Photoshop CS4 For Dummies E-Book

Peter Bauer

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

Seitenzahl: 563

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

This latest version of Photoshop has a few new tricks up its sleeve and Adobe Photoshop CS4 For Dummies will teach you how to use them. From the basics like getting your images into and out of Photoshop to enhancing, cropping, and color correction, it's all here! You'll get all of the basics of digital images and master the importing and exporting of images. You'll find out how to create easy enhancements like adding shadows and highlights and making color natural, in addition to learning how to use the Adobe camera raw plug-in. Before you know it, you'll be making beautiful "art" with Photoshop by combining images, precision edges, dressing up images, painting in Photoshop, and using filters. You can even streamline your work in Photoshop using advanced techniques. Find out how to: * Import images and use all the tools and processes * Reduce digital noise, make colors look natural, add highlights and shadows * Optimize images for print or the Web * Edit images * Explore the Painting function and master the daunting Brushes panel * Add layer styles * Create on-screen presentations, contact prints, and more Complete with lists of ten reasons to love your Wacom tablet, ten reasons to own a digital camera, and ten favorite tips and tricks, Adobe CS4For Dummies is your one-stop guide to setting up, working with, and making the most of Photoshop CS4 for all your digital photography needs.

Leseprobe

Photoshop® CS4 For Dummies®

by Peter Bauer

Photoshop® CS4 For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Author

Peter Bauer is best known as the Help Desk Director for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), but he has also authored or coauthored a dozen books on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, computer graphics, and photography. Pete is also the host of video-training titles at Lynda.com, a contributing writer for Photoshop User and Layers magazines, and an award-winning fine-art photographer. An Adobe Certified Expert, he also appears regularly as a member of the Photoshop World Instructor Dream Team. 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 feature film special effects, major book and magazine publications, award-winning Web sites, and fine art exhibitions. He has taught computer graphics at the university level, serves as a computer graphics efficiency consultant for a select corporate clientele, and shoots exclusive photographic portraiture. Pete and his wife, Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell, of the University of Notre Dame Law School, live in South Bend, Indiana. Despite being considered a world-class technogeek, Pete still plays organized ice hockey.

Dedication

For my wife — I am continually in awe of all you have accomplished and all you continue to accomplish! Your dedication to the law governing armed conflict makes the world a safer and more civilized place.

Author’s Acknowledgments

First, I’d like to thank Bob Woerner and Linda Morris of Wiley, as well as Ron Rockwell and the rest of the superb crew at Wiley that put the book itself together. I’d also like to acknowledge Scott and Kalebra Kelby, Jean Kendra, Larry Becker, Jeff Kelby, and Dave Moser of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), who make my professional life what it is today. 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 Jeanne Rubbo and Rob Sylvan for their support during the development of this book.

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. (I most especially value the incredibly-stimulating conversations with renowned photographers Vincent Versace and John Paul Caponigro — hail the Söze Society!) I would also like to single out Robb Kerr, one of the original Photoshop World instructors, who continues to inspire me both spiritually and intellectually.

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, all the while finishing her own extremely important The Power and Purpose of International Law (Oxford University Press).

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

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

Acquisitions and Editorial

Project Editor: Linda Morris

Senior Acquisitions Editor: Bob Woerner

Copy Editor: Linda Morris

Technical Editor: Ron Rockwell

Editorial Manager: Jodi Jensen

Editorial Assistant: Amanda Foxworth

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Cartoons: Rich Tennant (www.the5thwave.com)

Composition Services

Project Coordinator: Katie Key

Layout and Graphics: Reuben W. Davis, Melissa Jester, Ronald Terry, Christine Williams, Erin Zeltner

Proofreaders: Laura Albert, Lisa Stiers

Indexer: Sharon Shock

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

Diane Graves Steele, Vice President and Publisher

Composition Services

Gerry Fahey, Vice President of Production Services

Debbie Stailey, Director of Composition Services

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 (especially that first purchase price!), 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 Wiley 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 useable. 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 far away 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 included a number of images from PhotoSpin.com, my favorite subscription stock art source. But, again, 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, Sony, or Fuji, 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 (painting, dodging, burning, path creation and editing, cloning, healing, patching, lassoing, just to name a few), then yes, I do recommend a Wacom Cintiq display or Intuos tablet, or at least a Graphire 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 CS4 For Dummies.

How This Book Is Organized

Photoshop CS4 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 cover to cover (just to make sure 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: Breezing through Basic Training

The first set of chapters presents 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 people. 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 Brushes 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.

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 there’s far more to Chapter 16 than just Actions and scripting! It also shows you how you can create an on-screen presentation that anyone can view, generate a single page with small thumbnail images of all your photos, and save paper by printing multiple copies of a photo on a single sheet. Chapter 17 is a brief introduction to those features found only in Photoshop CS4 Extended. If you have Photoshop CS4 rather than Photoshop CS4 Extended, you might be interested in the highly technical, very complex scientific, technical, video, and 3D features. Or not.

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 (as you’ll read) restricting myself to just ten favorite tips and tricks, just ten reasons a Wacom tablet can be your best friend, and just ten reasons to own a digital camera. But I did it. (More or less — beware of hidden tips and tricks!)

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 the Image⇒Adjustments⇒Shadow/Highlight command.

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 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 as you read this book, icons that indicate something special. Here, without further ado, is the gallery:

This icon tells you I’m introducing a new feature, something just added to the program with Photoshop CS4. 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, 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 messing up Photoshop. If there were to be a quiz afterward, every Warning would be in the essay section!

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.

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, 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 cover to cover not only ensures that you find out the most about Photoshop, but it guarantees that you don’t miss a single cartoon or joke.)

Unless you’re borrowing a friend’s copy or you checked this book out of the library, 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 they’re easy to find next time because you’re sure to be coming back time and again to Photoshop CS4 For Dummies.

Part I

Breezing through Basic Training

In this part . . .

A solid understanding of certain basic concepts and techniques makes learning Photoshop much easier. Heck, it’s difficult to understand a discussion of feathered selections when you don’t know your pixels from a hole in the ground, right?

In Chapter 1, I introduce you to Adobe Photoshop. Chapter 2 focuses on the basic concepts of digital imaging and offers a look at the primary file formats in which you save Photoshop images. Even if you’re upgrading to CS4, you should also take a look at Chapter 3, which presents the revised Photoshop interface. Finally, Chapter 4 covers bringing images into Photoshop from digital cameras or scanners, organizing those files, and basic output through printing.

Chapter 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.

Whether you’re new to Photoshop, upgrading from Photoshop CS3 or earlier, or transitioning from Elements to the full version of Photoshop CS4 or Photoshop CS4 Extended, you’re in for some treats. Photoshop CS4 has an intriguing new look that enables you to do more, and do it more easily, than ever. 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.

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. (Pixels and the nature of digital imaging are explored 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 filter. 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).

Figure 1-2: Some common Photoshop tasks.

Astronaut image courtesy of NASA

New in Photoshop CS4 is the powerful ability to rotate the image on screen while you’re working. Not rotate the image itself — Photoshop has had that capability for ages — but to rotate the appearance of the image in the workspace. This is especially handy when doing delicate masking and painting, enabling you to orient the image on screen to best suit your stroke. As you can see in Figure 1-3, while you’re rotating, a red arrow indicates the image’s true “up.” Double-clicking the Rotate tool icon in the Toolbox restores the image’s orientation. (This feature is not available on older computers with less powerful video cards.)

Figure 1-3: Rotate while you work, without damaging the image’s quality!

Over the past few updates, Photoshop has developed some rather powerful illustration capabilities to go with its digital-imaging power. Although Photoshop is still no substitute for Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop certainly can serve you well for smaller illustration projects. (Keep in mind that Photoshop is a raster art program — it works with pixels — and vector artwork is only simulated in Photoshop.) Photoshop also has a very capable brush engine, which makes it feasible to paint efficiently on your digital canvas. 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. (Simulating vector artwork with Photoshop’s shape layers 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 artwork, and even to paint.

Photoshop CS4 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). Photoshop’s companion program Adobe Bridge even includes the Output panel to help you create entire Web sites to display your artwork online and PDF presentations for on-screen display, complete with transition effects between slides. (Read about Bridge’s Output panel’s capabilities in Chapter 16.)

Other things you can do with Photoshop

Although Photoshop isn’t a page layout or illustration program, you certainly can produce simple brochures, posters, greeting cards, and the like using only Photoshop. (See Figure 1-5.) One of the features that sets Photoshop apart from basic image editors is its powerful type engine, which can add, edit, format, and stylize text as capably as many word-processing programs. Photoshop even has a spell check feature — not bad for a program that’s designed to work with photos, eh?

Even if you don’t have the high-end video features found in Photoshop CS4 Extended, you can certainly supplement your video-editing program with Photoshop CS4 (even if Photoshop can’t open and play movies you capture with your video camera). From Adobe Premiere (or other professional video programs), you can export a series of frames in the FilmStrip format, which you can open and edit in Photoshop.

Figure 1-5: You can use Photoshop to create cards, posters, and brochures.

Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended

Although there have been different versions of Photoshop for years (Photoshop versus Photoshop LE versus Photoshop Elements), as with the prior release of Photoshop, Adobe is offering two different versions of Photoshop CS4. Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended both have all of Photoshop’s powerful image-editing, vector-drawing, painting, and type capabilities. Photoshop CS4 Extended also includes some very specialized, highly technical features for use in science, research, and video editing, and for use with 3D modeling programs. (These features are introduced in Chapter 17.)

So, if you have Photoshop CS4 rather than Photoshop CS4 Extended, should you feel cheated or like a second-class citizen? Nope! Unless you specifically need those extended features, there’s no real reason to purchase them. But what if you got Photoshop CS4 Extended as part of a Creative Suite or Adobe Bundle package of software — did you pay for something you don’t need? Well, sort-of-yeah-but-not-really. The folks who’re really paying extra for the extended features are those who purchase Photoshop CS4 Extended as a standalone program. The additional cost they pay funds the research and development of the extended features.

So why didn’t I get to choose between Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended when I ordered my Bundle or Suite? Buying software shouldn’t be as complicated as, say, ordering a cup of coffee. (Caf, de-caf, half-caf? Latte, espresso, cappuccino? White, brown, or raw sugar? Cream, half-and-half, milk, or skim? Small, medium, large, super, or el grosso maxmo?) It could get quite confusing. Imagine trying to wade through all of the thousands of products if Adobe marketed every possible combination as a separate Bundle or Suite or Studio! You’d spend so much time trying to find your perfect bundle, you’d never get to use the software.

If you don’t have specialized software

Admittedly, Photoshop CS4 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 Netscape Navigator — 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. (With Bridge’s Ouput panel, you can even generate a multipage PDF document from your individual pages.) If you don’t have Dreamweaver or GoLive, you can use Photoshop to create a Web site, one page at a time, sliced and optimized and even with animated GIFs. You also have tools that you can use to simulate 3D in Photoshop CS4, such as Vanishing Point (see Chapter 10).

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 the program is designed to push pixels rather than play with paragraphs. Photoshop even shows you a sample of each typeface in the Font menu. Choose from five sizes of preview (shown in Figure 1-6) in Photoshop’s Preferences⇒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.

Figure 1-6: Font previews in five delicious flavors!

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 laying out your page and creating your slices, use the Save for Web & Devices command to generate an HTML document (your Web page) and a folder filled with the images that form the page (see Figure 1-7). 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 resizable in the Web browser.)

Figure 1-7: You can create an entire Web page in Photoshop.

Viewing Photoshop’s Parts and Processes

In many respects, Photoshop CS4 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 CS4 inside the Adobe Photoshop CS4 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, Zip disks, 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.

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 image 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 DOC file 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, check for an update to the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in at

www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html

You will find installation instructions for the update there. (Make sure to read and follow the installation instructions exactly.)

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, those changes are irreversible. When working with an important image, consider these three 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.)

Open as a Smart Object. Rather than choosing File⇒Open, make 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!

Save your work as PSD, 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 1-8).

Figure 1-8: 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.

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). Like many programs, Photoshop uses the +Z/Ctrl+Z shortcut for Undo/Redo and the +Option+Z/Ctrl+Alt+Z shortcut for Step Backward, which allows you to undo a series of steps (but remember that you can change those shortcuts, as described in Chapter 3). Photoshop also has, however, a couple of great features that let you partially undo.

Painting to undo with the History Brush

You can use Photoshop’s History Brush to 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⇒General 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 or the Image Size or Canvas Size commands, you cannot revert to prior steps with the History Brush. 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 and White adjustment on the image to make it appear to be grayscale. In the History panel, you click in the left column next to the step immediately prior to Black and White to designate that as the source state, the appearance of the image to which you want to revert. You select the History Brush and paint over specific areas of the image to return them to the original (color) appearance (see Figure 1-9). There you have it — a grayscale image with areas of color, compliments of the History Brush!

Figure 1-9: Painting to undo with the History Brush.

Reducing to undo with the Fade command

Immediately after applying a filter or adjustment or using most of Photoshop’s tools, you can choose Edit⇒Fade and change the opacity or blending mode with which the previous step was performed. You might, for example, apply a sharpening filter and then choose Edit⇒Fade Unsharp Mask to change the blending mode from Normal to Luminosity. (Sharpening only the luminosity of your image, whether with this technique or in the Lab color mode, prevents unwanted color shifts along edges in your images. Color modes are discussed in Chapter 6.) Or you might apply the Motion Blur filter and then choose Edit⇒Fade Motion Blur (yes, the name of the command actually changes for you) to reduce the opacity of the blur to 75%. That gives you the appearance of a back-and-forth motion while leaving the subject more readily recognizable (see Figure 1-10).

Figure 1-10: Compare the original blur with a reduction using the Fade command.

Installing Photoshop: Need to know

If you haven’t yet installed Photoshop CS4 (or the Adobe Creative Suite), 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 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, use 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. (Reinsert the Photoshop CS4 CD and launch the installer to use the built-in uninstall feature.)

If you use autobackup software, shut it down, too. Never run autobackup 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 best to run the Photoshop installer while your computer is connected to the Internet. That enables Photoshop’s activation process to happen right away, making sure you can get started as soon as the installer finishes.

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. (If you have a multibutton mouse, right-click the folder to create an alias/shortcut; Control+click if you’re still using a one-button mouse.) 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.

Check for plug-in updates. Go to the manufacturer’s Web site for each of your third-party plug-ins and check for updates. This is especially important if you’re using an Intel-based Mac. Unless the plug-ins have been updated (“Universal”), they won’t run. There’s a workaround, however. In the Finder, go to [harddrive]⇒Applications⇒Adobe Photoshop CS4. Right-click or Control+click on the program icon and choose Get Info. In the Get Info window, select the option Open Using Rosetta. Photoshop will run more slowly, but you’ll have your un-updated third-party plug-ins available. When the plug-ins are finally updated (or you decide speed is more important), re-open Get Info and deselect the Open Using Rosetta box.

If you have lots of plug-ins, create sets. Plug-ins require 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, do so through the Photoshop Preferences⇒Plug-Ins pane by designating a second plug-ins folder and relaunching 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 7,500 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 from Extensis (www.extensis.com). Extensis also offers Suitcase for Windows.

Chapter 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 important, 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 television, which uses nonsquare pixels. (That’s a rather specialized field, which I very briefly address in Chapter 3.) 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 preparing images for the Web, you need smaller images that invariably have less detail.) If you capture an image of a dog in a park with 2 million pixels and capture the same shot with only 30,000 pixels, it’s pretty obvious which image will better show the individual blades of grass and the fur. Take a look at Figure 2-3 for an example of this critical concept.

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.

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. There are actually pixels in those seemingly empty areas; the pixels are, however, transparent.

Figure 2-3: More pixels (top) means better detail.

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 CS4, 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 is the size of your image’s individual pixels when you print. I go into greater detail about this concept in the upcoming section, “Picking an image resolution.”

Camera resolution: Digital cameras capture each image in a specific number of pixels. Check your camera’s user guide or open one of the images in Photoshop and choose Image⇒Image Size. Take a look at the number of pixels that your camera records for the width and for the height. Multiply the numbers together, divide by one million, and round off the result. (If you’re in the camera maker’s marketing department, make sure that you round up.) That’s the megapixel (MP) rating for the camera. Use it as a general guideline when shopping. If you create Web graphics or snapshot-size prints, 3 or 4 MP is fine. For large prints, you need at least 6 MP.

Monitor resolution: Monitor resolution determines how many pixels are visible on-screen. Whether you use a Mac or a PC, you set the monitor resolution at the system level (as shown in Figure 2-4). When you use a higher monitor resolution, you get a larger workspace, but each pixel is smaller, which might make some jobs tougher. Experiment to find a monitor resolution that works just right for you.

• Mac: Click the Apple menu in the upper-left corner of the screen and choose System Preferences. Then click Displays. (Some Apple monitors have a button on the bezel that automatically opens the window for you.)

• Windows: Choose Start⇒Control Panel and then double-click Display. Click the Settings tab to see what monitor resolutions are available.

Printer resolution: Unlike the three preceding terms, printer resolution doesn’t involve pixels. Rather, a printer resolution tells you how many tiny droplets of ink are sprayed on the paper. Remember that it takes several droplets to reproduce a single image pixel — you certainly don’t need an image resolution anywhere close to the printer’s resolution! (See the following section for more on this.)

Figure 2-4: Set a Mac’s resolution through the System Preferences (left), a PC’s resolution through the Control Panel (right).

Resolving image resolution

Image resolution is nothing more than an instruction to a printing device about how large to reproduce each pixel. On-screen, when working in Photoshop, your image has no resolution at all. An image that’s 3,000 pixels wide and 2,400 pixels tall looks and acts exactly the same in Photoshop whether you have the image resolution at 300 ppi or 72 ppi. Same number of pixels, right? (The one real exception to this rule is type — text is usually measured in points in Photoshop, and that measurement is directly tied to the print size of your document. Type and text are discussed in Chapter 13.)

You can always check — or change — a picture’s resolution by choosing Photoshop Image⇒Image Size. The Image Size dialog box (which you can see in Figure 2-5) has two separate but related sets of information about your image. At the top, you see information about the actual image itself, in the Pixel Dimensions area. Below, in the Document Size area, you see instructions for a printing device — that “size” pertains only to printing and has no impact on what you do in Photoshop.

You’ll find it very handy to change the pixel dimensions and the print size at the same time in the Image Size dialog box. And, much to the delight of math-challenged folks, the Image Size feature does most of the calculations. For example, with the Constrain Proportions option selected, you enter a new Width and Photoshop calculates the new Height automatically!

Figure 2-5: At the top, real information about your image. Below, merely printing instructions.

Changing the size of your artwork with the Image Size command

You have a number of ways to change the size of your photos and other art. In Chapter 4, I introduce you to cropping (chopping off part of the artwork to make it fit a certain size or to improve its overall appearance and impact). You can use Photoshop’s Image Size command to change the image dimensions or printing instructions without altering the composition, which is the visual arrangement of the image or artwork. All the content of the original image is there, just at a different size. Of course, as you can see in Figure 2-6, if you reduce the size of an image too much, some of that original content can become virtually unrecognizable.

Figure 2-6: As the zoomed-in smaller image shows, you can reduce an image too much.

If you know the specific pixel dimensions that you need for the final image — say for a Web page — you can simply type a new number in one of the upper fields in the Image Size dialog box and click OK. In most cases, you select all three check boxes at the bottom of the dialog box, enter your desired print width or height (letting Photoshop calculate the other dimension), enter your desired print resolution, and click OK. Of course, you probably want a little more control over the process, don’t you? Figure 2-7 gives you a closer look at the Image Size dialog box.

Figure 2-7: Your choices can have a substantial impact on the appearance of your final image.

In the lower part of the Image Size dialog box, you have three decisions to make. The first is rather easy: If you’re resizing an image that uses layer styles (see Chapter 12), you want to select the Scale Styles check box to preserve the image’s appearance as it shrinks or grows. In a nutshell, layer styles (such as shadows, glows, and bevels) are applied to a layer at a specific size. You can scale the image without changing those sizes, or you can scale the image and change the style sizes proportionally. Not scaling layer styles can dramatically alter the appearance of a resized image, as you can see in Figure 2-8. A slight bevel combined with a small drop shadow produces a subtle 3D effect in the original (upper) image. Below, when the image is scaled down to 1/4 the original size without scaling the effects, your chips change to chumps, and the artwork is ruined.

Figure 2-8: Scaling an image without scaling its layer styles can ruin your image.

The middle check box, Constrain Proportions, should almost always remain selected. Some exceptions might come up, but you normally want to preserve an image’s aspect ratio