Photoshop CC For Dummies E-Book

Peter Bauer

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 634

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Stretch your creativity beyond the cloud with thisfully-updated Photoshop guide! Photoshop puts amazing design and photo-editingtools in the hands of creative professionals andhobbyists everywhere, and the latest version - Photoshop CC - ispacked with even more powerful tools to help you manage and enhanceyour images. This friendly, full-color guide introducesyou to the basics of Photoshop CC and provides clear explanationsof the menus, panels, tools, options, and shortcuts you'll use themost. Plus, you'll learn valuable tips for fixing common photoflaws, improving color quality, adjusting brightness, removingunwanted background elements, and more. * Covers the new Photoshop CC release which brings even morefeatures to over four million photographers, graphic designers, webdevelopers, and other Photoshop professionals * Teaches the essentials for first-time users before moving on tomore advanced techniques like removing blemishes and wrinkles,creating composite images, and working with layers, filters,levels, and curves * Walks you through adjusting brightness, enhancing color, addingshadows and highlights, decreasing digital noise, taking advantageof Camera Raw, and optimizing your images for print and theweb The sky's the limit for stunning photos and innovative imageswith Photoshop CC For Dummies in your designtoolbox.

Leseprobe

Photoshop®CC For Dummies®

Published byJohn Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030-5774

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Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2013934760

ISBN 978-1-118-64575-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-65136-0 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-65137-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-65145-2 (ebk)

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Author

Peter Bauer is a member of the Photoshop Hall of Fame, an award-winning fine-art photographer, and the Help Desk director for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). He has authored more than a dozen books on Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, computer graphics, and photography. Pete is also the host of video-training titles at Lynda.com and a contributing writer for Photoshop User magazine. He appears regularly as a member of the Photoshop World Instructor Dream Team, hosting Help Desk Live! As NAPP Help Desk director, Pete personally answers thousands of e-mail questions annually about Photoshop and computer graphics. He has contributed to and assisted on such projects as special effects for feature films and television, major book and magazine publications, award-winning websites, and fine art exhibitions. He serves as a computer graphics efficiency consultant for a select corporate clientele, and shoots exclusive photographic portraiture. Pete’s prior careers have included bartending, theater, broadcast journalism, professional rodeo, business management, and military intelligence interrogation. Pete and his wife, Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell, of the University of Notre Dame Law School, live in South Bend, Indiana.

Dedication

I have written (and John Wiley & Sons has published) this book for you — the many who learn and live by the written word. Whether on paper or tablet, these words and illustrative figures were put here for you. There is no irony in the fact that you’ll use these words to produce pictures.

Author’s Acknowledgments

First, I’d like to thank Bob Woerner, Paul Levesque, and the rest of the superb crew at John Wiley & Sons that put the book together. I’d also like to acknowledge Scott and Kalebra Kelby, Jean Kendra, Larry Becker, and Dave Moser of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). With their support, I’m the Help Desk director for NAPP, and get to share my Photoshop knowledge with tens of thousands of NAPP members — and with you. I also thank my Help Desk colleagues Nicole S. Young (Nicolesy) and Rob Sylvan for their support during the development of this project.

Another great group from whom I continue to receive support are my colleagues on the Photoshop World Instructor Dream Team. If you haven’t been to Photoshop World, try to make it — soon. Rather than “Photoshop conference,” think “Photoshop festival.” Where else can you see suits and slackers, side by side, savoring every single syllable? It’s more than just training and learning: It’s a truly intellectually invigorating environment. And, of course, I thank my wife, the wonderful Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell of the Notre Dame Law School, for her unwavering support during yet another book project.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We're proud of this book; please send us your comments at http://dummies.custhelp.com. For other comments, please contact our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 877-762-2974, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3993, or fax [phone].

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

Acquisitions and Editorial

Senior Project Editor: Paul Levesque

Executive Editor: Bob Woerner

Copy Editor: John Edwards

Technical Editor: Dennis Cohen

Editorial Manager: Leah Michael

Editorial Assistant: Annie Sullivan

Sr. Editorial Assistant: Cherie Case

Cover Photo: Courtesy of Peter Bauer

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Katharine Crocker

Layout and Graphics: Jennifer Creasey, Joyce Haughey, Jennifer Mayberry

Proofreaders: Melissa Cossell, Linda Seifert

Indexer: Potomac Indexing, LLC

Publishing and Editorial for Technology Dummies

Richard Swadley, Vice President and Executive Group Publisher

Andy Cummings, Vice President and Publisher

Mary Bednarek, Executive Acquisitions Director

Mary C. Corder, Editorial Director

Publishing for Consumer Dummies

Kathleen Nebenhaus, Vice President and Executive Publisher

Composition Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

Photoshop® CC For Dummies®

Visit www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/photoshopcc to view this book's cheat sheet.

Introduction

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most important computer programs of our age. It’s made photo editing a commonplace thing, something for the everyperson. Still, Photoshop can be a scary thing, comprising a jungle of menus and panels and tools and options and shortcuts as well as a bewildering array of add-ons and plug-ins. And that’s why you’re holding this book in your hands. And why I wrote it. And why John Wiley & Sons published it.

You want to make sense of Photoshop — or, at the very least, be able to work competently and efficiently in the program, accomplishing those tasks that need to get done. You want a reference that discusses how things work and what things do, not in a technogeek or encyclopedic manner, but rather as an experienced friend might explain something to you. Although step-by-step explanations are okay if they show how something works, you don’t need rote recipes that don’t apply to the work you do. You don’t mind discovering tricks, as long as they can be applied to your images and artwork in a productive, meaningful manner. You’re in the right place!

About This Book

This is a For Dummies book, and as such, it was produced with an eye toward you and your needs. From Day One, the goal has been to put into your hands the book that makes Photoshop understandable and usable. You won’t find a technical explanation of every option for every tool in every situation, but rather a concise explanation of those parts of Photoshop you’re most likely to need. If you happen to be a medical researcher working toward a cure for cancer, your Photoshop requirements might be substantially more specific than what you’ll find covered here. But for the overwhelming majority of the people who have access to Adobe Photoshop, this book provides the background needed to get your work done with Photoshop.

As I updated this book, I intentionally tried to strike a balance between the types of images with which you’re most likely to work and those visually stimulating (yet far less common) images of unusual subjects from faraway places. At no point in this book does flavor override foundation. When you need to see a practical example, that’s what I show you. I worked to ensure that each piece of artwork illustrates a technique and does so in a meaningful, nondistracting way for you.

You’ll see that I used mostly Apple computers in producing this book. That’s simply a matter of choice and convenience. You’ll also see (if you look closely) that I shoot mostly with Canon cameras and use Epson printers. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t shoot with Nikon, or that you shouldn’t print with HP or Canon. If that’s what you have, if it’s what you’re comfortable with, and if it fulfills your needs, stick with it! You’ll also find that I mention Wacom drawing tablets here and there (and devoted one of the final chapters to the subject). Does that mean you should have one? If you do any work that relies on precise cursor movement (like painting, dodging, burning, path creation and editing, cloning, healing, patching, or lassoing, just to name a few), yes, I do recommend a Wacom Cintiq display or Intuos tablet. Next to more RAM and good color management, it’s the best investment just about any Photoshop user can make.

One additional note: If you’re brand new to digital imaging and computers, this probably isn’t the best place to start. I do indeed make certain assumptions about your level of computer knowledge (and, to a lesser degree, your knowledge of digital imaging). But if you know your File⇒Open from your File⇒Close and can find your lens cap with both hands, read Chapter 1, and you’ll have no problem with Photoshop CC For Dummies.

How This Book Is Organized

Photoshop CC For Dummies is primarily a reference book. As such, you can check the Table of Contents or the index for a specific subject, flip to those pages, and get the information you need. You can also start at the beginning and read from cover to cover (just to make sure that you don’t miss a single tip, technique, or joke). To give you an indication of the type of information in each chapter, I organized the book into parts. Here’s a quick look at what sort of content you can find in each part.

Part I: Getting Started with Photoshop CC

The first set of chapters present the basic operation of Photoshop, what you need to know to get around in the program, and the core process of getting images into Photoshop and back out again. If you’re new to digital imaging, and particularly unfamiliar with Photoshop, make sure to read Chapter 1 through Chapter 3. If you’ve worked with Photoshop or another image-editing program and aren’t quite sure about the concept of resolution or which file formats are best for which purposes, don’t overlook Chapter 2. Chapter 4 is the meat and potatoes of Photoshop: scanning and downloading images from cameras, cropping to fit specific print and frame sizes, and printing or posting your images on the web — all in one nice, tidy package.

Part II: Easy Enhancements for Digital Images

In Chapters 5 through 9, you discover ideas and techniques for improving the appearance of your images. You read about tonality (the lightness and darkness of the image), color correction (making the image’s color look natural), and making selections to isolate individual parts of your image for correction. Part II also includes a full chapter on the Raw file format for digital cameras — what it is, why it’s important, and how to determine whether it’s right for you. At the end of this part, I include a chapter on the most common problems in digital photos: red-eye, wrinkles, and unwanted objects. And, yes, that chapter includes what to do about those problems, too!

Part III: Creating “Art” in Photoshop

The chapters in Part III take a walk on the creative side. Although not everyone wants to use Photoshop as a digital painting program, everyone should understand how to get around in the complex and daunting Brush panel. Compositing images (making one picture from two or more), adding text (whether a simple copyright notice or an entire page), using paths, and adding layer styles are all valuable skills for just about all folks who work with Photoshop, even if they don’t consider their work to be “art.” You’ll also find info about how to integrate your iPad into your Photoshop workflow.

Part IV: Power Photoshop

The two chapters in Part IV are more specialized than the rest of the book. If you don’t work in a production environment (even regularly cropping to the same size for printing on your inkjet printer can count as production), you might not need to use Actions in Photoshop. But you find far more in Chapter 16 than just Actions and scripting! It also includes information on creating PDF presentations for on-screen viewing, multipage PDFs to share (or print quickly) sets of images, and a look at Contact Sheet II, used to help you stay organized. Chapter 17 explores Photoshop’s video-editing capabilities. With more and more digital cameras and smart phones capturing video, here’s an introduction to working with both video and animation in Photoshop.

Part V: The Part of Tens

The final part of this book, The Part of Tens, was both the easiest and most difficult section to prepare. It was easy because, well, the chapters are short. It was incredibly tough because it’s so hard to narrow any Photoshop-related list to just ten items. Photoshop is such a beautifully complex and deep program that I had a very hard time restricting myself to just ten things to know about the specialized and technical features of Photoshop, just ten reasons a Wacom tablet can be your best friend, and just ten things you need to know about high dynamic range (HDR) photography.

Keep in mind, too, that each section includes additional web content, including the traditional For Dummies Cheat Sheet, an entire chapter on my favorite tips and tricks, an in-depth look at Photoshop’s various blending modes, and more.

Conventions Used in This Book

To save some space and maintain clarity, I use an arrow symbol as shorthand for Photoshop menu commands. I could write this:

Move the cursor onto the word Image at the top of your screen and press the mouse button. Continuing to press the mouse button, move the cursor downward to the word Adjustments. Still pressing the mouse button, move the cursor to the right and downward onto the words Shadow/Highlight. Release the mouse button.

But it makes more sense to write this:

Choose Shadow/Highlight from the Image⇒Adjustments menu.

Or even to use this:

Choose Image⇒Adjustments⇒Shadow/Highlight.

You’ll also note that I include keyboard shortcuts (when applicable) for both Mac and Windows. Generally the shortcuts are together, with Mac always first, and they look like this:

Move the selection to a separate layer with the shortcut +Shift+J/Ctrl+Shift+J.

Icons Used in This Book

You’ll see icons in the margins of this book that indicate something special. Here, without further ado, is the gallery:

This icon tells you that I’m introducing a new feature, something just added to the program with Photoshop CC. If you’re brand new to Photoshop yourself, you can ignore this icon — it’s all new to you. If you’re an experienced Photoshop user, take note.

When I have a little secret or shortcut to share with you — something that can make your life easier, smoother, or more convenient — you see the Tip icon.

This icon doesn’t appear very often, but when it does, read carefully! I reserve the Warning icon for those things that can really mess up your day — things that can cause you to lose work by ruining your file or prevent Photoshop from fulfilling your wishes. If I were to give a quiz afterward, every Warning would be included! (Actually, they do appear on my exams — ask my students!)

The Remember icon shows you good-to-know stuff, things that are applicable in a number of different places in Photoshop, or things that can make your Photoshop life easier.

You might notice this icon in a place or two in the book. It’s not common because I exclude most of the highly technical background info — you know, the boring techno-geek concepts behind Photoshop. But when you do see the icon, it indicates something that you probably should know.

How to Use This Book

This is a reference book, not a lesson-based workbook or a tips-and-tricks cookbook. When you have a question about how something in Photoshop works, flip to the Table of Contents or the index to find your spot. You certainly can read the chapters in order, from cover to cover, to make sure that you get the most out of it. Nonetheless, keep this book handy while you work in Photoshop. (Reading from cover to cover not only ensures that you find out the most about Photoshop, but it also guarantees that you don’t miss a single anecdote or joke.)

Unless you’re borrowing a friend’s copy or you checked this book out of the library or you’re reading it on your iPad, I suggest you get comfortable with the thought of sticky notes and bent page corners. Photoshop is a very complex program — no one knows everything about Photoshop. And many concepts and techniques in Photoshop are hard to remember, especially if you don’t use them often. Bookmark those pages so that they’re easy to find the next time because you’re sure to be coming back time and again to Photoshop CC For Dummies.

Where to Go from Here

Occasionally, we have updates to our technology books. If this book does have technical updates, they will be posted at

www.dummies.com/go/photoshopccfdupdates

Part I

Getting Started with Photoshop CC

Visit www.dummies.com for great For Dummies content online.

In this part . . .

Get an introduction to Photoshop.

Discover “pixels” and see how they form a digital image.

Find out which file formats you need and when you need them.

Develop an understanding of Photoshop’s menus, panels, and tools.

Master the basic skills: bringing images into Photoshop, organizing the image files, and getting those images on paper with your own printer or a photo lab.

1

Welcome to Photoshop!

In This Chapter

What Photoshop does very well, kind of well, and just sort of, well . . .

What you need to know to work with Photoshop

What you need to know about installing Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is, without question, the leading image-editing program in the world. Photoshop has even become somewhat of a cultural icon. It’s not uncommon to hear Photoshop used as a verb (“That picture is obviously Photoshopped!”), and you’ll even see references to Photoshop in the daily comics and cartoon strips. And now you’re part of this whole gigantic phenomenon called Photoshop.

Before I take you on this journey through the intricacies of Photoshop, I want to introduce you to Photoshop in a more general way. In this chapter, I tell you what Photoshop is designed to do, what it can do (although not as capably as job-specific software), and what you can get it to do if you try really, really hard. I also review some basic computer operation concepts and point out a couple of places where Photoshop is a little different than most other programs. At the end of the chapter, I have a few tips for you on installing Photoshop to ensure that it runs properly.

Before we get started, however, let me fill you in on a few major changes. Photoshop CC is generally purchased as a download, whether through licensing the software or by subscribing. (If you don’t have the bandwidth to download such a huge file, contact Adobe Customer Support about getting the program on DVD.) There is only one version of Photoshop CC, no “standard” and “Extended” versions like in the old days. All of the features that used to be Extended-only are available to all Photoshop CC users. In addition, Bridge CC is not part of the Photoshop download — you’ll need to download it separately. And note that Bridge’s Output panel, the powerful Adobe Output Manager (AOM), has been removed from Bridge. Without AOM, Bridge CC doesn’t have PDF presentation and web gallery capabilities. It’s thought that at some point Adobe will make AOM an optional install for Bridge CC. But if you rely on those features, keep your older version of Bridge installed until such time as AOM is available for Bridge CC.

As for licensing versus subscribing to the Creative Cloud, that’s a decision you’ll need to make on your own. Adobe.com has lots of information on subscribing to the Creative Cloud programs, including benefits such as earlier access to some new features for the various programs. Okay, back to Photoshop the program!

Exploring Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is used for an incredible range of projects, from editing and correcting digital photos to preparing images for magazines and newspapers to creating graphics for the web. You can also find Photoshop in the forensics departments of law-enforcement agencies, scientific labs and research facilities, and dental and medical offices, as well as in classrooms, offices, studios, and homes around the world. As the Help Desk Director for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), my team and I solve problems and provide solutions for Photoshop users from every corner of the computer graphics field and from every corner of the world. People are doing some pretty amazing things with Photoshop, many of which are so far from the program’s original roots that it boggles the mind!

What Photoshop is designed to do

Adobe Photoshop is an image-editing program. It’s designed to help you edit images — digital or digitized images, photographs, and otherwise. This is the core purpose of Photoshop. Over the years, Photoshop has grown and developed, adding features that supplement its basic operations. But at its heart, Photoshop is an image editor. At its most basic, Photoshop’s workflow goes something like this: You take a picture, you edit the picture, and you print the picture (as illustrated in Figure 1-1).

Figure 1-1: Basic Photoshop: Take photo, edit photo, print photo. Drink coffee (optional).

Whether captured with a digital camera, scanned into the computer, or created from scratch in Photoshop, your artwork consists of tiny squares of color, which are picture elements called pixels. (I explore pixels and the nature of digital imaging in-depth in Chapter 2.) Photoshop is all about changing and adjusting the colors of those pixels — collectively, in groups, or one at a time — to make your artwork look precisely how you want it to look. (Photoshop, by the way, has no Good Taste or Quality Art button. It’s up to you to decide what suits your artistic or personal vision and what meets your professional requirements.) Some very common Photoshop image-editing tasks are shown in Figure 1-2: namely, correcting red-eye and minimizing wrinkles (both discussed in Chapter 9); and compositing images (see Chapter 10).

Astronaut image courtesy of NASA

Figure 1-2: Some common Photoshop tasks.

New features to help you do those jobs

The new version of Photoshop has lots of new features to help you perform those tasks more efficiently and more easily. Among the top new features are the option of using Adobe Camera Raw as a filter within Photoshop on any layer or Smart Object in your artwork (see Figure 1-3), a much improved Smart Sharpen filter, the new Shake Reduction filter, “intelligent” upsampling, and the selection of more than one path at a time. Other new features, ones you may never use, include system-specific anti-aliasing for type and improved painting in 3D. Changes you may not notice include faster processing in quite a few features for improved performance, additional language dictionaries, and better preset migration. (Presets are the custom brushes, layer styles, gradients and such that you create or otherwise obtain.)

Figure 1-3: Adobe Camera Raw as a filter!

Photoshop works with actual vector shapes, such as those created in Adobe Illustrator. Photoshop also has a very capable brush engine, including erodible brush tips (they wear down and need to be resharpened) and airbrush and watercolor brush tips, further extending the fine art painting capabilities of the program. Figure 1-4 shows a comparison of raster artwork (the digital photo, left), vector artwork (the illustration, center), and digital painting (right). The three types of artwork can appear in a single image, too. (Creating vector artwork is presented in Chapter 11, and you can read about painting with Photoshop in Chapter 14.)

Figure 1-4: You can use Photoshop with raster images, vector shapes, and even to paint.

Photoshop includes some basic features for creating web graphics, including slicing and animations (but web work is best done in a true web development program, such as Dreamweaver). Earlier versions of Photoshop included the companion program Adobe Bridge, which included the Output panel to help you create entire websites to display your artwork online and PDF presentations for on-screen display, complete with transition effects between slides. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, Bridge CC is not included with Photoshop and does not include these capabilities. If you use an earlier version of Bridge and are interested in its Output panel (or if the Adobe Output Module is made available as an optional install for Bridge CC), you'll find information on these capabilities on this book's companion website. Visit www.dummies.com/extras/photoshopcc for a bonus chapter on working with Adobe Output Manager in earlier versions of Bridge or as an optional install for Bridge CC.

Other things you can do with Photoshop

Admittedly, Photoshop just plain can’t do some things. It won’t make you a good cup of coffee. It can’t press your trousers. It doesn’t vacuum under the couch. It isn’t even a substitute for iTunes, Microsoft Excel, or TurboTax — it just doesn’t do those things.

However, there are a number of things for which Photoshop isn’t designed that you can do in a pinch. If you don’t have InDesign, you can still lay out the pages of a newsletter, magazine, or even a book, one page at a time. If you don’t have Dreamweaver, you can use Photoshop to create a website, one page at a time, sliced and optimized and even with animated GIFs. And while you’re probably not going to create the next blockbuster on your laptop with Photoshop, the video editing capabilities can certainly get you through the family reunion or that school project.

Page layout in Photoshop isn’t particularly difficult for a one-page piece or even a trifold brochure. Photoshop has a very capable type engine, considering that the program is designed to push pixels rather than play with paragraphs. (It even has spell check — not bad for an image editor!) Photoshop can even show you a sample of each typeface in the Font menu. Choose from five sizes of preview (and None) in Photoshop’s Type menu. However, you can’t link Photoshop’s type containers, so a substantial addition or subtraction at the top of the first column requires manually recomposing all of the following columns. After all, among the biggest advantages of a dedicated page layout program are the continuity (using a master page or layout) and flow from page to page. If you work with layout regularly, use InDesign.

Dreamweaver is a state-of-the-art web design tool, with good interoperability with Photoshop. However, if you don’t have Dreamweaver and you desperately need to create a web page, Photoshop comes to your rescue. After you lay out your page and create your slices, use the Save for Web command to generate an HTML document (your web page) and a folder filled with the images that form the page. (See Figure 1-5.) One of the advantages to creating a web page in Dreamweaver rather than Photoshop is HTML text. (Using Photoshop, all the text on your web pages is saved as graphic files. HTML text not only produces smaller web pages for faster download, but it’s also resizable in the web browser.)

Figure 1-5: You can create an entire web page in Photoshop.

Adobe Premiere, the more budget-conscious Premiere Elements, and Adobe After Effects are the best tools for video and related effects. But Photoshop offers a highly developed video capability, including audio tracks. Adobe Illustrator is the state-of-the-art vector artwork program, but — you get the point — Photoshop offers true vector shapes, not just simulations created with shape layers. If, however, you need to do sophisticated (or lots of) vector artwork, consider using Illustrator.

Viewing Photoshop’s Parts and Processes

In many respects, Photoshop is just another computer program — you launch the program, open files, save files, and quit the program quite normally. Many common functions have common keyboard shortcuts. You enlarge, shrink, minimize, and close windows as you do in other programs.

Reviewing basic computer operations

Chapter 3 looks at Photoshop-specific aspects of working with floating panels, menus and submenus, and tools from the Options bar, but I want to take just a little time to review some fundamental computer concepts.

Launching Photoshop

You can launch Photoshop (start the program) by double-clicking an image file or through the Applications folder (Mac) or the Start menu (Windows). Mac users can drag the Photoshop program icon (the actual program itself) to the Dock to make it available for one-click startup. You can find the file named Adobe Photoshop CC.app inside the Adobe Photoshop CC folder, inside the main Applications folder. (Chapter 3 shows you the Photoshop interface and how to get around in the program.)

Never open an image into Photoshop from removable media (CD, DVD, your digital camera or its Flash card, jump drives, and the like) or from a network drive. Always copy the file to a local hard drive, open from that drive, save back to the drive, and then copy the file to its next destination. You can open from internal hard drives or external hard drives, but to avoid the risk of losing your work (or the entire image file) because of a problem reading from or writing to removable media, always copy to a local hard drive. If you're in a workgroup situation and must use a network drive, consider Adobe Drive (available for free from www.Adobe.com).

Working with images

Within Photoshop, you work with individual image files. Each image is recorded on the hard drive in a specific file format. Photoshop opens just about any current image file consisting of pixels as well as some file formats that do not. (File formats are discussed in Chapter 2.) Remember that to change a file’s format, you open the file in Photoshop and use the Save As command to create a new file. And, although theoretically not always necessary on the Mac, I suggest that you always include the file extension at the end of the filename. If Photoshop won’t open an image, it might be in a file format that Photoshop can’t read. It cannot, for example, open an Excel spreadsheet or a Microsoft Word document because those aren’t image formats — and Photoshop is, as you know, an image-editing program.

If you have a brand-new digital camera and Photoshop won’t open its Raw images, choose Help⇒Updates from Photoshop’s main menu to install the latest version of the Camera Raw plug-in. (But remember that it takes a little time to prepare Camera Raw for new file formats. If you purchase a new camera on its first day of release, you may need to use the software that came with the camera until the next Camera Raw update is released.)

Saving your files

You must use the Save or Save As command to preserve changes to your images. And after you save and close an image, some of those changes may be irreversible. When working with an important image, consider these tips:

Work on a copy of the image file. Unless you’re working with a digital photo in the Raw format (discussed in Chapter 7), make a copy of your image file as a backup before changing it in Photoshop. The backup ensures that should something go horribly wrong, you can start over. (You never actually change a Raw photo — Photoshop can’t rewrite the original file — so you’re always, in effect, working on a copy.)

Activate auto recovery. In Photoshop’s Preferences⇒File Handling, make sure that the Automatically Save Recovery Information Every option is selected and set to an appropriate time interval. If Photoshop crashes while you’re working, when you re-open the program, it will (hopefully) be able to present you with your artwork at the stage when last saved for auto recovery.

Open as a Smart Object. Rather than choosing File⇒Open, consider making it a habit to choose File⇒Open As Smart Object. When working with Smart Objects, you can scale or transform multiple times without continually degrading the image quality, and you can work with Smart Filters, too! (You can read about Smart Filters in Chapter 15.)

Save your work as PSD file, too. Especially if your image has layers, save it in Photoshop’s PSD file format (complete with all the layers) before using Save As to create a final copy in another format. If you don’t save a copy with layers, going back to make one little change can cost hours of work.

If you attempt to close an image or quit Photoshop without saving your work first, you get a gentle reminder asking whether you want to save, close without saving, or cancel the close/quit (as shown in Figure 1-6).

Figure 1-6: Photoshop reminds you if you haven’t saved changes to an image.

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are customizable in Photoshop (check out Chapter 3), but some of the basic shortcuts are the same as those you use in other programs. You open, copy, paste, save, close, and quit just as you do in Microsoft Word, your e-mail program, and just about any other software. I suggest that you keep these shortcuts unchanged, even if you do some other shortcut customization. Okay, well, I do recommend one change to the standard keyboard shortcuts. See Chapter 3 for my recommendation on shortcuts for the Edit menu’s Undo/Redo and Step Backward actions.

Photoshop’s incredible selective Undo

Here’s one major difference between Photoshop and other programs. Almost all programs have some form of Undo, enabling you to reverse the most recent command or action (or mistake). Photoshop also has, however, a great feature that lets you partially undo. The History Brush tool can partially undo just about any filter, adjustment, or tool — by painting. You select the History Brush, choose a history state (a stage in the image development) to which you want to revert, and then paint over areas of the image that you want to change back to the earlier state.

You can undo as far back in the editing process as you want, with a couple of limitations: The History panel (where you select the state to which you want to revert) holds only a limited number of history states. In the Photoshop Preferences⇒Performance pane, you can specify how many states you want Photoshop to remember (to a maximum of 1,000). Keep in mind that storing lots of history states takes up computer memory that you might need for processing filters and adjustments. That can slow things down. The default of 20 history states is good for most projects, but when using painting tools or other procedures that involve lots of repetitive steps (such as touching up with the Dodge, Burn, or Clone Stamp tools), a larger number (perhaps as high as 60) is generally a better idea.

The second limitation is pixel dimensions. If you make changes to the image’s actual size (in pixels) with the Crop tool, the Image⇒Crop command, or the Image Size command or the Canvas Size command (both in the Image menu), you cannot revert to prior steps with the History Brush tool. You can choose as a source any history state that comes after the image’s pixel dimensions change but none that come before.

Here’s one example of using the History Brush as a creative tool. You open a copy of a photograph in Photoshop. You edit as necessary. You use the Black & White adjustment on the image to make it appear to be grayscale. In the History panel, you click in the left column next to a snapshot (a saved history state) or the step prior to Black & White to designate that as the source state, the appearance of the image to which you want to revert. You select the History Brush tool and paint over specific areas of the image to return them to the original (color) appearance (see Figure 1-7). There you have it — a grayscale image with areas of color, compliments of the History Brush tool!

Figure 1-7: Painting to undo with the History Brush, with the original in the upper-right.

Photoshop has another very powerful partial Undo in the Fade command. Found in the Edit menu, Fade can be used immediately after just about any tool or adjustment or filter or, well, almost anything that changes the appearance of the image. (You can even fade the History Brush tool.) The Fade command enables you to change the opacity and/or the blending mode of whatever alteration you most recently made to the appearance of your artwork with tools or commands. You might, for example, use a Sharpen filter and then use the Fade command to change the filter’s blending mode to Luminosity. That’s the functional equivalent of sharpening the L channel in Lab color mode without having to switch color modes at all. Keep in mind that when I used the word “immediately,” I really meant it — you can’t even use the Save command between applying a filter and using the Fade command.

Installing Photoshop: Need to know

If you haven’t yet installed Photoshop here are a few points to keep in mind:

Install only into the default location. Photoshop is a resource-intensive program. Installing it into the default location ([harddrive]⇒Applications on a Mac and C:\Program Files for Windows) ensures that it has access to the operating system and hardware as necessary. Installing into any other location or attempting to run Photoshop across a network can lead to frustrating problems and loss of work in progress.

Disable all spyware and antivirus software before installing. Antivirus software can intercept certain installation procedures, deeming them to be hazardous to your computer’s health. That can lead to malfunctions, crashes, lost work, frustration, and what I like to call Computer Flying Across the Room Syndrome. If you use antivirus software (and if you use Windows, you’d better!), turn it off before installing any program, especially one as complex as Photoshop. You might find the antivirus program’s icon in the Windows taskbar; or you might need to go to the Start menu, choose All Programs to locate the antivirus software, and disable it. On Mac, check the Dock. And don’t forget to restart your antivirus software afterward! If you already installed Photoshop and antivirus software was running at the time, I urge you to uninstall and reinstall.

If you use auto-backup software, shut it down, too. It’s best not to run auto-backup software when installing software. Like antivirus software, it can also lead to problems by interfering with the installer.

Connect to the Internet and activate right away. It’s also best to run the Photoshop installer while your computer is connected to the Internet. That enables Photoshop’s activation and registration process to happen right away, making sure that you can get started as soon as the installer finishes.

Photoshop is 64-bit software (and 32-bit, too). On both Windows and Mac, Photoshop CC is a 64-bit program — if you have a 64-bit operating system. (Windows 8, Windows 7, Vista, and XP all offer 64-bit versions; the Mac OS became 64-bit with Snow Leopard, OS 10.6.) 64-bit software generally runs faster and can take advantage of much more RAM than 32-bit software. However, in a Windows 64-bit operating system, Photoshop also installs a 32-bit version in C:\Program Files (x86). On the Mac, Photoshop is a 64-bit program only. If you have 32-bit plug-ins for Photoshop, check with the manufacturer or distributor to see whether 64-bit versions are available. You'll also want to use Mac's OS 10.7 or later for full access to all of Photoshop's features.

If you have third-party plug-ins, install them elsewhere. Third-party plug-ins — those filters and other Photoshop add-ons that you buy from companies other than Adobe — can be installed into a folder outside the Photoshop folder. You can then make an alias (Mac) or shortcut (Windows) to that folder and drag the alias/shortcut to Photoshop’s Plug-Ins folder. Why install outside the Photoshop folder? Should you ever need to (gasp!) reinstall Photoshop, you won’t need to reinstall all your third-party plug-ins. Just create a new alias/shortcut and move it into Photoshop’s new Plug-Ins folder. And don’t forget to go to the plug-ins’ websites to see whether the manufacturers offer updates!

If you have lots of plug-ins, create sets. Plug-ins require random–access memory (RAM) (computer memory that Photoshop uses to process your editing commands). If you have lots of plug-ins, consider dividing them into groups according to how and when you use them. Sort (or install) them into separate folders. (Hint: Plug-ins that you use in many situations can be installed into multiple folders.) When you need to load a specific set, swap out the alias or shortcut in the Plug-Ins folder and restart Photoshop.

If you love fonts, use a font management utility. If you have hundreds of fonts (over the years, I've somehow managed to collect upward of 12,000 fonts), use a font-management utility to create sets of fonts according to style and activate only those sets that you need at any given time. Too many active fonts can choke the Photoshop type engine, slowing performance. The Mac OS has Font Book built right in, or you can use the excellent Suitcase Fusion (Mac and Windows) from Extensis (www.extensis.com).

2

Knowing Just Enough about Digital Images

In This Chapter

Understanding digital images

Discovering resolution

Exploring the many file formats of Photoshop

In the early days of photography, some less-advanced cultures viewed a photo with great suspicion and even fear. Was that an actual person, trapped in the paper? Did taking a photo steal a person’s soul? You know that a camera doesn’t trap anyone inside the paper — and you can be pretty sure about the stolen soul issue — but how much does the average shooter know about digital images? And how much do you need to know about digital images to work effectively in Photoshop?

The answers to those two questions are “Not as much as he/she should” and “Not as much as you might fear.” In this chapter, I give you some basic information about how digital images exist in Photoshop, a real understanding of that critical term resolution, and an overview of the different ways that you can save your images. But most importantly, I help you understand the very nature of digital images by explaining the world of pixels.

Welcome to the Philosophy Chapter!

What Exactly Is a Digital Image?

Whether you take a picture with a digital camera or use a scanner to bring a photo (or other artwork) into Photoshop, you are digitizing the image. That is, digit not as in a finger or toe, but as in a number. Computers do everything — absolutely everything— by processing numbers, and the basic language of computers is binary code. Whether it’s a photo of a Tahitian sunset, a client’s name in a database, or the latest box score on the Internet, your computer works on it in binary code. In a nutshell, binary code uses a series of zeros and ones (that’s where the numbers part comes into play) to record information.

So what does binary code have to do with the wedding photos that you took this weekend or the masterpiece you must print for your thesis project? An image in Photoshop consists of tiny squares of color called pixels (pixel is short for picture element), as you can see in the close-up to the right in Figure 2-1. The computer records and processes each pixel in binary code. These pixels replicate a photo the same way that tiles in a mosaic reproduce a painting.

Figure 2-1: That’s not really Hugo the Bulldog; it’s a bunch of tiny, colored squares.

A tile in a mosaic isn’t face or sky or grass; rather, it’s beige or blue or green. The tiles individually have no relationship to the image as a whole; rather, they require an association with the surrounding tiles to give them purpose, to make them part of the picture. Without the rest of the tiles, a single tile has no meaning.

Likewise, a single pixel in a digital image is simply a square of color. It doesn’t become a meaningful part of your digital image until it’s surrounded by other pixels of the same or different color, creating a unified whole — a comprehensible picture. How you manipulate those pixels, from the time you capture the image digitally until you output the image to paper or the web, determines how successfully your pixels will represent your image, your artwork, your dream.

The True Nature of Pixels

Here are some basic truths about pixels that you really need to know. Although reading this section probably can’t improve your love life, let you speak with ghosts, or give you the winning lottery number, it can help you understand what’s happening to your image as you work with it in Photoshop.

Each pixel is independent. You might think that you see a car or a circle or a tree or Uncle Bob in an image, but the image is actually only a bunch of little colored squares. Although you can read about various ways to work with groups of pixels throughout this book, each pixel exists unto itself.

Each pixel is square (except on TV). Really! Each pixel in a digital image is square except when you’re creating images for some television formats, which use nonsquare pixels. It’s important that you understand the squareness of pixels because you sometimes have to deal with those pointy little corners.

Each pixel can be exactly one color. That color can change as you edit or alter the image, but each pixel consists entirely of a single color — there’s no such thing as a two-tone pixel. Figure 2-2, at 3,200 percent zoom, shows each pixel distinctly.

Figure 2-2: Each pixel is monotone, containing a single color throughout the pixel.

Smaller is better (generally speaking). The smaller each pixel, the better the detail in an image. (However, when you are preparing images for the web, you need smaller images that invariably have less detail.) If you capture an image of a house with a cellphone camera and capture the same shot with a professional DSLR (digital single-lens reflex camera — you know, one of the big professional cameras with interchangeable lenses) that captures three or seven or fifteen times as many pixels, it’s pretty obvious which image has better detail. Take a look at Figure 2-3, which illustrates how lots more smaller pixels present a better image than do fewer-and-larger pixels.

Figure 2-3: More pixels (top) means better detail. Note the zoom factors in the lower left of each shot.

Smaller pixels also help hide those nasty corners of pixels that are sometimes visible along curves and diagonal lines. When the corners of pixels are noticeable and degrade the image, you call it a bad case of the jaggies.

Keep in mind that the size at which an image can be printed — and still look good — depends on the number of pixels available. Sure, these days every digital camera seems to capture at least 10 megapixels, which is fine for 8x10 prints and perhaps even as large as 16x20 inches. But what about those cellphone shots? How about when your 10-megapixel pocket camera doesn’t have a long enough zoom to capture little Tommy’s exploits on the soccer field up close? That’s when you might need to crop and resample the image to increase the number of pixels. Resampling is discussed later in this chapter.

Pixels are aligned in a raster. The term raster appears regularly when you discuss images created from pixels. Raster, in this case, refers to the nice orderly rows and columns in which pixels appear. Each image has a certain number of rows of pixels, and each row is a certain number of pixels wide — the columns. Within the raster, the pixels perfectly align side to side and top to bottom.

Every picture created with pixels is rectangular. Some images might appear to be round, or star-shaped, or missing a hole from the middle, but they aren’t unless you print them out and grab your scissors. The image file itself is rectangular, even if it appears round. Pixels actually exist in those seemingly empty areas; the pixels are, however, transparent. When printing, the transparent areas will show the color of the paper you’re using.

How Many Pixels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?

You hear the term resolution a lot when working with digital images. Digital cameras have so-many megapixels of resolution; inkjet printers have so-much by so-much resolution; to work in Photoshop, your monitor must have a resolution of at least 1,024 x 768 pixels; when printing your images, you must use 300 pixels per inch (ppi) as your resolution (wrong!), but your web images must have a resolution of 72 ppi (again wrong!); and don’t forget your New Year’s resolution!

Resolution revelations

In this wonderful world of digital imaging, you see resolution used in four basic ways:

Image resolution: Image resolution