Photoshop One-on-One: Fundamentals

In this first lesson, we’ll start things the way every project starts: By opening an image file. After all, if you don’t first open one or more images in Photoshop, how are you supposed to edit the darn things?

I’ll begin by answering a common tech support question, “How do I open an image in Photoshop by double-clicking on it at the desktop?” First in Windows and then on the Mac.

Now we’ll take a look at the Home screen, which lets you open an image that you’ve opened recently. And that’s because, believe it or not, the image you’re most likely to open is one that you’ve opened before.

In Photoshop, the Open command is a little bit tricky. And that’s because you have Cloud Documents, you have older model Creative Cloud files, and then you have your personal files all over your local hard disks. Here’s how it works.

In this exercise, I’ll introduce you to a kind of partner to Photoshop called Adobe Bridge. Bridge not only provides another means for opening images. But it also lets you browse all files on your hard disks, and organize those files as well.

Photoshop includes a plug-in called Camera Raw that lets you develop images captured in your digital camera’s or smart phone’s raw file format. A good example of a raw image format is DNG, which stands for Digital NeGative. Unlike DNG, “raw” is accurately spelled lowercase. Anyone who spells it RAW in all caps—like it’s an acronym—is WRONG.

This lesson is all about navigation. Things like zooming, panning around, and switching between open images. You’ll even learn how to organize your panels to create the perfect workspace. I spend a lot of videos on this topic because I want you to be able to move around inside Photoshop without even thinking.

Everyone knows how to zoom in and out from an image. Which is why this video is about so much more. It is, in fact, about the very nature of the way Photoshop displays images, large and small.

Zooming in on a specific detail is a simple matter of selecting the Zoom tool and clicking. But you’ll be doing it so often, you’ll want to memorize these essential tricks.

Given Photoshop’s long history on the Mac, it’s ironic that something as basic as zooming conflicts with the operating system. Happily, it’s easily addressed with two adjustments.

So far, we’ve seen how you can zoom incrementally—that is, from 25% to 33.3% and so forth. Now we’ll see how to zoom continuously, which will land you at a custom zoom ratio.

The term “scrolling” derives from the old-school scroll bars on the sides of the image window. But these days, most folks prefer to call it “panning.” Either way, your best bet is the Hand tool.

Here are three advanced panning tricks that no one but you knows about: Bird’s-eye view, multi-image pan, and “overscroll.” Welcome to the realm of the power-users.

Photoshop lets you open as many images as your system will allow. Here are several ways to switch between them and organize them on screen.

Photoshop provides three screen modes, including a Full Screen mode that entirely hides the interface so that you can focus on the image all by itself.

Photoshop has long provided a context-sensitive options bar, which changes to suit the needs of the active tool. In contrast, the floating task bar changes to suit the current action.

To hide or show a specific interface element, choose a command from the Windows menu. To hide and show entire regions of the interface at a time, press Tab or Shift-Tab.

The Navigator panel provides a thumbnail view of the active image, allowing you to pan and zoom, as well as enter your own custom zoom value, especially useful in full screen.

Panels allow you to access Photoshop’s most essential options on a regular basis. A workspace is your way of saving how the panels are configured on screen. Please don’t skip this video so what you see on your screen matches what you see on mine.

In this video, I show you how to switch between workspaces, whether created by you or having shipped with Photoshop. As well as modify, reset, and update a workspace.

Here I explain how to change the size of the thumbnails in the Layers, Channels, and Paths panels. As well as how to eliminate automatic layer masks associated with fill and adjustment layers.

In the Preferences dialog box: Tools > Show Rich Tooltips, Workspace > Large Tabs, and Interface > Neutral Color. I also show you how to quit Photoshop to save your changes.

In this chapter, we’ll explore two imaging attributes that depend on pixels: Image size and resolution. You’ll learn how many pixels you need. You’ll learn how best to resize an image when you need fewer or more. And in the end, you’ll understand the mechanics of what makes a successful image, both in print and on screen.

Everyone knows that Photoshop brokers in pixels, and that pixels are squares of colors, and all that. But do you really know in your heart of hearts what a pixel actually is? In Photoshop, in print, and on any and every display on the planet. You will, by the end of this exhaustive and informative video.

At the heart of Photoshop are two keys concepts, image size and resolution. Image size is the sheer number of pixels inside an image; resolution is the number of pixels packed into an inch or millimeter or other units of measure. In print or on screen, as you’re about to see.

One of the most essential features in all of Photoshop, the Image Size command allows you to change the physical size and print resolution of an entire image all at once. Along the way, I’ll introduce you to the topics of resampling and interpolation.

In this video, I focus on common resolution standards for laser printing, commercial reproduction, and inkjet printing. Each standard is based on a multiple of the halftone frequency or printer resolution, depending on the scenario.

Upsampling is the act of adding pixels by rewriting every single pixel inside an image. And while upsampling is great for smoothing out transitions in formerly low-resolution images, it is no substitute for capturing authentic high-resolution data with a camera or scanner.

Photoshop lets you adjust the print resolution with the Print command. Or you can turn off the Resample check box and set a Resolution value in the Image Size dialog box, which affects not only the size at which the image prints, but also its size when placed into Illustrator or InDesign.

Here’s how to set the physical size of an image so that you have exactly as many pixels you need—whether to print the image or place it into a layout application such as InDesign. Downsampling always results in fewer pixels, which means less in the way of quantity, but more in quality

Don’t just share any old image online. Instead, follow the advice of this video, in which I provide general advice for downsampling an image for any purpose other than printing—whether to email, text, post to a social media or blog site, or otherwise repurpose for screen, online, or an ever increasing world of myriad devices.

When resampling an image, Photoshop rewrites every single pixel in the image based on one of seven interpolation settings. In this video, I explain how every one of them works, in terms that will totally make sense, I assure you.

Now that we’ve examined how the various interpolation methods work, here’s how to apply them in practice to the task of downsampling. Your options include Bicubic (my favorite) as compared with Bicubic Sharper, Bicubic Smoother, and Bilinear.

Imagine that you need to upsample a one-of-a-kind photo, such as that of Buzz Aldrin as captured by Neil Armstrong on the surface of the moon—which actually happened in a seedy Hollywood backlot, only on the moon. In that case, there is one and only one way to proceed, with the interpolation method set to Preserve Details 2.0.

A digital photograph begins life as a flat, no-layer image file. But when you so much as copy and paste one image into another, the pasted image becomes an independent layer. In this lesson, I’ll show you how to create a layered composition from beginning to end. Welcome to an early glimpse into the real power of Photoshop.

I start things off with a casual introduction to the most important panel in Photoshop, the Layers panel. Learn about groups, thumbnail size, visibility, navigation, layer names, layer masks, and the Revert command. Plus, take a moment to meet-and-greet my sample file from another world—before it eats you.

In this video, I’ll show you how to create a layer, how to delete one or more layers, and how to merge two or more layers into one. Along the way, we’ll get our first glimpse into one of Adobe’s first and most successful forays into AI, Generative Fill.

The simplest way to create a layer is to copy an image from one file and paste it into another. In this video, you’ll select an image—with the help of guidelines—name the layer, and move it to any location you like using the Move tool.

Now we’ll see a variation on the Copy command known as Copy Merged. This command takes the contents of a bunch of visible layers and merges them together on-the-fly. Then choose Edit > Paste and—just like that—you have a plausible UFO.

In this video, I’ll show you three ways to duplicate a layer. They’re all great, but my favorite I what I call “jumping,” which has a keyboard shortcut of Ctrl or Cmd-J. Tip: Jumping is also great for copying the selected portion of an image to its own layer.

One of the Move tool’s recent default settings is Show Transform Controls, which allows you to scale and rotate layers on-the-fly. Drag a handle to scale; drag outside the boundary to rotate. You can also enter specific numerical values in the options bar.

Photoshop allows you to introduce translucency into a composition by reducing the Opacity value at the top of the Layers panel. I also discuss how to nudge a layer by pressing an arrow key, or Shift along with an arrow.

In this video, I show you how to angle a composition to create the effect of a precarious, “lucky shot” photograph. I also show how to trim away transparent regions—all without harming a single pixel—using the Canvas Size command.

A key characteristic of the final composition is motion. Not only is the flying saucer moving so quickly I can barely track it, but my camera is shaking in the dim evening light. I can simulate both effects using an old-school filter known as Motion Blur.

One of the easiest and most flexible ways to convert a colorful composition to black-and-white is with the help of one of the most basic layers available to Photoshop, Solid Color.

Just as low light results in low color, it also results in more digital noise, also known (were we working with film) as grain. Here’s how to apply a grain effect across an entire composition without harming the original image.

A layer mask allows you to paint away the contents of a layer without harming the layer itself. In this video, we’ll use a layer mask to paint away the bottom region of the Fader layer and bring back some of the color to the larger composition.

Photoshop lets you organize layers by grouping them into what appear to be tiny folders in the Layers panel. As you might expect, you can hide, show, and move grouped layers together. You can also move layers in and out of groups, as well as dissolve a group by ungrouping it.

The Move tool allows you to move selected layers just by dragging them inside the image window. Or, at least, that’s the ways it’s supposed to work. In recent years, Adobe has added a slew of check box preferences, including Auto-Select, which I discuss at length in this video.

I’ll wrap things up with a look at a couple of tricks for working with the Layers panel. The first automatically zooms on a layer when you alt or option-click on it. The second allows you to customize the transparency grid.

In Photoshop, saving your work is more than a simple matter of going to the File menu and choosing the Save command. This lesson is not only about Photoshop’s most essential file formats: PSD, TIFF, PNG, and JPEG. It is also about making sure that you when you save, you are always safe.

Here are the things you want to know about saving your files in Photoshop, regardless of the file format, including what to do when things go horribly wrong. Hint: Look to the History panel.

Like many Adobe applications, Photoshop lets you revert to the saved version of an image. Unlike other apps, you can undo the revert. Photoshop also automatically saves recovery files. But beware closing a file with unsaved changes, in which case your decision is permanent.

When working on a layered composition in Photoshop, you want to save at least one copy of that file to the native PSD format. That way you will forever have access to layers, masks, and all the other items you can create inside Photoshop. As things stand now, only History states cannot be saved.

When you save a layered PSD file, Photoshop offers a Maximize Compatibility check box. It sounds like a good option to leave on, but it actually balloons the file size without much practical purpose. Personally, I usually turn it off.

The oldest of the standardized imaging formats, TIFF is the gold standard for print and archival imagery. Owned by Adobe, TIFF is the only format other than PSD that supports layers. However, you are best off saving a copy of your composition as a flat file.

The Save As command is a great way to save your files to different file formats. In this video, I show how to streamline the command so you don’t have to click an extra button or endure the tedium of incessantly deleting the word “copy.”

PNG is the darling of the interactive community. Not only does it support full-color images, it also permits transparency, and it automatically applies lossless compression. Depending on the size of your image, it may also result in nimble file sizes.

Support for JPEG is universal, from the most sophisticated digital camera to the most off-brand burner phone, making it far and away the most popular image file format the world over. Armed with “lossy” compression—which rewrites every pixel in an image—it trades quality for reduced file size.

Adobe Cloud Docs allows you to share your files, whether with a team, friends and family, or other platforms and devices, including an iPad. When saving to the cloud, Photoshop supports just one file format, PSDC.

Compatible exclusively with Adobe Cloud Docs, the Version History panel allows you to visit previous saved states in the development of a file. This can prove especially useful in restoring a file after an unexpected (not to mention undesirable!) auto-save.

You may notice that the name of this lesson includes the word “brightness.” In the world of digital imaging, brightness goes by many names. They include shade, tone, and my favorite, luminance. But it’s all brightness. Starting at black, which is no brightness, all the way up to white, which is as bright as it gets.

We start with a detailed look at how luminance works inside Photoshop and the larger world of digital imaging. Of special note are the three subjective brightness ranges: shadows, highlights, and midtones. Along the way, I’ll introduce you to color channels as well.

Photoshop offers three commands that automatically adjust the brightness and contrast of an image: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color. By the end, you’ll have a clear idea of how each command works.

All three of the Auto commands increase the contrast of an image. (If contrast is not a problem, these commands are not for you.) If color cast is not an issue, try Auto Contrast. If it is, try Auto Tone and then Auto Color, and see which one produces the best result.

Photoshop offers a fourth, hidden Auto function, the Auto button in the Brightness/Contrast dialog box. You can combine it with one of the other Auto functions as well as customize its settings. You can also blend it with the original image using the Fade command.

The Brightness/Contrast command used to clip highlights and shadows. In 2007, Adobe retooled the command for Photoshop CS3, and it’s been a reliably quick and easy solution ever since. Learn all about it in this video.

A static adjustment is said to be “destructive” because it rewrites the pixels in the image. The alternative is a dynamic adjustment layer, which is said to be “nondestructive” because no pixel is permanently changed. The result is an adjustment that you can update penalty-free anytime you like.

In this video, I share with you some tips and tricks that will serve you well when creating and editing adjustment layers. Specifically, I’ll show you how to name the layer as you create it, duplicate a history state, and highlight the first value in the Properties panel.

Photoshop allows you to combine adjustment layers with blend modes to achieve still more effects. The blend modes of merit are Multiply for darkening, Screen for brightening, and Overlay for increasing the contrast. If an adjustment adds too much punch to the colors, set its blend mode to Luminosity.

The latest additions to the Adjustments panel are presets, which are predefined combinations of one or more adjustment layers (with or without blend modes) working together to create a potentially interesting effect. You can also create your own preset for later use.

In this video, I take you on a detailed tour of the histogram, which is a column graph of the luminance levels in an image, on a channel-by-channel basis, from black to white. The primary way of viewing the histogram is from the Histogram panel, which lets you track the effects of Brightness/Contrast and other adjustments.

When set to Expanded View, the Histogram panel devotes an entire pixel to every one of the 256 columns associated with the standard luminance chart. Then can help you identify areas where luminance information is weak or altogether missing, as I demonstrate with the help of two real-world photographs.

Thanks to the independent nature of adjustment layers, you can isolate their effects using a layer mask. You can either create an empty layer mask and paint away the areas you don’t want to change. Or, more helpfully, select the areas you do want to change and convert the selection to a mask.

If an image is drab, you known to brighten it. If it’s washed out, you might add some contrast. But what if it’s a bit greenish? How in the world do you know the solution is to adjust the Temperature and Tint values? By watching these videos.

In this video, I show you how to identify the color cast or, if you prefer, color “bias” of a photo. In the process, I introduce you to Hue, Saturation, and Brightness; as well as the primary colors Red, Green, and Blue, and their respective complements Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow. I also show you how to sample a color using the Eyedropper tool.

After identifying an area of proposed neutrality, I test the contribution of two commands that automatically affect color balance, Auto Tone and Auto Color. Neither command provides a clear win, but each nudges the image in a more neutral direction.

Color Balance poses three primary color combinations in opposition to each other: Red vs Cyan, Green vs Magenta, and Blue vs Yellow, just as they appear in opposite each other in my Big Huge Color Wheel. The result is that you can approach each element of a color cast on a primary-by-primary basis, while at the same time affecting Midtones, Highlights, and Shadows independently.

When working with a static luminance or color adjustment, choosing the command resets the values and starts you from scratch. To load the last values you applied, press the Al or Option key as you choose the command, and you can continue your edits.

The best one-stop solution for correcting a color cast are the White Balance controls inside Camera Raw. These include the Temperature and Tint sliders, as well as the White Balance tool, the last of which behaves like a corrective Eyedropper. Happily, Camera Raw’s two slider controls are easier to understand and more powerful than the three Color Balance sliders combined.

Lest you think the various techniques I’ve shown you so far apply only to underwater images, I offer you an image—with an even more pronounced color cast—that I captured on dry land. The result is a quick review of everything we’ve learned so far.

Color cast can be a tricky problem to correct, so much so that it may elude the awesome powers of Camera Raw. By way of demonstration, I bring back a photograph some of you may have scene before, of my wife touching two continents, as captured with a mere GoPro.

In this video, we’ll see how to work with the ages-old Color Balance function expressed as a nondestructive adjustment layer. The good news is that you can edit the adjustment as much as you like and, frankly, it’s organized in a way that makes at least a modicum of sense.

If nothing else, Photoshop offers a few thousand ways to skin any given cat. Which is why, in this video, I show you a highly subjective but likewise measurable way to offset color cast using an adjustment layer known as Photo Filter.

The three Auto commands—Contrast, Tone, and Color—are variations on an adjustment called Levels. (The original name for Auto Tone was Auto Levels.) This means you can apply each Auto function as a nondestructive adjustment layer, and assign a midtone color to compensate for virtually any color cast.

Photoshop includes a plug-in called Camera Raw that allows you to develop files nondestructively—that is, without permanently modifying the image pixels. Camera Raw works with photographs captured to your camera’s raw file format, as well as JPEG and TIFF files. Raw files deliver the most flexible results.

Camera Raw runs inside Photoshop as well as other Adobe applications, such as Bridge. Bridge tends to be the best “jumping off” point because it lets you open JPEG files with a simple right-click command. In this video, I provide a quick overview.

After you develop an image, you have only to click Done to save your changes and return to Bridge. Once a file includes development settings, double-clicking it opens Camera Raw automatically. I also review metadata, and show you how to clear the development settings to restore the original file.

Zooming and panning work a bit differently in Camera Raw than they do in Photoshop. For starters, the Zoom tool toggles between two view settings: fit-on-screen and one other (by default, 100%). You can also drag with the tool to zoom in or out continuously.

In this video, I show you how to work with and manage the various panels of options on the right side of the image preview in Camera Raw, complete with preview and reset options. I review the Multiple, Single, and Responsive panel modes. And I wrap things up by showing you how to turn off rich tooltips.

Camera Raw lets you open JPEG and TIFF images. But it excels at developing photographs captured to your camera’s raw file format. Various camera manufacturers offers their own proprietary formats, such as CR2 (Canon), NEF (Nikon), RAF (Fuji), and more. But Camera Raw can save to just one raw format, DNG.

Every photograph suffers from some degree of lens distortion, which is why it’s always a good idea to switch to the Optics panel and turn on the Use Profile Corrections check box. It may not work for JPEG images, in which case you’ll need to improvise.

Also known as color fringing, chromatic aberration is a misalignment of colors around the outer perimeter of a photograph, usually manifesting as purple and green edges. Try turning on the Remove Chromatic Aberration check box. If that doesn’t work, you can manually adjust the Defringe values.

Camera Raw’s Exposure and Contrast controls are analogous to Brightness/Contrast inside Photoshop. The main difference is that Exposure provides more nuance when it has raw data to work with. Exposure specifically affects the midtones in an image. Try dragging in the histogram to affect the midtones dynamically.

In this video, I show you how to adjust four luminance ranges independently of the Exposure-controlled midtones. These include Highlights and Shadows. As well as the extreme highlights, Whites, and the extreme shadows, Blacks. For each, you can drag inside the histogram, as well as Alt- or Option-drag the sliders.

Located in the Effects panel, Texture, Clarity, and Dehaze allow you to selectively adjust the contrast of an image. Clarity affects the low-frequency details. Texture affects medium-to-high frequencies. And Dehaze enhances far-away details. I also include a never-seen-before trick for tracking Clarity and Texture by setting Dehaze to negative 100 percent.

The Effects panel also includes two largely unrelated functions, Vignette (perimeter brightness) and Grain (simulated fill grain). While I recommend using these features sparingly—or better still, not at all—I explore every one of the seven supporting options so you’ll know exactly what’s going on with each.

Camera Raw includes two varieties of predefined corrections: Presets, which are predefine collections of settings. And profiles, which rely on more intricate lookup tables. One such profile, Adobe Adaptive (Beta), automatically adjusts to accommodate the composition of the active photograph.

Photoshop lets you open multiple images, but you can edit just one image at a time. In contrast, Camera Raw lets you open and edit multiple images simultaneously. You can also synchronize across multiple images, and apply the Adobe Adaptive profile.