For Dummies Photoshop CS5 978-0-470-61078-7 User Manual
Product codes
978-0-470-61078-7
10
Part I: Breezing through Basic Training
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!
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 devel-
oped, 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).
images — digital or digitized images, photographs, and otherwise. This is the
core purpose of Photoshop. Over the years, Photoshop has grown and devel-
oped, 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 chang-
ing 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 profes-
sional 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).
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 chang-
ing 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 profes-
sional 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).
It seems that every time a new version of Photoshop is released, it has
at least one new feature that I just can’t wait to tell you about. Of all the
great improvements in Photoshop CS5 (including 64-bit cross platform
performance — more on that in a bit), perhaps the biggest Wow! factor is
Content-Aware Fill. When you’re retouching and compositing, Content-Aware
Fill can really help make your result look more natural and seamless. When
you make a selection and press the Delete/Backspace key, the Fill dialog box
pops up, offering you the opportunity to simply delete the content of the
great improvements in Photoshop CS5 (including 64-bit cross platform
performance — more on that in a bit), perhaps the biggest Wow! factor is
Content-Aware Fill. When you’re retouching and compositing, Content-Aware
Fill can really help make your result look more natural and seamless. When
you make a selection and press the Delete/Backspace key, the Fill dialog box
pops up, offering you the opportunity to simply delete the content of the
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