Photoshop Fundamentals

Getting around your Photoshop document is fundamentally critical and in this video we look at several ways to do so.

Zooming into and out of your document is a great way to focus in on an area or to pull back and get a look at your entire work.

This video looks at the Navigator panel, which is a convenient way to navigate throughout your document.

In this video, we look at some of the preferences that affect navigation and show you how to turn off the ones you don't need.

Painting is one of those key tasks in Photoshop. Some folks only use Ps for that purpose alone. Here, we get you in touch with the basics.

You're not limited to the brushes that ship with Photoshop. In this video, we take a look at how you can install brushes from the Internet.

The Brush panel offers tremendous customizability for how your brushes will appear on the canvas.

History is a critical aspect of Photoshop and in this video we show you how it accrues over each and every operation you perform.

The History Brush in Photoshop allows you to paint the result of a moment in the history of your document. Here you'll master how it works.

Many beginners in Photoshop have a difficult time with the concepts of layers and how they're different than channels. Not anymore!

This video begins an in-depth look at the nuances of working with layers and the things you really need to know to make the most out of them in your documents.

The background layer is the original layer in many of your documents and it comes with some special rules.

Grouping allows for multiple layers to be put underneath a single object for easy manipulation. This video covers the essentials for grouping.

Smart Objects are a great way to "embed" entire Photoshop documents or collections of layers into a single layer.

Blend modes are a great way to control how the pixels of a layer affect the pixels beneath them. This video covers the basics of how they work.

Here we look at the first several blend modes available and show how they can be used to create darkening effects on your image.

The lightening blend modes will make the pixels beneath your layer brighter in some way. In this video, we show how they work.

Overlay and its associated blend modes are capable of lightening or darkening based on the particular situation. You'll master how that works and why here.

This video covers the remaining blend modes, which do more specialized tasks such as inverting or performing math operations on pixel values.

Masks are one of the most important aspects of knowing how to fully utilize the power of Photoshop. We teach you the basics of them here.

The Masks panel offers an amazing level of power over the shape and outline of your mask. In this video, we cover how to use it.

Masks can also be applied to groups and in this video we show you the advantages of doing so.

Clipping masks are another way to control the visibility of a layer on a pixel-by-pixel basis. In this video, we show how they work.

This video introduces the concepts of adjustments and adjustment layers, showing how pixels of an image can be edited destructively or non-destructively.

In this video we introduce layer styles, which allow for a variety of special effects to be applied to a layer en masse or as defined by a layer mask.

Presets allow you to create a specific combination of layer styles and settings to create a specific look. In this video, we show how they work.

Here we take a look at several of the ways you can remove layer styles from your layers or switch off their visibility.

The Blending Options available within the Layer Styles window offer a vast amount of control for layer blending. We go over the first several options here.

In this video, we continue our look at the blending options, showing more settings to control how your layer affects or is affected by what is beneath it.

We now wrap up our discussion of the blending options in CS5, showing the final checkbox settings and how they work.

There are features of the Layer Styles window that are not readily visible and may go unnoticed. Learn about them here!

Many of the layer styles available make use of a contour curve to define some aspect of the effect. In this video, we cover contour curves.

Drop shadows are a common effect for a variety of situations. In this video, we show how to work with Photoshop's drop shadow layer style.

Inner shadows create a punched-out effect on your layers. See how they work and how to best control their settings.

In this video, we take a look at the outer glow layer style, which causes a glow around the edge of your layer.

An inner glow causes the inside of a layer to look like it's illuminated from within and in this video we take a look at the settings for the effect.

In this first part, we look at the basic settings of bevel and emboss, how the primary settings work, and how to get it applied.

In this next part, we take a look at another portion of the bevel and emboss effect, the ability to adjust the contour of the emboss.

Finally, we look at how a pattern can be applied to a layer via Bevel and emboss to create a bump map type of effect.

The satin layer style simulates the effect that the surface of your layer is covered in a satiny or silky material with an anisotropic highlight.

In this video, we explore the color overlay layer style, which simplly covers all the available pixels of a layer with a blendable color.

We now showcase the gradient overlay layer style, which applies a gradient across the pixels of a layer.

In this video, we look at the pattern overlay layer style, which allows for a pattern to be placed across the entire layer.

The stroke layer style creates a stroke or line that surrounds the visible edge of a layer. In this video, we show how to set up and control this effect.

The histogram is a great way to get immediate feedback on the nature of your layer or image by giving you overall or channel based pixel values and statistics.

Over the next several videos, we'll be covering the various adjustments that are available in CS5. This video gives you an overall look at how they work.

The Brightness/Contrast adjustment gives you the power to alter both the brightness and contrast of your image, as well as whether to preserve luminosity.

In this video, we take a look at the levels adjustment, which allows the artist to adjust the tonal range of an image en masse or channel by channel.

Like the levels adjustment, curves allow you to adjust your tonal range. However, curves allow for a tremendous amount of control by mapping input/output relationships.

This video takes a look at the exposure adjustment, which can be used to simulate the effect of changing the exposure of an image.

Vibrance is a quick and easy way to make the colors of your image pop a bit more by boosting contrast without overblowing your colors.

Hue/Saturation gives you a tremendous amount of color correction control and in this video we show you how to use it.

With the color balance adjustment, you can make a variety of changes to the overall color of your layer.

The black and white adjustment is by far the most powerful way to create a black and white image and here we show you how it works.

The photo filter adjustment provides you with a way to apply a layer of color over the top of your layer and control its density.

With the channel mixer, you can influence how much each color in your image is fed back into each color channel, allowing for a variety of effects.

With the invert adjustment, the colors of your image become reversed in a single easy step.

With posterize, you can control how many levels of intensity exist within each individual channel.

The gradient map adjustment allows you to map the intensity values of your image across a customized gradient for a variety of effects.

With the threshold adjustment, your image is split into pure black and white at the point of intensity specified. Here we give an example.

With the selective color adjustment, you have a tremendous amount of control over how much each color is presented in your image.

In this video, we take a look at the Shadows/Highlights adjustment, which allows you to make tonal changes to the dark and light areas of your image.

The HDR Toning adjustment allows you to recreate the surreal lighting effects typically found on HDR imagery, but to do so with a standard dynamic range image.

With the Variations adjustment, you can create global color casts using the primary colors and their analogous hues. In this video, you see how this works.

The Desaturate adjustment is one of the simplest operations you can perform on an object, simply removing the saturation information and making the image black and white.

The Match Color adjustment provides you with the ability to place a particular color into an existing image, or bring an image into a current color space.

With Replace Color, you can choose an existing color within an image or selection and swap it out for another color of your choosing.

The Equalize adjustment give you the ability to quickly even out the overall color and tonal range of an image, creating a smoother histogram.

In this video, we take a look at the most basic of selection types, the Marquee Selection. See how to create and control the selection of pixels with this tool.

Lasso selections allow you the ability to draw out a selection manually, rather than having to rely on an existing shape such as a rectangle or ellipse.

Quick Select and Magic Wand offer very fast ways to make certain selections. In this video, we show the difference between the two and how to use them.

To help speed up your selection workflow in Photoshop, we've put together this video which covers a variety of convenient selection-based hotkeys.

Quick Mask Mode gives you a way to paint down your selections as you would paint pixels on a Photoshop canvas. In this video, we show you how this works.

The Color Range selection command allows you to make a selection within an image based on a specific range of colors, along with a degree of variation.

Grow and Similar are two quick commands that give you the ability to create a new selection based on a current one, both by analyzing neighboring pixels.

Modifying selections gives you the ability to make simple changes to the overall shape of your currents selection such as expanding and contracting.

One of the more powerful tools in creating the perfect selection is the ability to adjust the size and shape of that selection as you go.

In this video, we take a look at how alpha channels can be used to both save and load selections inside of Photoshop.

This video gives an overview of the various transform operations we'll be looking at over the next several videos.

While transforming objects, the options bar at the top of the interface shows a variety of special options, which we overview here.

This video looks specifically at the various ways in which one can scale an object during transformations.

Rotation can be handled in a few different ways and in this video we show the options for controlling rotations.

Skewing is a special form of transformation that allows you to adjust the sides of a selection to reshape it diagonally.

Through distortion, you can move the four corners of the selection independently, allowing you to reshape it as you see fit.

By adjusting perspective, you can make an object appear to be receding into the distance and give a feeling of depth.

Warping an object allows you to reshape it using a grid of bezier curves instead of just corner handles.

In this video, we cover three separate transform commands, including incremental rotations, flipping, and repeating the last transformation.

Free transform allows you to combine several different transformations into one, and is one of the most common transformation modes.

Puppet work gives you an easy way to reshape a selection by dropping points down which can be used as rotation points like rigging a puppet.

Through content aware scaling, you can resize an image while maintaining the integrity of important areas.