Dear all, welcome to this super short tutorial on Adobe Photoshop 2021,
the most famous and professional software for photo editing! It comes with
advanced features for digital imaging, photo correction and manipulation
and several tools for vector graphic design to realize illustrations and
express your art. It also belongs to the Creative Cloud suite, under a
single or Photography subscription plan.
Do not forget to check our YouTube channel and our website to catch extra
news, tips, giveaways and much more for free!
When you open Photoshop its Home Screen page opens with everything ready
to start working. You can pick any of your most recent projects in front
of you or browse for these by going to Open on the left.
To see how to use Photoshop let's start from a new project with Create
new. At this point browse for the right template through the several
categories on top, adjusting full properties under Preset Details on the
right. You can set project name, width, height, orientation, resolution
and color codes as you like. When you click on Create the new project
opens on the main workspace, completely blank and white in color. You can
use your mouse wheel while holding down the ALT key to zoom in and out on
the big preview and the Space bar to pan and move.
Around the preview you have all the features to draw, correct and edit. On
the left you have the Tools bar, including several drawing and brushing
tools. On top there is the Menu and the Options bar, showing the properties
of the current object or tool and the Home button you can use to come back
to the Home page. On the right you have several panels to make corrections
and manage all the objects inside your project. If any of these is missing,
you can reopen any from the Window tab.
Let's understand what a project is. This is also called Photoshop document
and it is a composition of several independent objects called layers. Each
layer can be an image, a vector, a piece of text or a visual correction,
all listed under the Layers window on the right. These layers, edited and
put together, build the final appearance to be exported and rendered.
At first any new document is made by a single white layer used as
background. If you find it locked in italic just double-click on it to make
it editable.
Whereas if you open any photo this is indeed another Photoshop document
with the photo itself as unique layer. With File, Open... you can open
multiple photos, getting all of these listed on several tabs on top,
You can click on any of these to show the correct
document on the preview.
You can place any photo in another document if you need. Enable the
Rectangular Marquee tool and click and drag on the whole picture to select
it. Go to Edit, Cut and open the interested document. When you use Edit,
Paste you import the photo as a new layer under the Layers window.
To resize the document enable the Crop tool and edit the grid on the
preview. Drag from the nodes to scale, outside these to rotate and within
the grid to move. Checkerboard areas may also appear, representing blank
regions completely transparent with no pixels. Use Cancel or Commit to
undo or apply the crop.
All imported photos and images are also called pixel layers since they are
rendered in finite pixels that you can see if you zoom in enough. To edit
any pixel layer just select it from the Layers window and use any brushing
tool on the left, clicking and dragging on the preview directly. Some of
these tools are grouped, showing a white corner on their button. You can
get their full list by right-clicking on it, hovering over such button to
watch useful video hints.
Enable the Brush and the Pencil tool to draw freehand, picking the right
color from the Color panel on the right or from the preview itself by
holding down the ALT key. Then adjust the brush size, hardness, style and
several other tool properties from the Options bar on top.
With Clone Stamp and Healing Brush you can correct the photo imperfections.
First of all take any reference point by holding down the ALT key and then
brush on the picture. These tools brush pixels from such reference or cross
point, dropping exact copies with Clone Stamp and copies with matched color
with Healing Brush. You can also use Spot Healing Brush to correct small
imperfections with just one click.
Enable the Blur or the Sharpen Tool to increase or decrease the blurriness
level by brushing on the photo. Whereas use the Smudge Tool to drag the
photo pixels on any direction.
With the Dodge and the Burn tool you can increase or decrease the
brightness level of the photo highlights, midtones or lowlights. Then use
the Sponge Tool to adjust the color intensity, increasing it with Saturate
Mode and decreasing it with Desaturate Mode.
Remember to use CTRL (or CMD) and Z once or multiple times to undo any of
your past actions made.
Enable the Eraser tool to remove pixels from the photo by brushing on it,
reducing hardness to include some feather.
Photoshop has very advanced photo corrections inside Filter, Camera Raw
Filter. This includes color filters, noise reduction, color curves, HSL
sliders and the newest Color Grading option, to correct color saturation
and luminance on all the lighting ranges. Check this out!
Whereas if you need to retouch people's faces you can go to Filter, Neural
Filters... This new feature is able to add age, change the face
expressions and smooth skin imperfections. A true masterpiece to try!
With Photoshop you can also work with vector layers such as geometrical
shapes, freehand curves and pieces of text. In respect to photos these
are not rendered into pixels, so they do not lose quality and resolution
when you resize and edit these multiple times.
Enable any Shape Tool and click and drag on the preview to drop vector
lines and either regular or custom shapes, including the newest triangle.
Always use the Options bar to adjust properties, such as Fill and Stroke
colors, line thickness and style.
Whereas use the Type Tools to drop horizontal or vertical text. Click and
drag to define a text box and type inside it, setting font family, style,
distribution and color from the Options bar or the most complete Character
window. Remember to select any text to make changes effective and use
Cancel or Commit above to undo or apply text.
All these vector layers can't interact with the brushing tools seen before
because they are not made by pixels. You can render these vectors by
right-clicking on these and use Rasterize layer. At this point you can
edit and correct these just like images. Pay attention that this rendering
process is permanent.
Let's see how to manage photos and vectors from the Layers window. You can
use the eye button to hide and show each layer and the lock button to
prevent any modification on the selected layer. Whereas click on the bin
button at the bottom to delete the current layer.
The layer position in the list is also important to set the order of
visibility in case these overlap on the preview: the layer placed on top
is also put in front of all the other layers at lower positions.
Moreover you can right-click on a layer and go to Blending Options to apply
special effects including contours, glow, shadow, color overlays and more!
Whereas if you need to make basic transformations on any kind of layer just
select it and go to Edit, Transform. At this point you can move the object
by clicking and dragging and use its nodes to scale, rotate or skew, with
precise properties and Cancel/Commit buttons on top.
Photoshop also has several selection tools to define limited dashed regions
from the layer selected. These are used to contain all your next brushes,
corrections and cut-paste operations within such area, without affecting
the whole layer. For example with the Marquee Tools you can make simple
rectangular or elliptical selections; whereas with the Lasso tools you
define custom regions freehand or guided. You can also enable Quick
Selection to cover complex and wide areas that share the same color and
the Type Mask Tools to make selections by following any text content shape.
Remember to use CTRL (or CMD) and D to remove all the selections made.
Besides the brushing tools you can use the Adjustments palette to apply
corrections, this time to any pixel or vector layer. When you pick any,
you create a new adjustment layer affecting all vectors and photos below
it in position. This is composed by its overall properties on the left,
that you can open and edit by double-clicking on it; and its Layer Mask
on the right, showing where the adjustment is applied. By default this is
completely white, affecting the whole Photoshop document. If you drop the
adjustment with any selected region present, the Layer Mask will take it
shape.
To save the current document on the preview go to File and then to Save
As... Choose whether to save it online on the Cloud as a .psdc file or on
your computer as .psd. Whereas if you want to render the document to export
or print it as an image, choose .jpg or .png.
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