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They just kind of floated around in space. It was a mess. The panel will now hover over everything else see Figure To hide all open panels, press TAB on your keyboard. Press TAB again to get the panels back. Tip While I prefer the new system of docked panels, I often still find myself floating panels for certain tasks.
What happens when you want the floating panel to return to its default behavior as a docked panel? Simply drag it where you want it to go, just like the way you moved panels earlier in this section. Tip For example, if the tabs in your group are, from left to right, Layers, Channels, Paths, and you want the order to be Channels, Layers, Paths, then drag the tab for the Channels panel to the left so that it comes before the Layers panel.
From this menu, you will see a list of all of the panels available to you in Photoshop. As you can see in Figure , the menu has even more panels than the default workspace would lead you to believe. In the Window menu, when the name of a panel has a checkmark next to it, it indicates that panel is currently open in the interface. Most other Adobe applications have a Window menu that Tip allows you to retrieve panels in the same way. Working with Workspaces If you work in an environment with many other people, perhaps you have experienced the unfortunate occasion of coming back from a vacation, only to find that fellow employees have worked on your machine and messed up your workspace.
Maybe panels have been moved or rearranged, or keyboard shortcuts have been reassigned. Thankfully, Photoshop has the capability to save and access different interface configurations, called workspaces. These are two completely different tasks that use two completely different sets of panels. So, you could create one workspace that has what you need for text editing, and create another workspace that has what you need for painting.
Taking advantage of workspaces in Photoshop may seem inconvenient at first, but it can make you much more efficient. These can be accessed from the drop-down list on the far right end of the Application bar. The default workspace, shown here, is called Essentials.
Typically, these workspaces are used for specific workflows. For example, if you select the Painting workspace, the only panels that appear onscreen are panels that you would want for painting, such as the Brushes panel, the Color panel, the Swatches panel, and so on. But these workspaces can also be helpful in other ways.
The Secret Powers of Workspaces Not only can workspaces store information about how you like your panels laid out and which ones you want visible or hidden, but also panels can store customized menu settings and keyboard shortcuts. If you go to the Edit menu, you can choose either Keyboard Shortcuts or Menus. If you select Keyboard Shortcuts, a dialog box will pop up allowing you to customize keyboard shortcuts. If you find yourself constantly using a particular function in Photoshop, in most cases you can create a keyboard shortcut for it.
You can also change the keyboard shortcut if one already exists for it. If you select Edit Menus, you will have two main choices to customize menus. You can click the eye icon next to a menu item in a given menu to hide that option.
Few if any users of Photoshop use every function and command. You can also customize menu items by making them a different color so that they stand out. That way, when you open a menu, your eye will instantly be drawn to the functions that you use most. Or, if you wear several hats perhaps you create paintings, edit photos, and then post them to a web site , you can color menu items based on different workflows. The menu items you use for painting might be yellow, menu items you use for editing photos might be red, and so on.
Workspaces let you save panel locations, keyboard shortcuts, and menus. You can pick and choose which are saved in your workspace. You will get a simple dialog box asking both the name of your new workspace and which components of the workspace for example, panel locations, menus, keyboard shortcuts you wish to save as part of the workspace.
Once you click OK, your custom workspace will show up in the Workspace drop-down list with all of the others. This is even more critical to your workflow than getting acquainted with interface elements. Even if you already know a thing or two about Photoshop, the next few sections will cover impressive new features and some lifesaving shortcuts. Opening Documents First, we need to bring an image into Photoshop.
In Photoshop, the terms are essentially synonymous. As with several commands in Photoshop, you have many ways to do the same thing. This can Note be intimidating at first because it seems overwhelming to learn everything. You only need to learn and use the way that you like best. To open a file, choose File Open.
For this chapter, you can open one of your own images, or just follow along. Similar to what you might find in your web browser when you have multiple web pages open in the same window, Photoshop groups documents into tabs when more than one file is open at a time: To cycle through open documents, use the keyboard shortcut CTRL-TAB for both platforms. Then, while still holding those keys, simply click anywhere on the image to zoom into that area.
As before, click with those keys held down to zoom out. Another way to think of this is that it moves the camera, not the actor. But the current version of Photoshop has actually added a little improvement.
This will cause your image to zoom in until you release the mouse button. The Magic of Navigating with Keyboard Shortcuts The really cool thing about navigating documents with the keyboard shortcuts just mentioned is that they toggle only navigational tools. Using any other navigation method, you would need to move your cursor to change the view of the document, and perhaps go back and select the Brush tool again after that.
Who has the time and patience to do that? The Navigator Panel The Navigator panel is another way that you can navigate documents see Figure As you drag the slider at the bottom of the Navigator panel to the right, you zoom into the image. Dragging to the left zooms back out. Once you zoom in, a little red rectangle on the image preview in the Navigator panel appears, representing the portion of the image you are now seeing in the main document window.
You can drag that rectangle around to see different portions of your image, which is similar to what you saw previously with the Hand tool. As with all other panels in Photoshop, if the Navigator panel is not visible, you can select it Tip from the Window menu at the top of the interface to reveal it in all of its navigational glory.
Tools Instead of using keyboard shortcuts to toggle navigational tools, you can select them from the Tools panel on the left side of the interface. You can select the Zoom tool which looks like a magnifying glass, shown next to zoom in and out. To change the view of your image, you can select the Hand tool in the Tools panel, right above the Zoom tool. Once you select the tool, simply drag your image around to change your view. The Application Bar Mentioned briefly earlier in this chapter, the Application bar is a new feature that provides quick access to commonly used tools.
This is used for temporarily rotating your image. As with the Hand tool, this only changes your view, not the image itself. In previous versions of Photoshop, you might find enclosed in the package a sheet listing all shortcuts. But this list is absent from recent versions. A few versions ago, Photoshop introduced the ability to customize keyboard shortcuts.
Instructions on how to do that were provided earlier in this chapter. However, by going to Edit Keyboard Shortcuts, you can get a list of all keyboard shortcuts in addition to customizing them. Be aware that not all keyboard shortcuts will be on this list. The bulk of our study in this chapter will be about layers. Layers are perhaps the most critical element of Photoshop and can greatly increase your efficiency and the quality of your final product.
Your ability to use Photoshop well will largely depend upon your ability to use layers well. I usually like to start my projects, especially artistic projects, with a brand-new document. This way I can ensure that my document is set up to the correct specs for output. If you start with an existing project that is too small, it might be impossible later to make it large enough to print.
At first this dialog box can be intimidating as you glance around at all the empty fields. And Photoshop also has your back. Photoshop understands that this is a little overwhelming to new users.
It also knows that even if you are a total pro and know exactly what you should put in every field, it gets tedious filling out all this technical info. These presets are nicely arranged into a variety of categories based on different workflows. Figure shows the drop- down list of presets. People in the video world, web graphic designers, print graphic designers, those who create content for mobile phones and portable devices, those in the film industry, photographers, and many more use Photoshop on a daily basis.
And for each of them, Photoshop has document presets ready to get them started. Each preset also has a variety of sizes to choose from that are common to that medium or industry. For example, if you were to select the Web preset and then click the Size drop-down list, you would be presented with most common computer screen resolutions, as well as some sizes useful for web graphics.
You can change the unit of measurement to a variety of units. The default unit of measurement in Tip the United States is inches. For web and video documents, inches are irrelevant. The Truth about Resolution The term resolution is tossed around a lot these days. It is quite possible to have an image that is high resolution, but is still low quality. What Are Pixels? When Photoshop refers to resolution, it refers to how many pixels are in a given area.
So, before we understand resolution, we need to learn a little about pixels. Name Your Stuff! Better to accept the fact that naming files and layers is just a part of life, and name your Photoshop documents.
The fewer pixels in a given area like images. When there are more pixels in an image, they will be smaller and less conspicuous, and the resolution will be higher. Resolution on a computer screen is expressed in pixels per inch ppi.
This is because computer monitors have pixels. Printers and scanners often print and scan using dots or lines. When we refer to the resolution of these and other such devices, we use the terms dpi dots per inch and lpi lines per inch.
People often mistakenly use the terms dpi and lpi when referring to computer files, even though computer screens have neither dots nor inches. However, most monitor specs read in terms of pixel dimensions, not dot dimensions. The Bottom Line per Inch You must keep in mind resolution when you are creating your documents in Photoshop. Just because you tell Photoshop that you want to create a document that is 8.
How many pixels are in those inches? For onscreen graphics and images, or for images intended for video or 3D programs, 72 ppi is the standard, because that is the resolution of computer monitors and TV screens. Printed documents require smaller pixels to look clean, so the standard is usually about ppi.
Even though ppi is a fairly common standard, you should never assume anything. I once designed a CD cover for an independent punk band, and I assumed that ppi would be fine. However, their CD production house recommended I create the art at ppi— twice the resolution that I was planning on. When asking your printing agency about resolution, be sure that you get the resolution for your Tip computer document, not the resolution of their printer.
The first person you ask about this may not know the correct answer. What they might be tempted to tell you is the resolution of their printer, which may be something like lpi. In most cases, this does not translate to document resolution.
Document Color The rest of the fields used to create a basic document pertain to color. As such, you should use this color mode when using Photoshop to create images for 3D programs, video games, motion graphics, web graphics, or anything that will have its final output on a computer monitor or TV screen.
Use this color model for most jobs that will be commercially printed. Color Depth This is a huge can of worms. Until you get more proficient at Photoshop, leave this setting at 8 bit. In a nutshell, this refers to the number of possible colors. A 2-bit image would contain only four colors. An 8-bit image can contain Scientists estimate that the human eye can perceive about 10 million colors. So, for now, 8 bit will be fine. Background Color Ah, finally some respite from the mentally intensive properties used to create a new Photoshop document.
The Background Content drop-down list shown here essentially allows you to specify a background color for your document while you are creating it.
From this list, you can choose to create a White background layer, a Background Color that is the same color as the current background color in the Tools panel, or simply to create a Transparent background layer. Introduction to Layers As previously mentioned, layers are an integral part of using Photoshop effectively. They basically contain the various pieces of our documents. Think of the layers of a sandwich. But what if you wanted to remove the lactose from the Swiss cheese?
In Photoshop terms, we would say that they are on the same layer. If you add the paint strokes onto the same layer with the photo, and then you want to make changes later move them, recolor them, change their transparency, and so on , you would be in trouble.
It would be extremely difficult, and in some cases impossible. Not to mention that the pixels that you painted over would also be ruined and would need to be repaired, which would probably take half an eternity. On the other hand, if you create a new, blank layer and then paint on that, it would be extremely simple to adjust the paint stroke.
And painting on a new, separate layer would have the added benefit of leaving the pixels of your photo untouched. The Layers Panel The Layers panel is really the hub of our layers-centric workflow.
Figure shows the Layers panel in all of its layered glory. If your Layers panel is not visible, you can retrieve it from the Window menu at the top of the interface. Notice in Figure that when you create a new document, a background layer is already created for you.
Photoshop actually offers several different types of layers: plain old layers, background Note layers, adjustment layers, text layers, smart object layers, and others. If you have Photoshop Extended, you can also have 3D or video layers. How to. Fiddle with the Background Layer By default, when you open a file or create a new document in Photoshop, it automatically creates a background layer for you. This layer is locked to prevent you from accidentally performing certain changes to it, such as moving the layer or rearranging its layer order in the Layers panel.
In some instances you might want to edit your background layer directly not edit a copy. If you are exporting to another program or to video or 3D work, you may want transparent areas in your background layer, so that other objects may show through beneath the layers in the Photoshop document.
For whatever reason, if you want to unlock your background layer, simply double-click it. A dialog box will pop up asking you for the name of the layer and for a few other properties of the layer. The new default name is Layer 0, as shown here. You are then free to use the layer as you please. The icon looks like a notebook page about to be turned. The page-turning icon used to create a new layer can be seen throughout Photoshop and in almost all Tip Adobe applications.
It is a universal icon indicating that something new will be created. Remember this if you ever get stumped. This works if you want to create a new brush in the Brushes panel, a new style in the Styles panel, a 3D light in the 3D panel, and so on.
The Layers panel will then show you that a new layer has been created. Photoshop automatically names it Layer 1. If you create another new layer which you can do by using the same method , the default name will be Layer 2, and so on.
Or if the layer is already created, you can rename it by double-clicking exactly the name of the layer and typing the new name. How many layers can you have in one document? As many as your computer can handle. What Is That Checkerboard Pattern?
But with the new layer that was created, you may have noticed that the layer thumbnail is a gray-and-white checkerboard pattern. What gives? It basically tells you that nothing is there.
You can change the size of the layer thumbnail by going to the fly-out menu of the Layers panel Tip and selecting Panel Options. From there, you can choose whether to make the thumbnail larger, smaller, or to hide the layer thumbnail entirely. Hiding the layer thumbnail can help speed things along if you have a really big project with a lot of layers, or if you are on a slow computer.
Just use the default Photoshop size from the Preset drop-down list, and make sure the Background Contents drop-down list is set to White. Next, make a new layer by clicking the Create A New Layer button in the bottom right corner of the Layers panel.
These two color swatches are the foreground and background color swatches. After clicking on that color swatch, we will meet an important new friend called the Color Picker see Figure In the center of the Color Picker, we have a tall, narrow bar from which to select the basic color.
You can drag the little arrows on the hue slider vertically, or you can simply click the color to use. Next, we need to go to the big square on the left to fine-tune this blue color. Now select the Brush tool by clicking it in the Tools panel, or by pressing B on your keyboard.
This turns your cursor into a paintbrush. Notice that the in Chapter 5. For now, make sure that your new, blank paint squiggle is on the new blank layer is selected, and just drag in your document to paint a layer we created, and not on the squiggle see Figure Create another new blank layer. Go back to the swatch in the Tools panel, and open the Color Picker again. This time, change the color in the narrow color bar from blue to green, and click OK to accept.
The layer with the green squiggle is on top of the layer with the blue squiggle in the Layers panel. And it also covers up the blue squiggle. But we can change this through the magic of layers. Simply click the layer with the green squiggle, and then drag it down below the layer with the blue squiggle see Figure This would be a great time to rename them discussed earlier in this chapter.
Another Project: Opacity and Layer Blending Another one of the features of using layers is that we can blend them together in interesting ways.
The most simple and speedy way to blend layers together is by using opacity. Opacity is the opposite of transparency. Combining Images Before we adjust opacity to blend layers together, we need to have layers to blend. Our first step is to open multiple images. I will then repeat that multiple files, they show up as tabs process to open the file dark image.
To follow along, open in the Photoshop interface. Or you can just read and watch me work some sweet image-editing magic on these pictures. These are displayed as tabs toward the top of the interface see Figure Click one of the tabs to switch documents.
This is one of the new, cool features in Photoshop CS4. You have a couple of ways to do this. First, you can select one image and then copy and paste it onto the other one.
In our example, we want to copy and paste the dark image on top of the light one. You can also select the entire image by going to the Select menu at the top and choosing All. Tip You can also copy and paste by choosing those options from the Edit menu. To blend these by lowering the opacity of the top layer, click and drag on the word Opacity in the Layers panel.
Figure shows what the project looks like now. Notice how the increased transparency of the dark image layer allows some of the light image beneath it to show through. This allows for even more of the light image beneath to show through. The final result looks like the house is surrounded by early morning fog. Even if your only mission in Photoshop is to remove blemishes or annoying people from photographs, all photos essentially consist of variations in color.
Colors also have strange powers, with each color evoking different emotional responses. Just realize going into this chapter that it might feel a little incomplete.
Entire books have been written on most of the following subjects. I cover here only what you need to know to get started with Photoshop. The Essentials of Color Before we get into how to use color in Photoshop, we first need to look at what makes up a color.
One color model that has always made sense to me is that of hue, saturation, and lightness. We see this model often in Photoshop as well. These three properties refer to different elements of a color. You can choose among several ways of looking at color, and great variations in terminology exist. What Is Hue? Hue is what most people probably think of when they think of color. So, even though red and pink are different colors, they still share the same hue.
It uses the hue, Note saturation, and lightness model to adjust colors. Saturation is the intensity of a color. As we increase saturation, colors become more vibrant and intense. As we desaturate colors, they become faded and washed out. Completely desaturating a color will produce gray.
Figures and show a blue color with different levels of saturation. Note that both of these blues have the same hue and lightness. The only thing that has changed is the saturation. What Is Lightness? Lightness is a self-explanatory color property. Increasing lightness makes a color lighter closer to white , while decreasing lightness makes a color darker closer to black.
One of the most common tasks in any image editing program is to make things a little brighter. In lower-budget image editing programs and sometimes even in Photoshop , when you brighten an image, it universally brightens every pixel. The reverse is also true; when you darken every pixel in an image, you also darken the brightest pixel, completely losing pure white. Figures and show the same blue from Figure with varying amounts of lightness.
Pastel colors are created by increasing lightness and decreasing saturation. But when certain colors are used in certain ways, they do influence us. Sound farfetched? The Pen tool is the most important tool to master in Adobe Illustrator, and can unfortunately take quite a lot of practicing to master.
Arm yourself with this great insight and knowledge of how it works. The Pathfinder is also a crucial weapon to master in Illustrator. Gradient Mesh is actually one tool I still need to wrap my head around, but once mastered it can seriously take your Illustrations to the next level with the ability to create photo-realistic artwork.
This in-depth post focuses entirely on its use, with a large selection of examples and diagrams. The Type Tool might not sound like it needs much introduction, but Illustrator also provides some extraordinary type related options. Just like masks in Photoshop, Illustrator uses masks to hide and show various parts of the artwork. If hands-on learning is more your thing, why not try this RSS icon tutorial? It covers many of the basic commands, plus touches on some advanced tools such as the Pathfinder and creating offset paths.
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and design program developed and marketed by Adobe Inc. Originally designed for the Apple Macintosh , development of Adobe Illustrator began in Along with Creative Cloud Adobe's shift to monthly or annual subscription service delivered over the Internet , Illustrator CC was released.
The latest version, Illustrator , was released on October 26, , and is the 25th generation in the product line. Adobe Illustrator was reviewed as the best vector graphics editing program in by PC Magazine. Development of Adobe Illustrator for the Apple Macintosh began in [2] shipping in January as a commercialization of Adobe's in-house font development software and PostScript file format.
Adobe Illustrator is the companion product of Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is primarily geared toward digital photo manipulation and photorealistic styles of computer illustration , while Illustrator provides results in the typesetting and logo graphic areas of design. Early magazine advertisements featured in graphic design trade magazines such as Communication Arts referred to the product as "the Adobe Illustrator".
Illustrator 88, the product name for version 1. Byte in listed Illustrator 88 as among the "Distinction" winners of the Byte Awards, stating that with it Adobe had "pulled ahead" of previously industry-dominant competitor Aldus FreeHand. Early versions of the software did not support working in preview mode and users needed to have two windows open on their desktop in order to have a live preview of their work.
One window would show the work in progress and the other window would show a preview of the work in progress. Although during its first decade Adobe developed Illustrator primarily for Macintosh, it sporadically supported other platforms. The first version of Illustrator for Windows, version 2. The next Windows version, version 4. Note that there were no versions 2. And there was no version 6 for Windows.
Version 4 was, however, the first version of Illustrator to support editing in preview mode, which did not appear in a Macintosh version until 5. Version 6 was the last truly Macintosh version of Illustrator.
The interface changed radically with the following version to bring consistency between Mac and Windows computer platforms. The changes remained until CS6 when some small steps were taken to restore the app to a slightly more Mac-like interface. With the introduction of Illustrator 7 in , Adobe made critical changes in the user interface with regard to path editing and also to converge on the same user interface as Adobe Photoshop , and many users opted not to upgrade.
Like Photoshop, Illustrator also began supporting plug-ins, greatly and quickly extending its abilities. With true user interface parity between Macintosh and Windows versions starting with 7. Adobe bought Aldus in for Page Maker. As a result, Macromedia acquired Free Hand in from its original developer, Altsys , and continued its development through Illustrator Version 9 included a tracing feature, similar to that within Adobe's discontinued product Streamline.
Illustrator CS aka version 11 , released by Adobe for Mac and Windows in October , was the first version to include 3-dimensional capabilities allowing users to extrude or revolve shapes to create simple 3D objects. It was the last version for the Mac which did not run natively on Intel processors.
Live Trace allows for the conversion of bitmap imagery into vector art and improved upon the previous tracing abilities. Live Paint allows users more flexibility in applying color to objects, specifically those that overlap. Instead, Adobe would provide tools and support to ease the transition to Illustrator. Distributed systems have become more fine-grained as organizations shift from code-heavy monolithic applications to smaller, self-contained ….
Even bad code can function. But if code isn't clean, it can bring a development organization …. Skip to main content. Start your free trial. Book description This title includes additional digital media when purchased in print format.
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