Adobe Photoshop For Beginners Photoshop Users

Layers form the backbone of the image you’re constructing. Layers are stacked on top of each other and the blending modes determine how the layers react to each other.

Opening up your normal pixel layer gives you a variety of choices of layer styles. All the effects you choose will be visible under your layer. Here you will find:

• blending options to set your layer.
• Different styles to enhance layer
• Refinement tool

Blending modes allow you to set how the different layers react to each other. Stacking the layers on-top of each other will block out the layers underneath. Changing the blending mode will create a different effect with how the top and bottom layers react.

Masks are simple pixel areas that are visible or hidden on certain layers. For example; if you’ve applied a layer with a certain effect and you either want to reduce the effect or only reveal a certain part of the layer, applying a mask makes this possible. There are many techniques using tools to create effects before or after applying a mask. Two simple way to use masks:

• Applying a mask keeps the effect visible and areas can be brushed out.
• Inverting the mask hides the effect and areas can be brushed in

Adjustment layers are layers where you can apply different effects to your image. There are several different adjustment layers that adjust various aspects of your image, for example, colour, brightness, colour balance, etc.

A smart object allows you to make changes to your image without overwriting the original image data and giving you the opportunity to make non-destructive changes to the layer.

Before we move over to the next chapter we’ll just cover some of the other panels that form part of our workflow They include panels like History, Colour Ranges, etc.

Move tool

Marquee Tool

Lasso Tool

Quick Selection & Magic wand Tool

Clone Stamp Tool and Healing Brush Tool

Crop Tool

Eyedropper tool, Colour Sample Tool and Red Eye Tool

Brush Tool and Pen Tool

Eraser, Blur and Smudge tool

Gradient Tool

Type Tool

Pen Tool

Path Selection and Shape Tool

Final Tools

We include a PDF document with all the keyboard shortcuts in the Pro Product download. Keyboard shortcuts play an important part in creating a conducive workflow. Though you might not need or learn them all, getting to know the shortcut keys for you most essential elements will help you in the long run.

Transform selections on your image. There are a variety of options with different effects.

Colour Range helps to make selections based on the colour tones in an image. This can be used to quickly create selections.

This tool allows you to set anchor points and adjust them directly on your image. it allows you to warp the image to make changes.

Filters are effects that you can apply to a selected layer. External or 3rd part plugins is software that adds more filters to your selection.

It's a digital asset management app developed by Adobe Systems. It's an awesome tool for making pre-adjustment before heading into Photoshop.

• Saving Photoshop Files (Over 3GB Files - Large PSD Files)
• Saving For The Web
• Saving JPEG & PNG

A very important aspect of Photoshop is setting up your colour profiles before you actually start using Photoshop for retouching or graphic designing.

Additional to this course we've also added a list of bonus tutorials that would compliment this course as well as a lesson that will focus on the Wacom Pen Tablet and how to set it up.