Photoshop Tips
Part 1
By Harry O'Connor
I used to teach evening classes in Photoshop at my local art college and I would like to share some of my knowledge of the program with those that are interested in learning it. For those of who have never used Adobe Photoshop I suggest that you are missing out on one of the most powerful tools used by visual artists and photographers. The name is slightly misleading as the program does a lot more than edit and manipulate photos.
Photoshop is used by photographers, web designers, illustrators, fine artists, graphic designers and a host of other professions. Photoshop is the industry standard for image editing and is far superior to programs such as PaintShopPro and Macromedia Fireworks. (By the way Macromedia has recently been bought out by Adobe so who knows what’s round the corner!)
In my opinion there are only two main drawbacks with Photoshop. Firstly, and most importantly is the price. The current version, CS2 retails at around £500 which is out of budget for many artists and start-up companies. However there are ways around this. There are cut down versions of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements which is a fraction of the price at around £50.00 and has many of the same features as Photoshop. Ok, so it might not be as good as the full program but it could be a good way of evaluating the software, and it would give most people an insight into the world of Photoshop. You can download a demo of Photoshop or Photoshop elements at the following website: http://www.adobe.com/products/tryad obe/main.jsp
The second drawback is Photoshop can’t do everything! It tries, but its not very good at vector based artwork and should not really be used for desktop publishing, and if you are into technical drawing or desktop publishing I would suggest another program such as Adobe Illustrator or Quark express respectively.
TOP 5 GENERAL TIPS
1. Have Fun
Photoshop has so much depth, I have been using it almost daily since version 4.0 and I am sure there are many things I still don’t know about it. To really get to know this software you should play about with ideas and generally have fun before setting yourself a serious project.
2. Easy on those filters
There are hundreds of plug-ins and filters available for Photoshop and in my experience many beginners get immediately wooed by the instant effects that can be applied to a piece of artwork. For example it is possible to scan in a photograph of say, your back garden, and select the watercolour filter, turning it into an instant piece of art – to the untrained eye! The most overused effect has to be the lens flare effect, and I am sad to say that when I see one I cringe. Please use these filters sparingly!
3. Learn about selecting
One of the most important processes in Photoshop, and one that is often not learnt well is the use of selection tools. These tools enable you to select, cut out, move and edit specific areas of an image, instead of the whole image.
Lasso Tool
This allows you to draw freehand style around your selected area
Polygonal Lasso Tool
With this tool you can click around specific areas in a linier fashion. This tool is very accurate if you zoom in on the area first. Holding the shift key while using this tool restricts the angels between each click.
Magnetic Lasso Tool
This is a fairly recent tool (introduced in version 5.0) and not one I personally use often. How it works is that it tries to guess what you are trying to select by measuring the tonal and colour values of the area that you are drawing around. It can work accurately and quickly if you adjust the various setting at the very top of the screen whilst having this tool selected.
Rectangular Marquee Tool
A very simple tool that draws squares and rectangles as a selection. Press shift whilst drawing your selection to make it a square.
Elliptical Marquee Tool
Draws ellipses and circles as a selection. Holding the shift key ensures that a circle is drawn.
Single Row and Single Column Marquee Tool
I never use these, but they simply draw a 1x1 pixel selection.
By the way, if ever you can’t get rid of a selection, simply double click your mouse or press Ctrl and D to deselect. With all of these selection tools you can find more options but having the tool selected and changing the settings at the very top of the screen.
You can also add to a selection by pressing the shift key and drawing a new one, and you can subtract from a selection by doing the same with the Alt key. There is also a magic wand tool, which selects areas of similar colour.
