All About Photoshop

All about Photoshop

Even if you've never worked with images on your computer, you may have heard of Adobe 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 type of image editing, from touching up photos to creating high-quality graphics.

In fact, Photoshop has so many features that it may actually be too powerful for many users. It's also very expensive, so unless you need to edit photos or graphics professionally it may not be the best option for you. You may want to review our lesson on Photoshop alternatives to learn about other image editing programs you can use.

About this tutorial

Because Photoshop is primarily designed for professionals, it can be somewhat challenging to use, especially if you're learning it for the first time. However, you don't need to understand all of Photoshop's features to use it effectively. Throughout this tutorial, we'll help you understand the most basic and essential Photoshop skills. We'll also provide links to other tutorials if you want to learn more about advanced tools and techniques.

We'll be using Photoshop CC throughout this tutorial to show you Photoshop's features. If you're using an older version of Photoshop—like Photoshop CS6 or earlier—some features may work a bit differently, but you should still be able to follow along. However, if you're using Photoshop Elements, it's important to note that some of the features we cover may be missing or work in a different way. We'll talk more about Photoshop Elements in the next lesson.

Using Photoshop

Opening files

Most of the time, you'll want to start by opening an existing photo rather than creating a new blank image. Photoshop allows you to open and edit existing image files, including JPEG, PNG, and PSD (Photoshop document) files.

1-Select File > Open.

2-A dialog box will appear. 

Locate and select the file on your computer, then click Open

Working with Tools and other panels

The Tools panel

The Tools panel, where you'll select different tools for editing images, is one of the most important features in Photoshop. Once you've chosen a tool, you'll be able to use it with the current file. Your cursor will change to reflect the currently selected tool.

You can also click and hold to select a different tool. For example, you can click and hold the Rectangle tool to select different Shape tools, like the Ellipse Tool, Line Tool, and Custom Shape Tool.

Showing and hiding panels

You'll also be able to view and modify information on the current file through the other panels in the workspace. For example, you can view the document's layers in the Layers panel. To show or hide any panel, click the Window menu, then select the desired panel (currently visible panels are indicated by a check mark). In the image below, we're using the Window menu to turn on the History panel.

Customizing the Photoshop environment

If you want to customize Photoshop, you can adjust the default application settings. Most of these options are pretty technical, but we'd like to show you two basic adjustments you may find helpful.

Basic Task in Photoshop

There's almost no limit to what you can do in Photoshop, but first you'll need to learn the fundamentals. We'll cover some of the most basic image adjustments you can make in Photoshop, including:

1. Cropping: If you want to remove parts of an image, you can crop it. You can think of cropping like using a pair of scissors to cut out the parts you no longer want.
2. Resizing: If you want to make an image smaller or larger, you can resize it. However, keep in mind that making an image larger than its original size generally does not make the image look good.
3. Rotating: If you want to change the orientation of an image, you can rotate it to the left or right.