What is Photoshop? Introduction about Photoshop

Even if you've never worked with images on your computer, you may have heard of Photoshop. Available for both Windows and Mac, Adobe Photoshop is an extremely powerful application that's used by many professional photographers and designers. You can use Photoshop for almost any kind of image editing, such as touching up photos, creating high-quality graphics, and much, much more.

Interface
Photoshop is unlike other common software interfaces which emulate virtual typewriters or graphing paper. Photoshop creates an artist's virtual studio/darkroom. When you open the program you see a toolbox on the left with tools you will use to manipulate your images, and on the right, a white square which is your "canvas" or work area. The gray area surrounding the canvas is not part of your image, but only defines its edges.

To change the canvas dimensions, go to Image > Canvas size. You can type in any dimensions you like, but remember that the area of the image is directly proportional to the file size.

Photoshop Tools Bar

Photoshop Canvas : Working Window

The Basic Tools
We're not going to take a look at every single tool but we are going to look at almost every one of them. While this overview will give you an idea of what each tool does, go find yourself a photo and start playing around with them.

Move Tool (V)

The move tool simply lets you move objects in a given layer around the Photoshop canvas. To use it, click anywhere on the canvas and drag. As you drag, the Photoshop layer will move with your mouse.

Marquee Tool (M)

The images in Photoshop are stored pixel by pixel, with a code indicating the color of each. The image is just a big mosaic of dots. Therefore, before you can do anything in Photoshop, you first need to indicate which pixels you want to change. The selection tool is one way of doing this. Click on this tool to select it, then click and drag on your image to make a dotted selection box. Hold shift while you drag if you want a perfect square or circle. Any pixels within the box will be affected when you make your next move.

Crop Tool (C)

To crop your image, draw a box with the crop tool. Adjust the selection with the selection points, and then hit return to crop.

Lasso Tool (C)

The lasso tool lets you select free-form shapes, rather than just rectangles and ovals.

Magic Wand (W)
Yet another way to select pixels is with the magic wand. When you click on an area of the image with this tool, all pixels that are the same color as the pixel you clicked will be selected. Double click on the tool to set the level of tolerance you would like (i.e. how similar in color the pixels must be to your original pixel color. A higher tolerance means a broader color range).

Airbrush, Paintbrush and Pencil Tool

can be used to draw with the foreground color on whichever layer is selected. To change the foreground color, double-click on it in the toolbox. You will then see a palette of colors from which to choose. Select one and click OK. To change the brush size, go to Window > Show Brushes.

Eraser Tool

Erases anything on the selected layer. You can change the eraser size by going to Window > Show Brushes.

Line Tool

Can be used to draw straight lines. Click on the tool to select it, then click with the tool on the canvas area and drag to draw a line. When you release the mouse button, the line will end. You can change the thickness of the line or add arrowheads to it by double clicking on the tool to see this dialog box:

Text Tool

Click on this tool to select it, then click in the Canvas area. You will be given a dialog box in which to type your text, and choose its attributes. Each new block of text goes on its own layer, so you can move it around with the Move Tool. Once you have placed the text, however, it is no longer editable. To correct mistakes, you must delete the old version (by deleting its layer) and replace it.

Eyedropper

Click with this tool on any color in the canvas to make that color the foreground color. (You can then paint or type with it).

Magnifier 

Click with this tool on a part of your image you want to see closer, or drag with it to define the area you want to expand to the size of the window. Hold down the Option or Alt key to make it a "reducer" instead and zoom back out.