoshop you can have multiple documents open at once.
For example, let's quickly create a new document.
I'm going to come to File, New and just click OK
and there it is.
And let's make one more, File, New, and click OK
and we have another.
Now look again closely at the top left
just under the control panel,
this time we have three tabs.
Now we can click these to navigate to other documents.
If I click the far left tab,
we are back to our first document.
If I click the next tab along to the right,
we can see the new document
and if I click the next tab along,
we can see the other document.
So as we use multiple documents,
we can simply click on these tabs to navigate around.
So when we start to use multiple documents
later on in the course,
we will be using document tabs in this way.
So I'm going to close these two documents down
by clicking on the x icon on the far left of the tabs
until I am back to my original document.
So that's a brief overview of the Adobe Photoshop interface.
In the next video, we will be taking a closer look
at the work panels where I will be showing you
how you can customize your panel layout
to get a more comfortable and tailored workspace.
See you in the next video.
(upbeat music)