Using Keywords in Photoshop

Keywords are descriptive labels that you attach to files. They help to categorize your images, enabling you to more efficiently and quickly locate your desired files. Here is the lowdown on creating and using keywords.

-->To create a new keyword set, click the folder icon at the bottom of the Keywords palette or choose New Keyword Set from the Keywords palette pop-up menu. Name your set and press Enter (Return on the Mac).

-->To create a new keyword, select your desired keyword set, click the dog-eared page icon at the bottom, or choose New Keyword from the Keywords palette pop-up menu. Type your name and press Enter (Return on the Mac).

-->To rename an existing keyword set or keyword, select it and choose Rename from the Keywords palette pop-up menu. Provide a new name and press Enter (Return on the Mac).

Note that renaming a keyword in the palette doesn’t also rename it if it has already been applied to a file.

-->To delete a keyword set or keyword from the palette, select it and click the trash icon or choose Delete from the Keywords palette pop-up menu. Again, deleting the keyword doesn’t delete it from any files that it has previously been applied to.

-->To apply a keyword, select the file or files and check the box to the left of the keyword in the palette.

-->To remove a keyword from a file, select the file(s) and deselect the keyword in the palette.
-->To apply all the keywords in a set, select the files and select the check box to the left of the keyword set.

-->To search for images labeled with certain keywords, choose Search from the Keywords palette pop-up menu or click the Search button in the menu bar. Choose your desired folder or disk from the location bar or click the Browse button to navigate to your desired location. Select your criteria from the pop-up menu, choose either Contains or Does Not Contain, and enter your text. To add additional criteria fields, click the plus sign. When finished, click the Search button. All images containing your entered keyword appear in the thumbnail pane of the File Browser.

Right-click (Control+click on the Mac) on a keyword in the palette and select Search from the context-sensitive menu. The keyword is automatically entered in the Search field.

Edit History in Photoshop

The Edit History option records all the edits (image enhancements, retouches, and so on) made on an image in an edit log that you can save as a text file or as attached metadata. Choose the File Handling panel in the Preferences dialog box to establish your desired settings for your editing history.

The Metadata palette offers some options via the palette pop-up menu:

-->Search: Select Search to locate images by various metadata fields.

-->Increase/Decrease Font Size: Choose these options to enlarge or decrease the font size in set increments.

-->Metadata Display Options: This command allows you to choose the fields displayed in each of the metadata categories. Select the Hide Empty Fields option to display only your selected data fields. Keep your palette lean and mean by choosing the Hide Empty Fields option to hide metadata items that are set to display, but do not contain any data.

Note that you can define and create custom File Info panels for XMP metadata to suit your company’s specific data needs. By creating a Custom Panel Description file and storing it in a common location specified by Adobe applications that use this feature, this custom panel shows up when users select File➪File Info either in the File Browser or in the Photoshop application window. For specifics on this feature, download the XMP Custom Panels PDF document at Adobe’s Web site.

Working with Metadata in Photoshop

When you select an image, you can view its metadata. Metadata is just a fancy name for information that is embedded in your image file. In fact, Photoshop allows an image to have so much attached information, the only thing you won’t know is your image’s favorite color and hobbies. The metadata categories include the default categories of File Properties, IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council), and Camera Data (EXIF or Extended File Information). You can also choose to display the additional categories of GPS (Global Positioning System), Camera Raw (a digital camera file format), and Edit History categories.
Choose Edit➪Metadata Display Options to access these categories. In the following sections, you can find a brief description of each one.

File Properties
The fields in the File Properties category include common vitals, such as filename, size, format, color mode, and so on. This data cannot be edited.

Choose View➪Details to display the File Properties data next to the image thumbnail. This option allows you to collapse the left side of the File Browser without sacrificing the display of important metadata.

IPTC
This data includes info commonly used in the media and press industry. Fields such as headline, credit, source, and copyright are available for input via the File➪File Info command. Or make it easy: Select an image, or several images, and simply click the field in the File Browser and type your entry. If you select more than one image, Photoshop asks if you want the change to apply to all selected images. If so, click yes. All fields are later editable as well.

The File Info dialog box is now extensible, which means that users can create custom panels with fields specifically tailored to business needs or personal interests.

Camera Data (EXIF)
EXIF data is information that is attached to an image created from a digital camera. It includes data such as make and model of camera, exposure, and F-Stop settings. If a digital camera didn’t capture the image, it doesn’t have any EXIF data, although some scanners attach EXIF data, such as date, time, pixel dimensions, and resolution. Camera Data is not editable.

GPS
Some files, such as images captured by satellites, may contain GPS, or Global Positioning System, data. This data may contain information on latitude, longitude, altitude, direction, speed, and so on. However, this data is not shown in the Metadata palette by default. Choose the Metadata Display Options (described later) command to display the GPS data.

Camera Raw
Camera Raw is a file format used to capture images by a lot of different digital cameras. The image information is captured directly from the camera’s sensors and is not adulterated by filters or adjustments made by the camera. This enables photographers to read the image data and make their own controlled adjustments. Camera Raw data includes settings like white balance, temperature, exposure, color saturation, and so on. Like GPS data, the Camera Raw data is not shown in the Metadata palette by default. Choose the Metadata Display Options command to display this information.

Using the menu bar and buttons in Photoshop

The File Browser now sports a new menu bar. This menu bar is a visual testimony to the newly expanded capabilities of the File Browser. The next several sections provide a rundown of what you’ll find under each menu category.

File menu
Here’s what you’ll find on the File Browser’s File menu:
-->New Folder: This command creates a new folder in the location listed in the location bar.

-->Open: After you select a thumbnail in the main browser window, you can choose the
Open command to open the image in Photoshop. Of course, you can also simply double-click the selected file(s). To open multiple files, just press Ctrl (Ô on the Mac) while selecting. To select a group of contiguous files, Shift+click the first and last files to select those and all the files in between.

-->Edit in ImageReady: Choose this command if you want to open the selected files in ImageReady to prep the files for the Web.

-->Close File Browser: When you’ve had enough of the File Browser, choose this command.
Or click the Toggle File Browser button in the Options bar.
To have the File Browser close after you open an image, be sure to Alt+double-click (Option+double-click on the Mac) when you select your files in the File Browser window.

-->File Info: This feature lets you add some of your own metadata, such as title, author, copyrights, dates, credits, and so on. This information can come in handy for photographers and reporters. You can also edit (replace, append, save, and delete) Advanced Data such as EXIF (Extended File Information) Properties and TIFF Properties. But feel free to leave this data as it is.

-->Delete: To get rid of a selected image, choose Delete or click the trash can icon.
Be warned that choosing Delete removes the image(s) from your hard drive or external media, not just from the File Browser view.

-->Add/Remove Folder to Favorites: You can choose to add or remove a folder from your Favorites. If you’re not familiar with Favorites, it is a special folder that lists your favorite files, folders, programs, and drives for quick and handy access. You can easily find the Favorites folder in the folder bar and the location bar. And depending on your operating system, you’ll come across numerous ways to access your Favorites.

-->Cache commands: Cache is memory that stores frequently used data, such as thumbnails and file info, to allow for quicker loading when you display a previously viewed image or folder. Building cache for a subfolder will allow you store the information for a selected folder. If you purge the cache, you delete ranking and thumbnail information, thereby creating more disk space. Exporting cache lets you export to the folder selected in the location bar. This allows you to burn a CD without generating thumbnails.

Search is a great new feature that enables you to find files in selected folders or subfolders, based on a variety of criteria such as filename, dates, flags or keywords. Click Search and the files matching your criteria appear in the File Browser window. Note that you can also click the Search icon (binoculars icon) on the menu bar.

Assigning keywords to files is one of the quickest and most efficient ways to search for and locate images.

Many commands, such as Open, Delete, Rotate, Flag, and Rank, are available via a contextsensitive menu. Simply select an image or folder and right-click (Control+click on the Mac) to access the menu.

Edit menu
On the File Browser’s Edit menu, here are your options:

-->Select All/Deselect All: These two commands quickly select or deselect all the files in your selected folder.

-->Select All Flagged: Selects all flagged images located in your selected folder.

-->Flag: Select your desired images and choose Flag. Photoshop then tags the images and adds a small flag icon to the thumbnail. You can flag images for distinction and quick locating. Think of it as an electronic sticky note. For example, you can flag images that need editing or retouching or those you are considering using for an upcoming project. You can also quickly flag images by clicking the Flag icon in the menu bar.

-->You can also choose to display either Flagged, Unflagged, or both Flagged and Unflagged files from the Show drop-down list.

-->Rank: You can create your own custom sorting order by applying a “rank” for each image. Happily, you are no longer limited to ranking images from A to E. Apply any alphanumeric text, and Photoshop does its best to make sense of your ranking scheme and sort the images in a logical order. Numeric rankings appear first, followed by alpha rankings. Remember I said Photoshop tries to logically sort your ranking. But be warned that if you number your images 1, 2, 12, and 122, Photoshop sorts the images as 1, 12, 122, and 2. Photoshop looks to the first character, then the second, and so on.

-->Clear Ranking: Choose this command to strip all ranking from your images in the selected folder.

-->Rotate: The rotate commands rotate your images in varying degrees and direction. Note that when you rotate your images, the rotation is shown in the File Browser only when you open the image. When you open the image, Photoshop then applies the rotation. Use the Apply Rotation command to apply rotation without opening the file. You can also click the rotate buttons.

-->Append Metadata and Replace Metadata: Allow you to add or substitute existing metadata based on a template. To create a template, choose File➪File Info. In the File Info dialog box, enter all of your desired data. Then choose Save Metadata Template from the dialog box pop-up menu. Name the template and click Save.

-->Metadata Display Options: This command allows you to choose the fields displayed in each of the metadata categories.

-->Preferences: Selecting this command brings up the File Browser options of the Preferences dialog box. In addition, all other preferences are accessible as well. Here you can specify the file size limit of images you allow the File Browser to process. The default size is 100MB, while the maximum size allowed is 2047MB. However, allowing the File Browser to process extremely large files slows down its performance. If you don’t work in the world of mondo files, leave Preferences at the default setting and don’t worry about it. Here is the lowdown on the other Preference settings:

-Display: You can specify the number of most recently used folders in your location bar pop-up menu.

-Custom Thumbnail Size: Choose a Custom thumbnail size for displaying your images when you choose View➪Custom Thumbnail Size. Specify the Width of your thumbnail in pixels.

-Allow Background Processing: Select this option to allow Photoshop to process images in the background while you execute other tasks.

-Pre-generate High Quality Previews: This option enables the File Browser to create high-quality preview thumbnails of all images in your selected folder even before you select them. You must have Background Processing turned on to be able to select this option.

-Render Vector Files: Select this option if you want to allow your non-Photoshop files, such as EPS and PDF files, to be rendered, or displayed, in the File Browser window.

-Parse XMP Metadata from Non-image Files: This setting removes metadata from non-graphic images, such as text files.

-Keep Sidecar Files with Master Files: The Camera Raw file format has a feature that enables conversion and adjustment settings to be recorded and stored with the file.
These settings are stored in a sidecar file, which is an XMP (Adobe’s version of XML) data file. If you want to be able to reopen your file and have your conversion settings intact, select this option. If you want the conversion data stored in a single, collective file in the Camera Raw database, deselect this option.

You’ll notice the standard Copy command isn’t in the Edit menu. To copy a file, Alt+drag (Option+drag on the Mac) the file into another folder. To move a file, just drag it into another folder, either in the Folders palette or in the thumbnail panel.

Automate menu
On the File Browser’s Automate menu, you have the following options:

-->Batch: This command applies an action to multiple files within your selected folder in one fell swoop.

-->Batch Rename: Choose this command to rename multiple image files within a folder in one execution. You can choose to rename the files and keep them in the same folder or move them to a new folder. Click the Choose button to select that folder. Next, designate how your files are named. Choose an option from the pop-up menu or type your own. In my example, I chose to keep the original name of my documents, plus NYC, the date, and file extension. Next, choose the starting number for renamed images and check whether you want to enable the naming convention to be compatible with another platform. My images were quickly renamed.

-->Apply Format Settings: If you have a file selected in the browser, and the file is in a format that supports it (such as Camera Raw), the settings in the Camera Raw plug-in will tweak the results and be shown in the file browser. Any plug-in can potentially take advantage of this function, but currently the Camera Raw plug-in is the only one that does. Therefore, if you have the Camera Raw file selected, and the Camera Raw plug-in installed, the menu command will read “Apply Camera Raw Settings.” However, if you don’t have both of those conditions, the command will be grayed out and will just say “Apply Format Settings.”

-->Online Services: You can access Adobe’s partners and service providers online to order products such as prints and photo books.

-->All the remaining features are the same as those found in the Photoshop File➪Automate menu.

Sort menu
From this menu in the File Browser, select the criteria by which you want to sort your files. The default is by the name of your file, but a ton of other options, such as rank, flag, or date, are up for grabs. After you select the criteria, the File Browser displays your files accordingly.

View
And last but not least, here’s what the File Browser’s View menu has to offer:

-->Folders: Select this option to view folder icon thumbnails, in addition to image thumbnails, in your File Browser.

-->Unreadable Files: Select this option to see files that Photoshop does not recognize.

-->Flagged/Unflagged: Choose to view either flagged, unflagged, or both flagged and unflagged files in the File Browser. For more on flags, see the earlier section, “Using the menu bar and buttons.”

-->Thumbnails: Choose the viewing size of your thumbnails. The Custom Thumbnail size is based on your Preferences setting. The Details view displays the metadata in the File Browser window, next to a small thumbnail of the image.

-->Show Rank: Choose this option to display the ranking, if any, of each image. You can use ranking to sort your images in a specific order.

-->Reveal Location in Explorer (Finder on the Mac): If you select a file and then choose this option, the File Browser opens a Windows Explorer window and shows you the location of that file on your system.

-->Refresh: If you’ve renamed a file, the order of your files isn’t updated in the File Browser window. Choose Refresh or press F5, to get your files in order. Note that you can also choose Refresh from the Folders palette pop-up menu.

Closing and opening files also causes the File Browser to refresh.

Photoshop CS has bestowed the thumbnail pane with light-box powers. You can now drag images around to reorder, group, or rank them. What the heck? You can just drag them around to give them a little exercise if you want. Sitting in that File Browser window all day can make a file a little stiff.

Configuring the File Browser Window in Photoshop

The File Browser, being as enormous and full-featured as it is, is surprisingly flexible when it comes to how you configure its various panes and palettes. Here’s a rundown of how to customize your File Browser window:

-->To size the entire File Browser window, diagonally drag any corner or edge of the window. On the Mac, drag the lower-right corner.

-->To resize panes, drag the bar that divides them. Position your cursor over the bar (it changes to a double-headed arrow) and click and drag the bar to size the pane.

-->To view just the large pane containing the thumbnails, click the double-headed arrow located at the bottom of the File Browser window.

-->You can drag and regroup the tabbed palettes in the File Browser just as you can the regular Photoshop palettes. To collapse a palette, double-click its tab.

-->After you have configured your File Browser, you can save it as a workspace preset that you can then call up at anytime. Simply choose Window➪Workspace➪Save Workspace.

Provide a name and click Save. To access the workspace, choose Workspace and then select the name of your saved preset.

Brief Anatomy of the File Browser in Photoshop

Before I dive headlong into the detailed operations of the File Browser, let me give you a brief anatomical breakdown of each of its components.

-->Menu bar: Commands found on the menu bar allow you to open or delete images, edit an image in ImageReady, add file info, and search for images. You can also flag files and append their metadata (information about your file). See more on metadata coming up. The menu bar also offers options for sorting and viewing files. Finally, you have access to basically the same Automate menu that you find in Photoshop itself (in the File menu).

-->Buttons: Rotate, flag, search, or delete files with a click of the button.

-->Location bar: Across the top center edge of the File Browser is a location bar that lists the current location (such as a folder on your hard drive) on display.

-->Show bar: Choose to display files that are either flagged or unflagged files or both.

-->Folders palette: Located in the upper-left corner of the File Browser is a palette showing the folders on your computer. If an image file is available to your computer, the File Browser lets you use this palette to find it.

-->Preview image: Beneath the Folder palette is a preview of the currently selected image.

-->Main browser window: Beneath the location bar is a scrollable browsing window that shows thumbnail images of all the image documents in the currently selected folder. In addition, any folders located within the current folder are shown with a folder icon.

-->Keywords palette: This new feature lets you tag your images with keywords such as the names of people or places to enable easier locating and sorting of images.

-->Metadata palette: Below the Preview window is a Metadata palette that shows information about your images. The File Properties section shows items such as filename, date of creation, date last modified, image format and size, and so on. Any file information for images added via the File➪File Info displays in the IPTC section of the Metadata palette. Likewise, you can also enter, or edit file information directly in the IPTC section in the File Browser. Finally, the Camera Data section displays information associated with your digital photos, such as the make and model of your camera, and exposure and ISO speed. You can also display other types of metadata, such as Camera Raw information, by choosing them in the Metadata Display Options dialog box accessed via the Metadata palette pop-up menu.

Managing Images with the File Browser in Photoshop

The File Browser is a powerful tool that gained even more power in Photoshop CS. The File Browser lets you visually explore your hard drives and external media to find the exact image you need and has a multitude of sorting and viewing features that let you list the images in various ways.

As you can with any browser, you can use the Photoshop File Browser after very little practice.
Many of its functions are similar to browsing functions you already know. There are several ways to access the File Browser.
-->Choose Window➪File Browser.
-->Choose File➪Browse.
-->Click the new File Browser button on the Options bar.

No matter how you access the File Browser, after you open it, this behemoth of a window fills your screen. And because the File Browser has become such a feature-rich entity.

Note that the File Browser has undergone an identity change. In Version 7, the File Browser was a palette; in Photoshop CS, it has gained window status and can no longer be docked in the Palette Well. It also means, unfortunately, that if you’re a Windows user and you use a dual monitor setup, you will not be able to drag the File Browser onto your second monitor. If you’re a Mac user, you’re in luck — you’ve always been able to move any palette, dialog box, or window and still can. In addition, because the File Browser is now a window, it doesn’t automatically close after you open your images.

Working with Extras in Photoshop

Extras are the optional items displayed on your screen, such as grids, guides, selection edges, annotations, slices, and the target path (a line drawn with the Pen tool). Although you can turn on and off the display of each of these options independently, the Extras function helps you to create a set of extras that you want to see or hide. You can then turn them all on or off at once.

The following list explains how to show or hide these extras:
-->To turn one extra on or off, choose View➪Show and then choose the extra you want to show or hide in the Show Extras Options dialog box.

--> To show or hide extras in a group, choose View➪Show➪Show Extras Options. Select each extra that you want to show in the dialog box that appears.

-->To show or hide all the extras you’ve selected in Extras Options, choose View➪Extras or press Ctrl+H (Ô+H on the Mac).

Using the Info Palette in Photoshop

The Info palette displays a variety of information, depending on what tool you’re using. For example, if you’re using the Measure tool, the information in the Info palette duplicates the measurements shown in the Options bar. Choosing other tools modifies the Info palette’s display to reflect the functions of that tool. Here is some of the information you can find out by keeping the Info palette visible on your desktop:

-->When using most tools, the Info palette displays the X and Y coordinates of the cursor, as well as the color values of the pixel directly beneath the cursor.

-->When making a selection with the marquee tools, the Info palette shows both the X and Y coordinates of the cursor, as well as the width and height of the selection.

-->When dragging with the Crop or Zoom tools, the Info palette shows the width and height of the marquee used to define the cropping or zoom borders. The Crop tool’s current angle of rotation is also displayed.

-->With the Line, Pen, and Gradient tools, the Info palette shows the X and Y coordinates of the starting position for the line, path, or gradient you are defining, as well as the distance (D) of the line you’ve dragged, the change in X and Y directions (DX and DY), and the angle (A).

-->When you use a transformation command, the Info palette displays the percentage change in the Width, Height, and Angle, Angle of Horizontal Skew (H), and Angle of Vertical Skew (V).

-->When you use a color adjustment, such as Levels, the Info palette displays before and after color values beneath the mouse cursor.

-->After you’ve made a selection with the Lasso or Magic Wand tools, the Info palette also shows the Width and Height of the selection. Choose Palette Options from the Info palette’s pop-up menu (click the triangle in the upper right to open the pop-up menu).

Here you can define a second color readout in addition to the default readout, using a different color model if you want. In addition to the regular color modes, the default Actual Color option displays values in the current mode of the document. Proof color displays values based on the setting chosen in View➪Proof Setup. The Total Ink option displays the percentage CMYK ink under the cursor based on the settings in the CMYK Setup dialog box in the Color Settings (Advanced). You can also define a measurement increment for the mouse cursor (in inches, pixels, millimeters, and so forth) independently of the increment you’ve selected in Preferences.

Measuring an object in Photoshop

To measure an object, follow these steps:
1. Select the Measure tool.
It’s tucked away in the Tools palette with the Eyedropper. Press I to cycle among the Eyedropper, Color Eyedropper, and Measure tool until it appears.
2. Click at a starting location for the measuring line and then drag to the end location.
Hold down the Shift key to constrain the line to multiples of 45 degrees.
3. Release the mouse button to create the measurement line.

Measuring an angle in Photoshop
You can measure an angle by drawing two lines and reading the angle between them from the
Options bar. Just follow these steps:
1. Select the Measure tool.
2. Click at a starting location for the first line and drag to the end location.
You can hold down the Shift key to constrain the line to multiples of 45 degrees.
3. Release the mouse button to create the first line.
4. Hold down the Alt key (or the Option key on the Mac) and click in the end point of the first line where you want to measure the angle.
5. Drag the second line and release the mouse button when it is finished.
6. In the Options bar, read the angle between the two lines (A).
You can also see the length of each of the lines as D1 and D2.

Measuring On-Screen in Photoshop

You can measure distances and objects within Photoshop many different ways. The rulers, used in combination with guides, are a good way to mark distances precisely so that you can create objects of a particular size. You can change the increments used for these measurements in Photoshop’s Preferences.

However, Photoshop also has a handy Measure tool you can use to lay measurement outlines in any direction (not just vertically or horizontally as with grids and guides). These lines tell you a great deal more than just the size of the object you’re measuring. You can also measure angles and determine the exact coordinates of an object.

When you use the Measure tool, the Options bar offers a read-out of information that includes the following values:

-->X, Y — the X and Y coordinates of the start of the line: For example, if you start at the 1-inch position on the horizontal ruler and the 3-inch position on the vertical ruler, the X and Y values in the Options bar are 1.0 and 3.0, respectively. (You select the increments for the X and Y values on the ruler in Photoshop’s Preferences.)

-->W, H — the horizontal (W) and vertical (H) distances traveled from the X and Y points: A 1-inch long, perfectly horizontal line drawn from the X,1 and Y,3 position shows a W value of 1.0 and an H value of 0.0.

-->A: The angle of the first line.

-->D1: The total length of the line.

-->D2: The total length of the second line.

Using grids in Photoshop

The Photoshop Grid feature offers a convenient canned set of guidelines already nicely arranged for you at preset intervals. You can use a grid for any application where you want to align objects in a pleasing, geometrically precise arrangement.
Grids share some features in common with guides but boast a few differences, too:

-->Like guides, grids don’t print with your image. They are transparent artifacts used only as reference lines in your image.

-->Objects and tools can optionally snap to the lines on a grid, depending on whether you have View➪Snap To➪Grid turned on or off.

-->You can show or hide grids by choosing View➪Show (Hide)➪Grid.

-->You can change the color of the grid and choose solid lines, dashed lines, or dots for
the grid by choosing Edit➪Preferences➪Guides, Grids, & Slices (Photoshop➪Preferences in Mac OS).

-->You can specify the distance between grid lines and the number of subdivisions between grid lines in the Preferences dialog box. For more information on setting grid and guide preferences.

Using guides in Photoshop

After the guides are in place, here are a few of the things you can do with them:

-->Turn the Snap to Guides feature on or off: Choose View➪Snap To➪Guides.

-->Lock all guides so you don’t accidentally move them: Choose View➪Lock Guides.
You can also select Alt+Ctrl+semicolon (Option+Ô+semicolon on the Mac).

-->Remove all guides and start from scratch: Choose View➪Clear Guides.

-->Change a horizontal guide to a vertical guide (or vice versa): Hold down the Alt key (Option key on the Mac) as you drag the guide.

-->Align a guide at a precise location on the ruler: Hold down the Shift key as you drag a guide to force it to snap to the ruler ticks.

-->Create a new guide in a precise location: Choose View➪New Guide, click the Horizontal or Vertical option, and type in a distance from the ruler where you want the new guide to reside.

Creating guides in Photoshop

Guides are nonprintable horizontal and vertical lines that you can position anywhere you like within a document window. Normally, they are displayed as solid blue lines, but you can change guides to another color and/or to a dashed line.

To use guides, choose Edit➪Preferences➪Guides, Grid, & Slices (or Photoshop➪Preferences➪Guides, Grid, & Slices in Mac OS X). Guides would be useful even if they were only, well, guides. However, they have another cool feature: Objects and tools dragged to within 8 screen pixels of a guide are magnetically attracted to the guide and snap to it. That makes it ridiculously easy to align objects precisely. Because the objects snap to the guides, you can be confident that you have placed the objects exactly on the guide and not just near it. You can turn off the “snap to” feature if you want a little less precision in your arrangements.

To place guides, follow these steps:
1. Make sure that rulers are visible in your image. Choose View➪Rulers to display them, if necessary.
Anytime you create a guide by dragging from the ruler, the Show Guides option automatically switches on. At other times, you can show or hide guides by choosing View➪Show➪Guides, or by pressing
Ctrl+semicolon (Ô+semicolon on the Mac).

2. Click in the horizontal ruler and drag down to create a new horizontal guide. Release the mouse button when the guide is in the location you want.

3. Click in the vertical ruler and drag to the right to create a new vertical guide.
When you release the mouse button your new guide stops.
You can also create a horizontal guide by Alt+clicking in the vertical ruler (Option+clicking on the Mac), or a vertical guide by Alt+clicking in the horizontal ruler (Option+clicking on the Mac). Use whichever method is faster for you.

4. Use the Move tool (press V to activate it) to reposition your guides.

Getting Precise Layout Results in Photoshop

Photoshop includes numerous useful features that help you lay out your images precisely. There are dozens of reasons to make a selection in a particular place, position an object at an exact location, or align several objects along the same imaginary line. Here are a few examples:

-->You want to draw parallel lines exactly 50 pixels apart to create a “window blind” effect.

-->You’re creating a set of thumbnails that need to be aligned so they line up in neat rows and columns.

-->You want to create an object that is the exact same size (in one or more dimensions) as another object already in your image.

You have several tools to help you do this, and more.

Choosing a Screen Mode in Photoshop

Photoshop’s working area can become horribly cluttered. And here’s a secret: The more adept you become, the more cluttered the desktop becomes. Just when you begin to appreciate a neatly docked Options bar and the convenience of displaying palettes, you realize that you’ve gobbled up all your free working space.

Photoshop has three different screen modes (or maybe five, depending on what you consider to be a screen mode). Each mode shows or hides some of the elements on the screen at the press of a key or click of the mouse button. Three screen modes are on the Tools palette; two more are hidden but easily accessible.

Press the F key to cycle between the three screen modes.

In the Full Screen mode, Standard Screen mode, or Full Screen mode with menu bar, you can still press Shift+Tab and the Tab key to hide the palettes and/or Options bar.

If you hide the Tools palette when in either Full Screen mode, you can’t click the icons to return. Press Tab or Shift+Tab to reveal the Tools palette, or simply press the F key to cycle among the screen modes.

Cruising with the Navigator Palette in Photoshop

Some Photoshop users don’t use the Navigator palette, which is a roadmap to your image document, nearly as often as they could, and there’s a simple reason for that: In its default size, the Navigator palette is just too darned small to be of use.

Most new Photoshop users see the tiny Navigator window and decide that working with such a small thumbnail image isn’t worth the bother. There’s a quick fix, and after you’ve seen exactly what the Navigator palette can do for you, it may become one of your favorite tools.
Here are the keys to using the Navigator palette:

-->Resize the Navigator palette: Before you begin working with the Navigator palette, grab the size box at the lower-right corner of the Navigator palette and drag it down and to the right to create a jumbo version with a much larger, more viewable thumbnail.

This works really well if you are using a second monitor, especially in Windows, since you can’t put another document window on the second monitor. Placing the jumbo-sized Navigator palette on the second monitor is the next best thing.

The Navigator palette is one palette that you probably won’t want to relegate to the Palette Well. It’s most useful when it is visible at all times. Position the Navigator palette to one side of your image so it’s ready for instant use.

-->View the thumbnail: The entire Navigator window shows the full document image, with an outline called a View box showing the amount of image visible in the document window at the current zoom level.

-->Change the view: Click anywhere in the thumbnail outside the View box to center the box at that position. The comparable view in your main document window changes to match.

-->Move the view: Click anywhere in the thumbnail inside the View box and then drag to move the box to a new position. The main document window changes to match the new view.

-->Zoom in or out: Click the Zoom In button (which has an icon of two large pyramids) or Zoom Out button (which has an icon of two smaller pyramids) to zoom in or out. Or drag the Zoom slider that resides between the two icons. The View box changes sizes as you zoom in or out, and Photoshop magnifies or reduces the view in the original document window to match, as well.

-->Specify an exact magnification: The lower-left corner of the Navigator palette has a Magnification box just like the one in the status bar. It shows the current magnification, and you can type in a new value to zoom to the exact magnification level you need.

If the View box color is too similar to a dominant color in your image, you can choose a new color for its outline by selecting Palette Options from the Navigator palette pop-up menu.

Handling the Hand tool in Photoshop

The Hand tool helps you to quickly move around in an image document. The Hand tool works similarly to a scroll bar, but you’ll probably find the scroll bar to be more efficient. The Hand tool is more of a function than an actual tool because you rarely need to click the Hand tool to use it. Simply press the spacebar while using any other tool, and the cursor changes into the Hand icon, enabling you to move the image around in its window by dragging.
Here are some tips for using this tool:

-->Press H to activate the tool: To activate the Hand tool without clicking its icon on the Tools palette, just press the H key.

-->Use the Options bar to change the size of a window: When the Hand tool is active, the Actual Pixels, Fit on Screen, and Print Size buttons appear in the Options bar. Click these buttons to enlarge or reduce the image window so the whole image fits in the window; make the document as large as it can be in your working space; or make the document appear in the size it will be when printed.

-->Use the Hand tool as a spacebar lock: When the Hand tool is active, you can hold down the Alt key (Option key on the Mac) and click in the image to zoom out, or hold down the Ctrl key (Ô key on the Mac) and click to zoom in — without needing to hold down the spacebar as you would with the normal keyboard shortcut.

The Hand-tool-as-a-spacebar-lock trick is new in Photoshop CS. Another new option, Scroll All Windows, enables you to move around all open documents simultaneously.

Double-clicking the Hand tool resizes the document image so its longest dimension expands to fill the screen in that direction. A tall, portrait-oriented image balloons up until the document is as tall as possible in the Photoshop working area. A wide, landscape-oriented image expands its width to fit within the left and right borders of the screen.

-->Press the Page Up or Page Down buttons to change the view. These buttons move the view up or down by a window.

Now that you have become friendly with the Zoom and Hand tools, here is one last tip. If you hold down the Shift key while scrolling with the Hand tool or zooming with the Zoom tool, all open image windows will scroll or zoom together. This can come in especially handy, for example, when you have created another view of the same document (Window➪Arrange➪New Window).

Zooming tricks in Photoshop

After you’ve absorbed the basic features of the various zoom alternatives in Photoshop, you’ll want to find out about some of the special tricks built into them. Here’s a list of the most useful options:

-->Magnify by dragging. With the Zoom tool, drag over the portion of the image you want to zoom into. A selection marquee appears, and when you release the mouse button, that portion of the image fills your document window. To freeze and then move the selection marquee around the image, begin your drag and then hold down the spacebar while dragging the marquee to a new location.

-->Double-click the Zoom tool to display the image at 100 percent magnification. You can also choose View➪Actual Pixels from the menu bar or, if the Zoom tool is active, click the Actual Pixels button on the Options bar.

-->Choose View➪Fit on Screen to make an image the largest possible size that will fit on the screen. You also can click the Fit on Screen button on the Options bar if the Zoom tool is active or (the fastest way) just double-click the Hand tool.

To resize windows to fit on the screen when you’re not using the Zoom tool, choose Edit➪Preferences➪General (or Photoshop➪Preferences➪General in Mac OS X) and select the Keyboard Zoom Resizes Windows option.

Zooming In and Out of Image Windows in Photoshop

Photoshop offers several ways to zoom in or out of an image, but you’ll probably find yourself using one method, such as the keyboard shortcuts, almost instinctively.
Each method has advantages of its own. Here’s a quick discussion of each:

-->Keyboard shortcuts: While using any tool, hold down the Shift key. Then press the Alt key (or press spacebar+Option on the Mac) and click to zoom out from a point centered on where you click. Press the Ctrl key instead (or spacebar+Ô on the Mac) and click to zoom in to a point centered on where you click the mouse button. Photoshop zooms in or out by one of its preset increments (such as 100 percent, 200 percent, or 50 percent, 33 percent, 25 percent, and so forth). The maximum magnification Photoshop allows is 1,600 percent; the minimum magnification is 0.0533 percent.

Using keyboard shortcuts is the best way to change magnifications on the fly.

-->Zoom tool: Click the Zoom tool in the Tools palette or press Z to activate it. Click anywhere in the image to magnify it by one of the preset magnifications mentioned in the preceding bullet. Hold down the Alt key (or the Option key on the Mac) and click with the Zoom tool to zoom out. In either case, the zoom centers on the point you click. The Zoom tool’s big advantage is its zoom selection facility. With the Zoom tool, drag in your image to create a temporary selection. When you release the button, Photoshop zooms in to fill the image window at the highest magnification that includes the selected area.

-->Options bar zoom buttons: When the Zoom tool is active, plus (+) and minus (–) zoom buttons appear on the Options bar. You can click the buttons to enlarge or reduce the image to the next preset percentage, centering the zoom on the center of the image.

As you zoom in and out, Photoshop does not alter the size of the document window, so your image may become too large for its window (in which case scroll bars appear so you can view the rest of the image) or too small (in which case a gray border appears around the image).

Select the Resize Windows to Fit option on the Options bar, and Photoshop automatically changes the size of the document window to show the full document in view, up to the size of the Photoshop working area.

-->Menu zoom: Choose View➪Zoom In or View➪Zoom Out to enlarge or reduce the image from the menu bar. You can also choose from these options on the View menu:
_ Actual Pixels (which shows your image on the screen at 1:1 pixel ratio)
_ Fit on Screen (which enlarges the image to the maximum size that will fit on the screen)
_ Print Size (which shows the image at the size it will print)

-->Magnification box: The Magnification box in the status bar at the bottom of the Photoshop working area (in Windows) or the bottom of each document (in Mac OS) shows the current magnification ratio. Many Photoshop users don’t realize you can also type in an exact magnification ratio in this box to produce a custom zoom level. This is handy if you need a specific amount of enlargement or reduction.

-->Match Zoom: Photoshop CS offers a new command for zooming when you have more than one document open. Choose Match Zoom to have all your open documents match the magnification percentage of your active document.

-->Match Location: Another new command, Match Location, matches the locations of all your open documents with the location of your active document. For example, if you are viewing the center portion of an image, choosing this command then adjusts the views of all your open documents to the center as well.

-->Match Zoom and Location: And finally, Match Zoom and Location does both commands simultaneously.

Viewing and Navigating Images in Photoshop

Photoshop offers a variety of ways to view your image documents as you work with them. You can pull back to look at the big picture or zoom in to work on a tiny portion of the image in minute detail. A useful Navigator palette is also at hand to show you exactly where you are in an image and help you move to a specific spot with a click of the mouse button. Should you want to align objects precisely on the screen, Photoshop offers grids and guides with some “magnetic” properties. And, if you’re having trouble finding the image you want, Photoshop even includes a browser to help you search visually.

Looking at the Image Window
Each Photoshop image document resides in its own window, which provides multiple views of the same document. You can drag the window anywhere in the Photoshop working space, but you can’t drag it to a second display screen if you’re using Photoshop with more than one monitor in Windows (Mac users
can, though). Remember that you can, however, move palettes and dialog boxes onto a second monitor.

You can move palettes and dialog boxes out of the main working space (and onto a second monitor), but documents must stay put in the original display if you’re using Windows.

The image window comes in handy because sometimes you’ll want to look at an image from two perspectives. For example, you may want to get up close and personal with an image to edit pixels, but you still want to view the full image in a fairly large size. Or, you might want to zoom in on two different portions of an image, but find that simply enlarging the entire image on your screen doesn’t show both parts at once.

In either case, all you need to do is create a new image window for the same image. You can size each window separately, and you can center the window on any portion of the image you like. For example, you can have one window zoomed in on the upperright corner of an image and a second window zoomed in on the lower-right corner, and have both visible on the screen at once.

Here’s a quick list of what you can do with multiple windows:
-->Keep different parts of an image straight by creating multiple windows. Select the document window you want to duplicate, and then choose Window➪Arrange➪New Window for (filename) from the menu bar. You can size and position the new window and zoom in or out without affecting the view of the original window.

-->Keep windows organized by cascading them. If you find that you’ve created so many windows that you can’t view them all easily, Photoshop can automatically arrange them for you in its working space. Choose Window➪Arrange➪Cascade to create an overlapping stack of windows arranged from the upper-left to the lower-right side of your display.

-->Keep from losing important windows by tiling them. Choose Window➪Arrange➪Tileto arrange the windows side by side without overlapping. Photoshop changes the size of the document windows so they all fit on the screen, but doesn’t change the zoom amount. In many cases, the reduced-size windows have scroll bars to let you view the hidden portion of the window.

-->Tidy up by closing windows you don’t need anymore. To close a specific window, click its Close button in the upper-right corner of its title bar under Windows (at the top left in the Mac OS).

-->Close all windows in one fell swoop. To close all windows, choose Window➪Arrange➪Close All (or press Shift+Ctrl+W) in Windows. If you’re using Mac OS, choose File➪Close All instead. On the Mac, you can also hold down the Option key and click the Close button to close all open documents.

-->Minimize a document (in Mac OS). To minimize an active document and place the thumbnail in the Dock, choose Window➪Arrange➪Minimize. To maximize the image, simply click the image thumbnail in the Dock.

-->Bring all Photoshop documents to the front (in Mac OS). The Mac OS allows you to work in multiple applications and multiple files simultaneously. Sometimes when you switch back into working in Photoshop, your documents may be buried behind non-Photoshop files that are open in the other applications (the files are interleaved).

Choose Window➪Arrange➪Bring All to Front to bring all your Photoshop documents to the forefront.

Setting Printing Options in Photoshop

Photoshop has several printing modes to choose from, depending on how much control you need and how much of a hurry you’re in. Here are your options:

-->Print One Copy (Alt+Shift+Ctrl+P, or Option+Shift+Ô+P on the Mac) is a quick way to print a hard copy using the default settings.

-->Print (Ctrl+P, or Ô+P on the Mac) pops up the standard Windows (or Mac) Print dialog box, with options to choose a new printer, select which pages to print, select the number of copies, and indicate whether to collate the output. The exact options available depend on what printer you are printing to.

-->Print with Preview (Alt+Ctrl+P, or Option+Ô+P on the Mac) opens an expanded Print dialog box that includes a preview window and many more options to choose from. You can even access the Page Setup dialog box from this dialog box if you want to change the orientation, paper size, or switch to a different printer. This dialog box is almost identical under the Windows and Mac operating systems. To set your print options, follow these steps:

1. Choose File➪Print with Preview.
The Print dialog box opens.

2. Use the Top and Left boxes in the Position area to indicate where you want the image to appear on the page.

3. To center the image, select the Center Image check box.

4. Select the Show More Options check box and choose Output from the drop-down list.
The other option on the drop-down list, Color Management, controls advanced proofing and color profile tasks. Note that any options that don’t apply to your selected printer are grayed out.

5. If you want to scale the image up or down, choose the scale percentage and/or enter height and width values in the Scaled Print Size area.
(This doesn’t change the physical dimensions of the image, just the print size.) Additional options include:

-->Show Bounding Box: Places the handles around the image area and allows for visual sizing.

-->Print Selected Area: Allows you to print only part of a large image.

-->Scale to Fit Media: Sizes your image to fit on a particular paper size.

6. Choose the printing options you want to apply:

--> Background: The area surrounding the printed image is called the background, not to be confused with the background color on the Colors palette or the background layer of an image. You can change this color from the default (white) to any other color. Clicking the Background button brings up the Color Picker tool. Black is often the best background choice if you are printing slides on a film recorder and want the area outside the image to remain dark.

-->Border: The dialog box that pops up lets you specify a black border to be printed around an image in any width from 0 to 10 points, 0 to 3.5 millimeters, or 0 to 1.5 inches.

-->Bleed: A bleed is an image that extends right up to the edge of the paper size on one or more edges. In effect, you’re cropping inside the image area. In practice, most printers don’t actually print right to the edge, so to bleed, say, a 5-x-7-inch image, you need to print it on a larger sheet of paper, such as 8 x 10.
Clicking the Bleed button opens a dialog box in which you enter a width in inches, millimeters, or points inside the edge of the image.

-->Screen: When you click the Screen button, you see the Halftone Screens dialog box which lets you create halftones for color separation.

-->Transfer: This is an advanced function used for prepress operations to compensate for the change in dot sizes when halftoned images are printed on a press.

-->Interpolation: This option is only available with some printers, particularly PostScript Level 2 (or higher models), to even out the jagged appearance of diagonal lines in lowresolution images. Just be aware that interpolation can only help so much and in some cases, it can be damaging.

7. Select options for marking the area outside the print area. These include several items that appear only when the print area is smaller than the paper size:

-->Calibration bars: This option adds an 11-step grayscale bar outside the image area when printing to a paper size that is larger than the image area. You can use calibration bars to gauge how accurately the gray tones of an image are being reproduced.

-->Registration marks: Registration marks are handy when you’re printing with multiple plates for color separations, such as those used in four-color or duotone processes. These marks help keep the plates aligned so the image is printed properly.

-->Corner crop marks: Clicking this box prints crop marks at the corners of the image, which indicate where trimming should take place.

-->Center crop marks: These crop marks show where the page will be trimmed at the top, bottom, and each side.

-->Description: To include a description on a printout, choose File➪File Info and enter the text you want to appear. Then check the Description box in this dialog box.

-->Labels: Selecting this check box prints the document name and channel name on the image.

8. Set the options that apply when you’re printing to film for color separations, if that’s the case.
Be sure to talk to your service bureau or offset printer representative for their recommendations.
Here are your choices:

-->Emulsion Down: The side of a film or photographic print paper that is light sensitive is called the emulsion side. You must specify whether you want the emulsion side up or side down for film output. Emulsion Down is the most common film output choice, although some publications may request Emulsion Up. The default is Emulsion Up (the check box is not selected). This option is not available with all printers.

-->Negative: When you’re printing an image on paper, you usually want a positive image, in which case you should not select the Negative check box. However, if you’re printing the image on film (as is the case if you’re printing color separations), your printer will probably request a negative. To print a film positive, do not select this check box.

Photoshop Page Setup in the Mac OS

To choose which printer is active in the Mac OS, use the Print Center to access the Page Setup dialog box choose File➪Page Setup, or press Shift+Ô+P. You can set the page size and orientation, scaling, and additional parameters, depending on your printer.

In Mac OS X, you can also choose a printer directly from the Print dialog box just as you can in Windows. Also in Mac OS X, if you’re connected directly to a printer via the USB port, the system automatically detects the printer. If you’re on a network, you can use Print Center and select a printer from the Printer list or in the Print dialog box.

Photoshop Page Setup in Microsoft Windows

With Windows applications such as Photoshop, you open the Page Setup dialog box by choosing File➪Page Setup or by pressing Shift+Ctrl+P. In this dialog box you can select the paper size, orientation (Portrait or Landscape), and other things, such as which paper tray to use. If you click the Printer button, a second Page Setup dialog box appears.

Here, you can choose a specific printer from those attached to your computer or network. Clicking the Properties button takes you to specific options customized for your printer, such as print quality or special effects available with that printer. These vary from printer to printer, so consult your printer’s instruction manual.

Printing an Image in Photoshop

The process of printing an image in Photoshop is slightly different in the Windows and Mac OS operating systems. The chief differences are in the Page Setup step, in which you select a printer and choose orientation, paper size, and other parameters. The next few sections take a closer look at Page Setup in the two operating systems.

Using professional printing services
Even if you own a photo-quality printer, you may want to take advantage of professional services from time to time. For example, you may own a dye-sublimation printer that cranks out snapshots with aplomb but can’t give you a 5-x-7-inch or 8-x-10-inch print.

Hop in the car and jaunt over to a retailer in your area equipped with one of those stand-alone kiosks, such as the Kodak Picture Maker. These devices accept images in many formats. You can use your digital camera’s memory cards, Kodak Photo CDs, or diskettes to supply fodder for the kiosk. Most include scanners that can capture your original prints, slides, and negatives.

They even offer Photoshop-like picture-fixing capabilities. You can adjust color, repair red-eye problems, crop or enlarge your images, and add text.

Many photofinishers or service bureaus can make prints from your Photoshop-edited images if you burn them to a CD, save them to a Zip disk, or upload them to an FTP site over the Internet. You can often purchase greeting cards, T-shirts, mouse pads, and other printed output that is difficult to duplicate at home. Large-format prints, posters, and murals are other cool options.

Online service providers are also becoming increasingly popular. Adobe has partnered with shutterfly.com and MyPublisher.com to offer prints of all sizes, calendars, and professionally printed and bound photo books.

Photoshop: Getting It on Paper

Hard-copy prints have become a hugely popular output option, thanks largely to the swarm of sub-$200 photo quality inkjet printers that are vying for your discretionary dollars. Today, anyone can afford a printer capable of producing sparkling prints from digital images. The chief problem is restraining the urge to print everything in sight before your ink tank (and wallet) runs dry.

Taking a Look at Printers
You can print Photoshop images on any kind of printer, but, aside from the occasional 200-copy print run of black-and-white “Have You Seen This Kitty?” posters, monochrome laser printers are not high on the list of favored Photoshop output hardware. More often, you’ll be choosing a full-color printer, probably an inkjet model, but also possibly a dye-sublimation, thermal-wax, or even color laser printer model. Although all these printers produce roughly similar results, they do have some differences, as detailed in the following list:

-->Inkjet printers: These printers paint the page by spraying a jet of ink one dot at a time, under precision computer control. The ink can be water-based or solid ink that is melted just before application. Liquid inks tend to spread by soaking or wicking into the fibers of the paper, can smear when wet, and produce better results when used with photo paper designed especially for inkjets.

Most inkjet printers use four ink tanks for black, cyan, magenta, and yellow. A few use six tanks, adding “weak” cyan and magenta hues to the strong colors and black to provide more colors. Regardless of configuration, inkjet printers generally provide excellent full-color output, but the cost of consumables (ink and paper) can add up fast.

-->Dye-sublimation printers: These printers potentially offer better-looking prints, but require even more expensive materials than inkjet printers. Most models cost more than inkjet models. Many consumer-oriented dye-sub printers are models capable of producing only snapshot-sized (roughly 4-x-6-inch) prints. They use a continuous ribbon of color panels in a roll that is the same width as the print, with each panel used only once. The print head’s tiny heating elements can melt dots of dye over a range of 256 values to generate up to 16.8 million colors. Professional dye-sub printers are accurate enough to be used for color proofing.

--> Thermal-wax printers and solid-ink printers: These printers use blocks of wax or resin that are melted and sprayed directly onto a page. Some apply ink to a drum that rolls against a piece of paper, like an offset printing press. Significantly more expensive to own and operate than inkjet printers, these devices are generally for advanced-amateur or professional applications.

Closing and Quitting in Photoshop

When your session is finished, you’ll want to close up shop and quit Photoshop. PC users, in addition to using the traditional File➪Exit option, you can close Photoshop in any of the following ways:
-->Choose Close from the Windows Control menu in the upper-left corner of the Photoshop title bar.
-->Click the Close (X) button in the upper-right corner of the Photoshop title bar under Windows.
-->Press Ctrl+Q.
-->Mac users can choose Photoshop➪Quit or press Ô+Q.
With any of these methods, Photoshop asks you, in turn, if you’d like to save any open file that has not been saved or has not been saved since it was modified in this session. Click the Yes button to close and save the files. You can also close any open files without exiting Photoshop by pressing Shift+Ctrl+W (Shift+Ô+W on the Mac).

Applying Digital Copyrights in Photoshop

You may want to protect your work from unauthorized reuse by embedding digital copyright information in the file — using the watermark capabilities in Photoshop (provided by Digimarc technology). You should apply a watermark only after an image is finished. If you change an image later, you have to apply the watermark to a new copy of the image; you cannot add a watermark to an image that has previously been marked. Although watermarking isn’t bulletproof, it can help preserve your rights. Follow these steps to apply a digital copyright to an image:
1. If your image has more than one layer, choose Layer➪Flatten Image to combine all the visible layers into one.
2. If the image is an Indexed Color image (for example, a GIF file), choose Image➪Mode➪RGB Color to convert it to RGB mode.
You can always reconvert it to GIF after applying the watermark.
3. Choose Filter➪Digimarc➪Embed Watermark.
The Embed Watermark dialog box Opens.
4. If this is the first time you’ve applied a watermark, click the Personalize button and follow the instructions to register with Digimarc Corporation over the Web or by telephone. Enter your ID and PIN numbers as instructed and then click OK.
Digimarc Corporation charges an annual fee based on the number of images you want to watermark and
your desired subscription level. For example, 1 to 99 images at the basic subscription level costs $49 per year.
5. Enter a copyright year for the image in the text box.
6. Choose from the following options:
-->Restricted to limit the use of the image.
-->Do Not Copy to specify that the image should not be copied.
-->Adult Content to mark the image suitable for adults only.
7. In the Target Output area, choose whether the image is intended for Monitor, Web, or Print display.
8. In the Watermark Durability area, drag the slider or enter a value.
Durability in this case is a compromise between visibility (very durable) and unobtrusiveness (not very visible). If you make the watermark less visible, someone can accidentally (or intentionally) damage or make it less effective by some image-processing operations. The more durable a watermark becomes, the more likely it will be visible to the eye, but the image will remain protected even if the image is scanned, modified with filters, or printed.
9. Select the Verify check box in the lower right.
This tells Photoshop to double-check the image after the watermark is applied, to make sure it was successfully embedded.
10. Click OK to apply the watermark.

Saving a backup copy in Photoshop

You usually want to have a backup copy of an image safe on your hard drive any time you make changes to a file and, often, periodically throughout a work session. If you change your mind about the modifications you’ve made to an image, you can always return to the backup copy. Photoshop offers several ways to create such copies:
-->Choose File➪Save As and enter a new name to the file. It’s also a good idea to specify a new location, such as another hard drive or perhaps a removable storage destination, such as a Zip disk or a CD-R/RW disc.
-->Choose File➪Save As and select the As a Copy check box. Photoshop simply adds “copy” to the current filename (for example, myfile.psd becomes myfile copy.psd) and saves the file under that new name.

Photoshop also enables you to create backup snapshots of your images at any time (or even a snapshot of an earlier version of the image by using the History palette). However, because Photoshop does not save these snapshots when you close an image, you should use them just as backups during a particular working session. In addition, Photoshop now offers a Layer Comps palette, which enables you to save different configurations of your document by recording the appearance of your layers.

Saving a File in Photoshop

Before you exit Photoshop, you’ll want to save your file on your hard drive or other media. Don’t worry if you forget to do this; Photoshop won’t let you exit without first asking you if you’d like to save any files that you’ve changed or newly created. However, it’s a good idea to save files from time to time as you work on them so that you always have a recent copy safely stored on your drive. Follow these steps to save a file:
1. Choose File➪Save As.
Choose File➪Save to store the current file under its present name. Choose File➪Save As to store a new file never saved or a file already saved under a different name. The Save As dialog box appears.
2. Navigate to the folder where you’d like to store the file.
3. Type a name in the File Name text box.
4. Choose a format from the Format drop-down list.
Some file formats have special capabilities and requirements. For example, if your document has layers, you can save it in TIFF or PSD or PDF formats. Your options appear in the Save As dialog box when you select a format.
5. In the Save and Color Options areas, select or deselect the following check boxes as desired:
-->As a Copy: Save the file as a copy.
-->Annotations: Include or delete annotations in the saved copy.
-->Alpha Channels: Include or ignore alpha channels (stored selections).
-->Spot Colors: Enable spot colors in the saved file.
-->Layers: Include layers or simply flatten the image to one layer
-->Use Proof Setup: Enable proof setup, which includes an on-screen preview of how the image will look when printed or viewed on a specific device.
-->ICC Profile (Windows)/Embed Color Profile (Mac): Embed a color profile in the file based on the settings established in your Color Settings dialog box.
--> Thumbnail (Windows only): Embed a thumbnail image in the file if you’ve defined thumbnails as optional in Photoshop’s Preferences.
-->Use Lower Case Extension (Windows only): Use lowercase extensions (that is, .tif instead of .TIF) regardless of how you type the filename.
6. Depending on which file format you choose, you may get an additional dialog box of options.
7. Click Save to store the image.

Creating a New Image in Photoshop

At some point, you’ll want to create a new image from scratch. You may want an empty canvas to paint on or need a blank image as scratch space. Or you may want to paste a copied selection into a new document. Follow these steps to use the New feature to create a new image:
1. Choose File➪New or press Ctrl+N (Ô+N on the Mac).
The New dialog box appears. If you copy a selection to the Clipboard and then choose File➪New, Photoshop automatically selects the Clipboard preset and enters the dimensions of the copied selection as the width and height of the new document. You can create the new, empty document and then paste the copied selection into it by pressing Ctrl+V (Ô+V on the Mac).
2. Type in a name for the new file.
If you specify no name, Photoshop creates one for you, such as Untitled-1, Untitled-2, and so forth.
3. Enter the width and height of your image by using one of the following methods:
-->Enter the width and height manually.
Type the width and height of your choice in the text boxes. The Preset size will automatically revert to Custom. Note that now when you change the units for either the width or height, the other also changes. Hold down the Shift key to change both width and height independently.
-->Choose a preset size from the Preset drop-down list.
The document sizes include Default Photoshop Size; common printing sizes such as 4 x 6, 5 x 7, or 8 x 10 inches; display screen sizes such as 640 x 480 pixels or 800 x 600 pixels; digital video sizes; plus an array of other popular sizes. Photoshop CS has a couple new presets. The Clipboard provides the size that corresponds with an image that you have copied to the clipboard. You can also choose to match the size of any open file.

Open files are listed at the bottom of the Preset list. Now for the best new preset — your own! Photoshop now allows you to create a user-defined custom preset based on your defined settings. Click the Save Preset button in the New Document Preset dialog box. Name your preset. Choose any or all the options you want to include in your preset. When you choose not to include an option, Photoshop displays the last used value for that option. Click OK.

Your custom preset now appears at the top of the Preset list. As with other Photoshop dialog boxes, you may change from the default unit of measurement of pixels to another, such as inches.
4. Enter the resolution for the new document.
For example, you may want to choose 72 pixels/inch for images that will be displayed on-screen and 300 pixels/inch for images that will be printed.

It’s important to choose the right resolution at this point in the creation process because if you need to change the resolution later, you degrade image quality. Note that Photoshop now kindly gives you the size of your image in the lower-right of the dialog box based on your settings. This is good information if you’re targeting a specific file size for your image.
5. From the Color Mode drop-down list, select a color mode.
Your choices include Bitmap, Grayscale, RGB Color, CMYK Color, and Lab Color. Photoshop CS now provides support for 16-bit images. Therefore, you can now select the desired color depth for your document. Only 1-bit color depth is available for Bitmap images (each pixel is either black or white). The remaining 8-bit and 16-bit color depths are available for the other color modes.
6. In the Background Contents dropdown list, select an option for how you want the background layer to be filled.
You choices are white, the current background color, or transparent.
7. Click the Advanced button to display a couple of additional options the New Document dialog box in Photoshop CS now has.
-->Color Profile assigns a color profile (a definition of the way color looks in a document) to your new document. The default color profile is the Don’t Color Manage This Document profile. I don’t recommend using this setting. As an overall recommendation, use Working RGB when creating a new document unless you have good reason not to otherwise. This setting provides a nice, large gamut (range) of RGB colors.
-->Pixel Aspect Ratio selects an aspect ratio (the relationship of Width to Height). The default setting of square is fine for print or Web images. Images for digital video content may require a non-square aspect ratio such as D1/DV NTSC or others.
8. Click OK when you’re finished entering your options.
Photoshop creates the new image.

Placing Files in Photoshop

In Photoshop, you use the File➪Place command to put PDF (Portable Document Format), Adobe Illustrator (AI), or EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) files into a layer of their own. These files are often created by programs other than Photoshop, such as Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Illustrator, or CorelDRAW. Although Photoshop can open these files independently, you must use the Place feature if you want to combine them with an existing image. Follow these steps to place a PDF, Adobe Illustrator, or EPS file:

1. Open an existing document into which you want to place a file.
2. Choose File➪Place.
The Place dialog box opens.
3. Navigate to the file you want to insert and then double-click the file.
For some types of files, such as multipage PDF files, you may see a dialog which lets you specify which page you would like to place.
Your image appears in a bounding box in the center of your Photoshop image.
4. You can reposition the artwork by positioning your cursor inside the bounding box and dragging. You can also transform (size, rotate and so on) your placed artwork if desired by
dragging or rotating the handles on the bounding box or by entering values in the Options bar.

Be careful, however. If you enlarge your placed image too much, you may degrade the quality of your image.

Note that when you place a file, you cannot edit the text or vector artwork in it. Why? Because Photoshop rasterizes the file, using the resolution of the file into which you placed it. Note too that when art is larger than the Photoshop image, Photoshop downsizes the art so that it fits the image.
5. Choose Anti-Alias in the Options bar if you want to soften the edges of the artwork during rasterization.
Not choosing the option produces a hard edge.
6. Double-click inside the bounding box to commit the placed image to a new layer. You can also press Enter (Return on the Mac) or click the Commit button (the check icon) in the Options bar.

Opening a Photo CD image in Photoshop

The Eastman Kodak Company originally developed the Photo CD format more than a decade ago. It has become a popular image format option because of its flexibility and high quality. Photo CDs store each image in multiple versions as Image Pacs, so you can open the version that has the resolution you need. Professional versions of this format provide copy protection and other features that professional photographers need. Your photofinisher can save your images to a CD in Photo CD format for you; Photoshop can’t save in this format, however.

Follow these steps to open a Photo CD image:
1. Choose File➪Open and navigate to the folder containing the Photo CD image you want to open.
2. Double-click the file’s icon.
The Kodak PCD Format dialog box appears containing the preview image and several other options.
3. Choose the desired resolution from the Pixel Size drop-down list.
Versions from 64 x 96 to 2048 x 3072 pixels are available. You can select a color profile tailored to a specific type of image from the Profile drop-down list. (Generally, only advanced users will want to change the default value.)
4. In the Profile drop-down list, choose the film type for the original image, such as color negative, Ektachrome (E-6), Kodachrome (K-14), and so forth.
5. In the Destination Image area, choose a resolution and indicate whether you want the image to open in landscape (wide) or portrait (tall) orientation.
Only advanced users will want to change the Color Space definition.

The ProCD version of Photo CD has one additional higher resolution than is available in the consumer version: 4096 x 6144 pixels, a whopping 72MB per image! The top resolution of 2048 x 3072 (18MB) in the consumer version should be plenty for all but the most demanding applications.

6. Click OK to open the image.
In the Image Info area of the dialog box, you can see what type of equipment was used to scan the original as well as the original image type (color negative, transparency, and so forth).

Opening special files in Photoshop

Photoshop needs to know the image format of a file (that is, whether it’s a TIFF, PCX, PSD, or JPEG file, for example) before it can open the file. Photoshop uses different methods in Windows and Mac OS to determine the format of an image file:

-->In Windows, Photoshop looks at the file extension (.tif, .pcx, .psd, and so forth), and if it finds a standard image format extension, it assumes that the file was saved using that format.

-->The Mac OS X uses a similar system based on filename extensions. The difference is that the file extensions may or may not be hidden. Showing or hiding file extensions can be accomplished via any file’s “Info” dialog. Select the file in the Mac OS X Finder, press Ô+I, and the Info dialog pops up. Here you can show or hide the extension for that file, and change what application is associated with that file (and all files with the same extension).

For compatibility reasons, Macintosh applications like Photoshop usually use the Windows file extension. However, when you move files from one platform to the other, they can easily be misidentified. With Photoshop’s Open As feature, you can specify the format you think (or know) that a given file uses. This facility works slightly differently in Windows than in the Mac OS.

Opening Photoshop special files using the Windows OS
In Windows, follow these steps:
1. Choose File➪Open As. The Open As dialog box appears.
2. Navigate to the file you want to open.
3. From the Open As drop-down list, choose the file format you want to use.
4. Double-click the file’s icon.
If you’ve chosen the right format, the file opens in Photoshop.
If the file doesn’t open, you may have chosen the wrong format. Choose another and try again.

Opening special files using the Mac OS
The standard Open dialog box includes a Format list at the bottom. Make sure that the Show list displays All Readable Documents. Then you can choose the file format you’d like to try directly from the Format list.

Getting Started and Finishing Up Photoshop

Although you can create some interesting images from scratch in Photoshop, most of the time you’ll be working with digital pictures that already exist. These may be images captured by your scanner, photos you’ve grabbed with your digital camera, or snapshots stored on a Kodak Photo CD.

Photoshop offers you lots of different options for opening existing images, creating new images, and saving changes to your hard drive. This chapter takes you through the steps you need to know to begin working with your images.

If you want to capture an image with your scanner or import a photograph from your digital camera, opening such a digital image may involve a little more than just using the file navigation tools built into Windows Explorer or the Mac OS Finder. Browsing for Files If you don’t know the exact filename of the image you want to open or can’t remember its location, you can use the Photoshop File Browser to search for and open files. Finding a file is about as easy as you might expect: Choose File➪Browse, or press Shift+Ctrl+O (Shift+Ô+O on the Mac). Guess what! The File Browser window opens.

Now you can also just click the new File Browser button, which looks like a folder & magnifying glass, and is on the right side of the Options bar.

To navigate to a folder you’d like to search, use the folder tree in the upper-left corner of the window. Click an image to see it in the Preview window (which shows up on the left side of the File Browser). Photoshop graciously provides information about the file on the Metadata palette below the preview.
When you find a file you’re sure you want to open, double-click it, or choose File➪Open on the Browser menu.

If you know exactly where an image file is stored, you can open the file in a similar way to opening a word processing, spreadsheet, or other file; the default Open dialog boxes resemble those that you find in most other applications. (I discuss other file-opening options in the following sections.)
Follow these steps to open a file:

1. Choose File➪Open, or press Ctrl+O (Ô+O on the Mac).
The standard Open dialog box for Windows or the Mac OS appears. The layout of the dialog box differs slightly between the two operating systems.

2. Navigate to the folder that contains your file.

OS X has a Favorites folder like the Windows taskbar where you can add frequently used folders. It also sports a Find button in the Open dialog box for those hard-to-locate files.

From the Files of Type list (Windows) or Show list (Mac OS), you can choose which types of files you want displayed.

To view all image files, choose All Formats (Windows) or All Readable Documents (Mac OS).

3. Click the name of the image file you want to open.
To select multiple files, click the first file and then Ctrl+click (Ô+click in Mac OS X) each additional file.
You may see a preview of the image in the dialog box’s Preview window.

4. After you select the file you want, click the Open button.
The file opens in Photoshop. If you choose File➪Open Recent, a submenu lists the last files you worked on.
Click a filename to open it or simply type the number next to the filename.
You can define the number of files that appear on this menu in File Handling section of the Preferences dialog box.

Creating custom tool presets in Photoshop

Here are the short and simple steps for creating your own custom tool preset:
1. Choose a tool.
Most tools are fair game. If a tool doesn’t allow for presets, such as the Measure tool for example, the Tool Preset picker button is grayed out.

2. Select the option you want for the tool in the Options bar.

3. Click the Tool Preset picker button in the Options bar.
You can also choose Window➪Tool Presets to bring up the Tool Presets palette. The Tool Presets palette offers an additional handy icon at the bottom of the palette: the trash icon. This icon lets you delete a preset quickly. Select the preset and click the trash icon or simply drag the preset to the trash.

You can’t create a new preset from the Preset Manager, which is accessible from the Tool Preset picker pop-up menu or by choosing Edit➪Preset Manager.

4. Click the Create New Tool Preset picker button (the dog-eared page icon), or if you’re using the Tool Presets palette, choose New Tool Preset from the palette menu.

5. Name the preset and click OK.
Your new preset is now saved and ready for reuse.

6. To select the tool preset, you can do one of three things:
-->Click the Tool Preset picker button and select a preset from the picker pop-up menu.
-->Select a preset in the Tool Presets palette.
-->Select a preset in the Preset Manager. Choose Tools from the pop-up menu and select your preset.

Saving Time with Tool Presets in Photoshop

Tool presets enable you to create tool settings that you can save and use again. This feature is a real time-saver if you use specific tool settings on a frequent basis. For example, I make numerous 2-x-2-inch and 2-x-3-inch rectangular selections on images I use in a newsletter. Because I saved the settings as presets, I don’t have to redefine them each time I want to select an image for my project.

Using tools for the Web in Photoshop

Photoshop doesn’t have a whole lot of tools dedicated to the preparation of Web images (though it does have quite a few commands). That’s mainly because its companion program, ImageReady, takes up the slack in that department. You will find the Slice tool and Slice Select tool which allow you to create and select slices, or rectangular sections, from an image. You can then optimize, and apply Web features like rollovers and image maps, to those slices separately for the best viewing experience on your Web page.

Viewing, navigating, sampling, and annotating tools in Photoshop

Photoshop has an abundance of tools to help you view and navigate your image window. These tools allow you to zoom in and out, move your image within the window, and measure distances and angles. The Eyedropper and Color Sampler tools let you pick up and sample color respectively — handy for grabbing or evaluating color in an image. The Notes tool and Audio Annotation tool create written and audio notes that you can leave in an image window — useful for collaboration purposes or simply for reminders to yourself.

Creating shapes in Photoshop

The Shape tools allow you to create vector-based elements in your image. Depending on the mode selected, these elements are automatically filled with the foreground color or left as just an empty path. The beauty of vector-based elements is that they are resolution independent, meaning that they always print at the resolution of the output device rather than the resolution of the image. Vector-based shapes created with the Shape tools can also be resized and transformed without any quality degradation, unlike raster images. Although vector-based elements are the heart and soul of the Shape tools, you can also create shapes filled with pixels of the foreground color.

Creating effects with typographical tools in Photoshop

The type tools pretty much do as their moniker suggests — create type of varying sorts. The Horizontal Type tool and Vertical Type tool create regular old type, whereas the Mask Type tools create selections in the shape of letters, which can then be filled with images.

Using focus and toning tools

The focus and toning tools allow you to enhance your image by altering the pixels in various ways. You can lighten, darken, blur, smudge (see Figure 2-13), sharpen, saturate, or desaturate color in selective portions of your image. These tools work best for touching up smaller areas rather than the entire image.

Using tools for cloning and retouching in Photoshop

The cloning and retouching tools are the powerhouse tools to break out when you need to do some image repair work. These tools allow you to duplicate portions of your image, paint with a pattern, or seamlessly fix scratches, wrinkles, and other blemishes.

The unique History Brush tool lets you actually paint a previous version of your image back into your current image — perfect for undoing mistakes or repairing edits that went awry. The new Color Replacement tool lets you replace the color of your image with the foreground color.

Using painting tools in Photoshop

The painting tools, in general, allow you to apply color or erase pixels. In the case of the Gradient tool, you can apply multiple colors simultaneously. And with the Art History Brush tool, you paint on a stylized effect rather than color. All the painting tools rely on the Brushes palette for the size, shape, texture, and angle for the tip of the tool.

Creating and modifying paths in Photoshop

The path tools create and modify paths, which are elements comprised of straight and curved segments and anchor points. You can then use these paths as a basis for a selection or to define a shape. Because of their precision, using path tools to ultimately create a difficult selection usually yields better results than you can achieve with the selection tools.

Using selection tools in Photoshop

The selection tools are the workhorses of Photoshop. They allow you to capture and isolate pixels so that you can edit or manipulate just a portion of an image. Marquee tools capture rectangular, elliptical or single rows or columns of pixels. Whereas the Lasso tools make freeform selections, the Magic Wand tool creates selections by picking up pixels of similar colors. And the Move and Crop tools do just what their names describe — move and crop images.

Introducing the Photoshop Tools

I’m just giving you a very brief description of what each tool does. You’ll be more thoroughly initiated with the use of each of the tools as you go through the book. Don’t want to go page by page through the book? Okay. Well, you’re in luck; I also give you the exact spot where you will find more on each of the tools. For what it’s worth, I have organized the tools into logical groupings, although some can cross over into other groups and some are unique enough that they don’t really fit well in any group.

Getting to know your tools in Photoshop

The Tools palette is divided into three basic sections: tools, color swatches, and icons for masking modes and viewing options. The next several sections introduce you to the tools. The following list details the other residents of the Tools palette:

-->Foreground Color and Background Color: Color swatches represent the current foreground and background colors. When using some of the tools, such as the Brush or Pencil, you may apply either of these colors. The small black and white swatches represent the default colors of a black foreground and white background. Click the Default Colors icon to reset the colors to the default. Click the curved arrow icon to switch the foreground and background colors.

-->Edit in Standard Mode and Edit in Quick Mask Mode: The first set of icons allows you to work in either Standard mode or Quick Mask mode. For now leave the mode set to Standard.

-->Standard Screen Mode: The default setting, this mode enables you to see your entire Photoshop desktop.

-->Full Screen Mode with Menu Bar: This mode hides your desktop background and other open images.

-->Full Screen Mode: Use this mode to hide your desktop background, any open images, and the menu bar. In addition, the Photoshop window turns to black.

You can now move an image even when it is in Full Screen Mode.

-->Edit in ImageReady: When you click the bottom-most icon, you launch Photoshop’s sister program, ImageReady, a Web graphics program.

-->Go to the Photoshop and ImageReady area of www.adobe.com: If you click the feather icon at the top of the Toolbox, you are transported to the Photoshop product area of the Adobe Web site. This site is loaded with tons of great info, such as tips, tech support, upgrades, and news on products and events.

Selecting tools in Photoshop

To select a tool, simply click it in the Tools palette. A small black triangle in the bottom-right corner of a tool slot indicates that more tools are hidden behind that tool on a flyout menu. To display the flyout menu and reveal the hidden tools, click and hold down the mouse button on the tool. Then drag to the right and down the column of tools, highlight the tool you want, and release your mouse button.

You can also access tools by using keyboard shortcuts:
-->Selecting visible tools: You can access the visible tools by pressing a single key on the keyboard. For example, to select the Move tool, press the V key; to select the Brush tool, press the B key.

-->Selecting hidden tools: For the most part, you can access a hidden tool by pressing the Shift key along with the keyboard letter of the visible tool. For example, to select the Pencil tool, which shares the flyout menu with the Brush tool, press Shift+B.

Photoshop has a couple of exceptions, however. You can press Shift+M to switch between the Rectangular and Elliptical Marquee tools, but you can’t access the Single Column and Single Row marquee tools. Press Shift+P to cycle through the Pen and the Freeform Pen; however, the remaining tools — the Add Anchor Point tool, Delete Anchor Point tool, and Convert Point tool — do not have keyboard shortcuts.

You can adjust your preferences if you decide that you don’t like having to press the Shift key to access a hidden tool. Choose Edit➪Preferences➪General (Photoshop➪Preferences➪General in Mac OS X) and deselect the option Use Shift Key for Tool Switch. You can then rotate through the tools by pressing the same letter repeatedly.

You can also Alt+click (Option+click on the Mac) on a tool to cycle through all the tools hidden beneath it. The only exceptions are the Marquee tools and the Pen tools; some of the tools on their flyout menus aren’t accessible this way.

When you hover your mouse over a tool, color control, or icon, you see a tool tip. The tool tip tells you the name of the tool or icon and its keyboard shortcut, if any. This feature is helpful when you first start working in Photoshop, but if it gets annoying after a while, feel free to turn it off. Choose Edit➪Preferences (Photoshop➪Preferences in Mac OS X) and deselect the Show Tool Tips option in the General Preferences dialog box.

If you try to use a tool and all you see is the Cancel or No (the circle with a diagonal line) icon, click the image. Photoshop politely informs you why it isn’t allowing you to use the tool. For example, if you try to apply color with the Brush tool on a shape layer, you get a message that you can’t use the Brush because the content of the layer can’t be edited with that particular tool.

Getting to Know the Tools Palette in Photoshop

After you have a good grasp of the overall Photoshop environment, you’re ready to dive into the cache of gadgets that, along with the menus and palettes and dialog boxes, make it all happen. Just as you can use a saw, hammer, and nails to transform a pile of 2 x 4s into a garden gazebo, you can use the Lasso tool, Healing Brush, and Smudge tool to convert a mediocre photo into a masterpiece fit to be framed. But remember, behind every garden gazebo is a carpenter who knew how to use the tools required to build it.

Turning On the Tools Palette You can access the Tools palette — or Toolbox as it is often affectionately called — by choosing Window➪Tools. Here are a few tips for using the Toolbox:

--> To quickly hide and show the Tools palette (along with the other palettes), press the Tab key.
--> To collapse the Tools palette, double-click the title bar above the feather icon at the top.
-->To move the Tools palette anywhere within the Photoshop window, drag the title bar above the feather icon.

Accessing Help When You Need It in Photoshop

To access the Photoshop Help system, plus some other useful information, look no further than the handy-dandy Help menu. If you’re using the Mac OS, the Help menu also lets you turn Balloon Help on and off.

Because you can view the Help screens (they pop up in a Web browser window) simply by pressing F1 (or Ô+? on the Mac), you may not visit the Help menu very often, but if you ever want to find all your help resources in one location, this is the place to be. Here are some other help sources:

-->The Welcome Screen allows you to access valuable tips and tutorials.
See the earlier section, “Getting a WarmWelcome,” that describes this new feature. The About Photoshop splash screen displays the version number of your Photoshop program. That way you’ll always know if you’ve installed the latest patches and updates to Photoshop CS.

-->The About Plug-In entry displays a list of all the plug-ins you’ve installed for Photoshop.
Selecting an item in the list shows an About screen of version information for that plug-in. On a Mac, both the About Photoshop splash screen and About Plug-In menu are on the Photoshop menu.

-->The Export Transparent Image and Resize Image choices launch a wizard (assistant on the Mac) that leads you step by step through all the decisions you need to make to create an image that includes transparency. For example, you might want to create some text in Photoshop and then have it appear to “float” above your Web page’s background. The Resize Image Wizard (Assistant on the Mac) leads you through adjusting the image size so the document will print at the size you want.

-->The System Info entry displays information about your computer, its operating system, and available memory, plus Photoshop-specific data such as the location you set for your Plug-Ins folder. If you like, you can click the Copy button to copy this information to the clipboard, and then paste it in a text document and print it out.

-->The Updates, Registration, and Photoshop Online choices access Internet resources for Photoshop.

Proofing and finalizing the image in Photoshop

A hodgepodge of functions is sprinkled throughout the View menu. Some of them, like Proof Setup, Proof Colors, and Gamut Warning, won’t trouble you until you’ve become a fairly advanced Photoshop user.

If you prefer using the View menu instead of the Zoom tool, you’ll find various commands to zoom into and out of the image. You can also choose your screen mode, which lets you view your image full screen with the menu bar and palettes, or full screen with just palettes. From the View menu, you can select which extras Photoshop displays. You can choose to see (or hide) the following:

-->Selection Edges: Moving lines that define the boundary of a selection and are very useful for obvious reasons.
-->Target Path: Lines and curves that define a shape or are used to select part of an image. You definitely want to see them if they need editing.
-->Grids and Guides: Lines that display on screen and are great when you’re aligning selections, objects, or other components, and potentially distracting when you’re not.
-->Slices: Rectangular pieces of an image to which you can optimize or apply Web features. If you’ve sliced the image, you probably want to view the results.
-->Annotations: On-screen notes and audio annotations that you can create and view (or play). Annotations can sometimes be confusing, unless you’re already confused; then annotations can help you sort out what’s what.

The View menu holds the controls for turning on and off the snap feature in Photoshop. (The snap feature makes objects magnetically attracted to grids and guides.) You can also create new guides, lock and clear slices (see Book IX, Chapter 3, for slice-and-dice information), and turn rulers on or off.

Some functions, especially the zoom features, are better accessed through tools or keyboard shortcuts. Trust me, when you’ve learned to zoom in and out by pressing Ctrl++ (Ô++ [plus sign] on the Mac) and Ctrl+– (Ô+–[minus sign] on the Mac), you won’t be spending a lot of time in this menu searching for those functions.

Simplifying your edits with the Options bar in Photoshop

The Options bar was a welcomed addition to Photoshop because it eliminated the need to access a separate options palette for each tool. The bar remains available at all times, docked beneath the menu bar (unless you decide to hide it for some bizarre reason), and the options change as you switch tools.
Because the Options bar changes its appearance with each active tool, it’s difficult to explain all the components you might find there; but every Options bar does have some characteristics in common:

-->Gripper bar: Grab this bar and drag to undock or dock the Options bar at the top or bottom of the Photoshop window. You can also let the Options bar float anywhere in the working space.
-->Tool options: This box displays the icon of the currently active tool and may include some options for that tool.
-->Options pop-up menu: The Options bar may have a pop-up menu that includes a selection of brush tips (for painting and erasing tools), a flyout-type options menu that lets you select presets (saved settings) for various tools, and additional options, such as the size of the icons used to represent brush tips. You may also reset a particular tool or all tools to their Photoshop default values.
-->Bar options: Additional options, such as mode, opacity, feather, type styles, and fonts are arrayed on the rest of the Options bar.
-->File Browser button: The File Browser button (a folder with magnifying glass icon) allows you to display and hide the File Browser window with a mere click. The File Browser button is a new member to the Options bar.
-->Palette Well: If your monitor has a screen resolution higher than 800 x 600 pixels, the Palette Well appears at the right side of the Options bar. You can drag palettes from their groups into the Palette Well, where only their tabs appear. Click the tab and the palette appears, ready for use. When you click again in your document, the palette shrinks down to its tab. The Palette Well is a great tool for keeping your frequently used palettes accessible. I like to keep some palettes, particularly the Layers and Channels palettes, open in the workspace at all times, but some others (such as the Swatches or Styles palettes) don’t need to be visible on-screen at all times.

Applying filters in Photoshop

A filter is an effect that changes an entire layer, channel, or selection. Some common filters include the Blur and Sharpen filters as well as distortion filters such as Spherize. The Filter menu, shown in Figure 1-11, consists almost entirely of cascading categories of image-transmogrifying plug-ins. You can wade through this menu to find the perfect effect to apply to an image or selection.

After you apply a filter, Photoshop moves the filter to the top of the Filter menu for easy accessibility in case you want to reapply the filter with the exact same settings. The new Filter Gallery command allows you to apply several filters simultaneously in one neat editing window.

To choose the last filter you used, use the Ctrl+F (Ô+F on the Mac) keyboard shortcut. Extract, Liquify, and Pattern Maker are more like miniprograms than filters. The rest of the Filter menu consists of 14 different filter categories, each containing from zero to a dozen or more options:

-->Single-step filters are pretty basic to use but can make a huge impact on an image.
These include simple filters such as the Blur, Facet, and Clouds filters. Just click each filter to apply it; it has no options to choose.
-->Dialog box-based filters let you choose options galore. These filters come complete with preview windows, buttons, slider controls, and menus. You can distort, pixelate, sharpen, stylize, apply textures, and perform other functions with these filters.

If you’ve installed additional filters from third parties, Photoshop lists them at the very bottom of the Filter menu. You can find third-party filters at Web sites such as www.alienskin.com, www.andromeda.com, and www.autofx.com.

Creating layers in Photoshop

Layers give you a way of stacking portions of an image — overlay style — on top of one another so that you can work on individual pieces separately. Then, when you’re satisfied with your changes, you can combine the changes into a final image.

The Photoshop Layers feature is so useful it’s hard to imagine that it hasn’t always been present in Photoshop. (Thank your lucky stars if you didn’t have to use versions of Photoshop that preceded version 3.0.) Those of us who worked with Photoshop 2.5 and earlier still wake up from nightmares in which a floating selection (the predecessor to the layer feature) permanently merged with the background because of an ill-timed sneeze.

The Layer menu in Photoshop lets you create new and duplicate layers, delete one or several layers, change layer properties (such as a layer’s name), or add special features, such as drop shadows or beveled edges, to objects in a layer. You can also create special kinds of layers to make adjustments or mask out portions of an image. The menu has selections for changing the order of the layers (moving a specific layer to the front or top of the stack, and so on) and grouping layers together so that you can treat them as a set.

You also can merge layers down, combine them with all other visible layers, or flatten them into one single-layer image. Although merging your layers makes the file smaller, flattening is irreversible after you close the file. It’s always a good idea to store an unflattened version of a file in case you want to make more changes later on.

Photoshop has two key layer facilities, the Layer menu and the Layers palette. Some of their functions are duplicated, but some are not, so make sure you’re using both of them. The latest member of the layers family is the Layer Comps palette. This palette enables you to capture different versions of your document by recording the configuration of your layers at a point in time.

Making changes by using the Image menu in Photoshop

You’d think the Image menu might have something to do with making changes to an image document as a whole, wouldn’t you? In practice, some of the entries you’ll find here do apply to the whole document, but others apply only to particular layers or selections.

For example, the Mode menu item allows you to change an entire image from grayscale to color. The Duplicate, Image Size, Canvas Size, Rotate Canvas, Crop, and Trim selections all change the whole document in some way. (Their functions are obvious from their names, except for Trim, which removes pixels from the edge of an image.)

A new command on the Image menu is Pixel Aspect Ratio. This command allows you to view your image in common digital video aspect ratios that aren’t square (such as 16:9), thereby simulating the display of the image on a device that uses non-square pixels, such as a movie screen or a wide-screen TV.

On the other hand, the changes wrought from the Adjustments submenu can’t be applied to an entire image if the document has more than one layer. Adjustments such as Color Balance, Hue/Saturation, or Brightness/Contrast work only with a single layer or a selection on that layer.

You’ll find yourself turning to the Image menu more often than many of the other menus, partially because it’s so useful, and partially because, for some reason, many of the options don’t have keyboard shortcuts that let you bypass the menu. By the way, Adobe removed the Histogram option from the Image menu in favor of its own palette.

Making simple image edits in Photoshop

The Edit menu contains tools that enable you to cut, copy, or paste image selections in several different ways. You can fill selections or stroke their outlines (create a line along their edges). And you can use this menu to rotate, resize, distort, or perform other transformations (changes in size or shape) on your selections. You can undo the change you made in Photoshop, fade a filter, check your spelling, or find and replace text.

The Edit menu also offers some choices that may not logically belong here but which don’t fit anywhere else. For example, you can define brushes, patterns, and shapes. You can clear the Photoshop clipboard, dump Photoshop’s list of the changes you’ve made, and establish your color management settings and tool presets. On a PC, you also access Photoshop’s Preferences (your personal settings for things such as memory, how cursors look, and so on) from the Edit menu. Mac users will find Color Settings and Preferences located on the Photoshop menu. You’ll also find a new command that allows you to customize your own set of keyboard shortcuts.

Making selections in Photoshop

Selections let you work with only part of an image. You can choose all of a layer or only portions of a layer that you select with one of the selection tools, such as the Marquee or Magic Wand. The Select menu is short and sweet, but the capability and control that the menu unleashes is nothing short of an image-editing miracle.

Understanding selections is such an important cornerstone to your Photoshop knowledge that I devote an entire blog to showing you how to use them.

Another important capability is the option of saving selections and loading them later for reuse. Not only can you load a selection you’ve already made, but you can also subtract the saved selection from another selection or add it to another new or saved selection.

To save a selection, choose Select➪Save Selection. In the Save Selection dialog box that appears, type a name for the selection and click OK.

Opening and saving files in Photoshop

The File menu offers a cornucopia of file options, from opening new images and opening saved files to browsing existing files, closing files, and saving files. You can edit a file in ImageReady, save a file optimized for the Web, import and export special file types, grab an image from your scanner or digital camera, and apply automated tasks to certain files or batches of files. You can even enter or retrieve specialized information about a file.

You’ll find the page setup, preview, and printing commands on the File menu. And on a PC, there’s even an entry for leaving Photoshop entirely (Mac users can find the Quit command on the Photoshop menu). To open a file, choose File➪Open and navigate to the folder containing the file you want to open. Select the file and click OK to open it. Choose Online Services to access Adobe partners and providers offering a variety of services such as ordering prints, photo books, and calendars.

Working with Your First Photoshop File

So many menus, so little time! The second you begin working with Photoshop, you may be convinced that Adobe’s flagship image editor has somewhere on the order of 8,192 different menu selections for you to choose from. In truth, Photoshop has only about 500-plus separate menu items, including some that are duplicated. That figure doesn’t count the 100 or so entries for filter plug-ins (which can expand alarmingly as you add third-party goodies).

However, even 500-plus menu items are considerably more than you’ll find in the most ambitious restaurants. Basically, if you want to do something in Photoshop, you need to use the menu bar. The menu bar consists of nine main entries, each of which holds a dozen or more nested subentries and sub-subentries that cascade into view as you drag the cursor down the list. If you’re using the Mac OS, the Photoshop menu bar may share space with Finder components, such as the Apple menu or the Clock.

You’ll find pop-up menus everywhere, next to icons on the Options bar, on menus that fly out from palettes, in the status bar, and especially in the menu bar. You can find detailed descriptions of the menus and how to use them elsewhere in this blog, but the following sections offer a summary of what you can find and where you can find it.

Photoshop also helps you by providing context-sensitive menus, which change their listings depending on what you’re doing. You don’t see options you don’t need and do see options appropriate to what you’re working on.

Playing with Palettes Photoshop

Many image-oriented programs use palettes of a sort, and Photoshop itself has had palettes since version 1.0, released in January of 1990. However, since Photoshop 3.0, the program has used a novel way of working with palettes. Instead of stand-alone windows, Photoshop uses grouped, tabbed palettes, which overlap each other in groups of two or three (or more, if you rearrange them yourself). To access a palette that falls behind the one displayed on top, click the palette’s tab. By default, some palettes, such as Brushes, Info, Layer Comps, and Tool Presets, appear alone.

Palettes operate a little like dialog boxes and may contain sliders, buttons, drop-down lists, pop-up menus, and other controls. You’ll also find icons at the bottom of many palettes. For example, at the base of the Layers palette are icons that let you create a new layer, add a layer style, or trash a layer that you no longer want.

Some palettes can change like chameleons. The Actions palette can be displayed in Button mode, in which you see only the name of each set of procedures you might want to invoke. Or you can flip the Actions palette to Normal mode, which lists each of the procedures in the action separately for you to view or edit.

Many palettes, such as the Brushes, Styles, Actions, and Colors palettes, include options for defining sets of parameters (called presets) that you can store for reuse at any time.

Here’s how to open, close, and otherwise manipulate a palette group from the Window menu:

-->To bring a palette to the front of its group: When the palette group is open, the palette that’s visible is the palette that has a check mark next to it on the Window menu. In this mode, you can select only one palette in any group because only one tab in a group can be on top at one time.

When you select a palette from the Window menu, you have no way of knowing which palettes are grouped together because Adobe now lists palettes alphabetically instead of by groups.

-->To move a palette out of its group: Grab the palette’s tab and drag to its new location, such as another group, the Palette Well, or the Photoshop desktop. If you move the palettes out of their groups or drag them onto the desktop so that they stand alone, any of them can be check marked.
-->To hide a palette: Select a check-marked palette on the Window menu or click the Close button at the top of the palette.
-->To access a palette from the desktop: Find its group and click the palette’s tab to bring it to the front.

Here are some palette-manipulation tips:
-->Save space by keeping palettes in groups. You can drag all the palettes in a group by dragging the group’s title bar. Access an individual palette by clicking its tab to bring it to the front. As a result, several palettes occupy only the screen space required by one.
-->Use the Window menu if you can’t find a palette. If you can’t find a palette or suspect that it’s hidden, access the Window menu and select the palette’s name to make it visible or to bring it to the top of its group.
-->Rearrange groups by dragging. If you’d like to move a palette to another group or to display it as a stand-alone palette, grab its tab and drag. Release the mouse button where you’d like the palette to reside in the workspace, or in the destination palette group.
-->Customize, customize, customize. After you’ve used Photoshop for a while, creating your own custom palette groups based on the palettes you most often use can be a real time saver. For example, if you don’t use the Paths palette very often but can’t live without the Actions palette, you can drag the Paths palette to another group or the Palette Well and put the Actions palette in the same group as the mission-critical Layers and Channels palettes.
-->Minimize palettes to save even more space. You can double-click a palette’s title bar (or tab if you’re using the Mac OS) to shrink the palette or palette group down to its title bar and tabs alone. You can also click the Minimize button at the top of palette.
-->Restore default palette locations whenever you need a change. If you decide you don’t like the way you’ve arranged your palettes, you can choose Window➪Workspace➪Reset Palette Locations to return them to the default configuration (the one they had when Photoshop was installed).

Some individual palettes, such as the Swatches and Character palettes, allow you to reset the settings back to their defaults. Select Reset from the palette’s pop-up menu located in the top-right corner.

Dissecting Dialog Box Jargon Photoshop

In many respects, the Photoshop dialog boxes are very much like the dialog boxes you find in all other Windows and Mac applications. You’ll find text boxes with space to type in information (such as the name of a new layer, or the width or height you want to apply to a new document), pop-up menus of parameters you can choose from (such as whether you want the width and height expressed in pixels, inches, millimeters, picas, or some other unit of measurement), and controls like sliders that you use to specify amounts (in percentages, pixels, or degrees) over a continuous range.

Some dialog boxes are very complex and perform multiple tasks. However, even though Photoshop’s dialog boxes perform a variety of functions, the controls in them are standardized and familiar enough that, after you know how to use a few dialog boxes, you can use them all.

Photoshop dialog boxes, particularly filter dialog boxes, include preview windows so that you can check out the effects of your settings before clicking the OK button. The Photoshop Variations dialog box is one of the most complex of these. It includes a whole clutch of thumbnail images that show you the current image, plus several different renditions.

Dialog boxes generally appear when you choose a menu item followed by an ellipsis, such as Load Selection . . . The ellipsis is your tip-off that the menu selection needs additional information to complete the operation. Dialog boxes can also pop up at other times, such as when you double-click the Quick Mask icon in the Tools palette to produce the Quick Mask Options dialog box, or double-click the www.adobe.com icon at the top of the Tools palette.

If you know how to work with other applications, you already know how to use most of the controls in Photoshop dialog boxes. These include:

-Pop-up menus: Drop-down lists of choices that have been preselected for you.
-Spin buttons: These are up-/down-arrow buttons that you click to increase or decrease values quickly.
-Text boxes: Areas in which you can type values of your own choosing.
-Radio buttons: A set of mutually exclusive buttons; you can select only one of them, such as the Inside, Center, or Outside radio button, which tells the Stroke dialog box where to apply the stroke.
-Check boxes: Boxes that you can select or deselect to turn a feature on or off, independently of other features.
-Slider controls: Controls for specifying any one of a continuous range of values.
-Nested dialog boxes: Some dialog boxes include a button with text followed by an ellipsis, indicating that when you click the button, a new, sub-dialog box appears.
-Action buttons: Labeled with text such as OK or Cancel, these buttons activate or cancel an operation when you click them.

Setting Up the Status Bar Photoshop

By default, the status bar appears at the bottom of the Photoshop working area in Windows. If you’re using the Mac OS, each document window has its own status bar. On a PC, you can turn the status bar on or off by selecting it or deselecting it on the Window menu.

Many people tend to associate status with wealth, so I don’t really think there’s a reason not to accept the free wealth of information that the status bar offers:

-->At the far left is a box that displays an active image’s current zoom level (such as 66.67 percent). Incidentally, the title bar of the document itself also shows the zoom level.

If you installed Photoshop to a networked computer and you’ve activated the workgroup features, which enable file sharing and other perks, you see the icon for the Workgroup Services pop-up menu just to the right of the zoom info box.

-->Next is the file and image information display area, which, by default, shows the document size information. You can customize this area to display other information. Click the size value to display a preview of how your image fits on your selected paper size.

-->Because the good people at Adobe know just how complex a program Photoshop is, next to the file and info display area of the status bar is a description of the currently selected tool’s functions, as well as information on how to select additional options for that tool. This extra tidbit will only be found on Windows machines, however.

Although each Macintosh document includes its own status bar, all the bars for all the open documents show the same category of information. That is, if you change the status bar of one image to display scratch sizes, all the status bars of the other document images switch to display scratch sizes, as well.

Because Photoshop files can get pretty hefty in size, your status bar shows the file size of the active image by default. To display other types of information, click the right-pointing arrow in the status bar and select one of the following options from the menu that pops up:

-->Document Size: When you select this option, Photoshop displays two numbers to approximate the size of the image. The first number shows you the size of the file if you were to flatten (combine) all the layers into one and save it to your hard drive.

The number on the right shows the full size of the image — including all the individual layers, channels, and other components of the image. You’ll want this option active when you need to keep track of how large your image is.

-->Document Profile: When you select this option, the status bar displays the name of the color profile that the image uses. You probably won’t use this option unless you need to know the profiles of all the open documents while making complex color corrections.

-->Document Dimensions: When you select this option, the status bar shows you the size of the image by using the default measurement increment you’ve set in Photoshop’s Preferences (pixels, inches, picas, and so on). You might need this for instant reference to the physical dimensions of your open files.

-->Scratch Sizes: Scratch space is the virtual memory set aside on your hard drive to simulate RAM and make editing large files easier. Enabling this option shows two measurements for an active image. On the left, you see the amount of real memory and virtual memory that all open images are using. On the right, you see the total amount of RAM available for working with images. Photoshop needs a lot more memory and disk space to work on an image while it’s open, and that’s what’s shown by the Scratch Sizes display, as opposed to the Document Size display that shows only the file size of the document itself.

-->Efficiency: This indicator helps you gauge whether you really have enough RAM to perform a task. It shows the percentage of time Photoshop spends actually working on an operation, compared to the time it must spend reading or writing image information to or from your hard disk. If the value dips below 100 percent most of the time, you need to allocate more memory to Photoshop (if you’re using a PC).

-->Timing: This number shows you how long it took you to complete your last incredible feat.

-->Current Tool: This option shows you the name of the tool currently in use.

Setting display settings with the Window menu

The Window menu, controls the display of palettes and some other elements of the Photoshop working area. The top two entries on the Window menu enable you to control the display arrangement of your open documents and manage your workspaces. In the Window➪Arrange submenu, you can tell Photoshop to cascade (stack) or tile (butt them edge to edge) all open documents.Here is the lowdown on the other options found on the Window➪Arrange submenu:

The new Match Zoom command takes all your open documents and matches the magnification percentage of your currently active document.

-->The new Match Location command takes all your open documents and matches the location of your currently active document. In other words, if you are viewing the lowerleft corner of your active document and choose Match location, all your open documents will also be displayed from the lower-left corner.

-->And of course, Match Zoom and Location employs both commands simultaneously.

-->The Arrange Icons command (Windows only) takes minimized files and arranges the title bar icons in a neat row directly above the status bar.

-->Minimize (Mac only) hides the image while placing the image’s thumbnail in the Dock. Click the thumbnail to restore the image in Photoshop.

-->If you have multiple applications launched and document windows open, the Bring All to Front command (Mac only) will enable all Photoshop documents to come to the front, ahead of any open document windows from other applications.

On the Window➪Workspace submenu, you can save your current desktop arrangement, load or delete a stored arrangement, or reset your palette locations. For step-by-step instructions. The remaining bulk of the Window menu contains a list of palettes in alphabetical order.

Photoshop CS has eliminated the Window➪Documents menu. Consequently, you don’t have to open a submenu to see a list of open documents. The list of all open documents is once again shown at the bottom of the Window menu.

Using Photoshop with two monitors

If you’re serious about your graphics work, you may consider purchasing a second monitor (and video card if you don’t own a two head video card that can operate a second display) to attach to your main computer system. A second monitor gives you additional monitor space to display multiple large image files and palettes of Photoshop tools. I often move stuff from screen to screen to maximize the area on my main screen for an image I’m working on.

If you have a dual-monitor setup, you can even move components from one display screen to another. Whether you’re using Mac or Windows machines, whenever you want to use a tool that appears on your secondary screen, you just slide the mouse over to the alternate display and click.
In order to use a second monitor, your computer must have Windows 2000 or later installed. Or you should be running any recent Mac OS.

Launching Photoshop and Customizing the Desktop

You start Photoshop just as you launch any other program under Windows or the Mac OS. As with other programs, you can choose the method you find the easiest and most convenient.
Here’s a quick summary of your options:

-->Launch from the Windows Start menu. Windows PCs have a handy pop-up Programs menu that includes your most frequently used applications. Just locate the program on the menu and select it.

-->Launch from the Windows taskbar or Macintosh OS X Dock. You may have inserted icons for your really mission-critical programs in these readily accessible launching bars, usually found at the bottom (or sometimes sides) of your screen. Click the Photoshop icon to start.

-->Launch Photoshop by double-clicking a shortcut or alias icon placed on your desktop.

-->Double-click an image file associated with Photoshop. When you installed Photoshop, the setup program let you specify which type of common image file types (.TIF, .PSD, .PCX, and so forth) you wanted to be associated with (or linked to, for launching purposes) Photoshop, ImageReady, or neither (Windows only). Double-clicking an icon, shortcut, or alias representing the file type you chose launches Photoshop.

When you launch Photoshop, the desktop workspace, appears. Like the real-world desktop where your keyboard and monitor reside, the Photoshop desktop is a place for you to put all the documents you’re working with.
The desktop consists of a main window, called the application window if you’re using Windows (and called the document window if you’re using the Mac OS), which takes up the majority of your screen by default. Within the main window, you see a variety of other windows and boxes, such as the image document window that enables you to view and edit images.

The main window contains the stuff you’re probably used to seeing in other programs — a title bar at the top of the window, a status bar at the bottom (unless you have it turned off) if you’re a Windows user, and menus to help you execute commands and get important information about your image files. But the arrangement of controls may be a little unfamiliar to you. Photoshop arranges controls into groups called palettes.

In Windows, borders mark the left and right edges of the Photoshop window — even if the main application window’s contents fill up more than your screen can show.

Your virtual desktop can become as cluttered as the real thing, but Adobe has built in some special features that let you keep stuff close at hand but tuck things away so they’re not constantly underfoot (or undermouse, so to speak). After you’ve arranged your Photoshop desktop just as you like it for a specific project, you can even save the desktop and reuse it whenever you work on that project.

Every document you ever work on appears within the confines of this window and can’t leave its borders. You can move around some other components, such as the various palettes and the Options bar, both inside and outside the Photoshop application window.

Windows users can close, minimize, and restore the main Photoshop window, just as you can with most windows in other programs. Mac users can choose Photoshop➪Hide Photoshop. To display Photoshop again, simply click the icon in the Dock.

The Photoshop window hides one cool secret for Windows users: If you double-click anywhere in the gray empty area, the Open dialog box pops up, so you can navigate to a file you want to work on without wandering up to the File menu, using the Ctrl+O keyboard shortcut, or using File Browser.

Examining the Photoshop Environment

As environments go, the Photoshop working environment is pretty cool: as inviting as a landscaped backyard and not nearly as likely to work you into a sweat. Each of the many tools in Photoshop is custom-designed for a specific chore and chock-full of more options than a Swiss Army knife.
When you’re familiar with your surroundings, you’ll be eager to make like Monet in his garden, surrounded by palettes, brushes, buckets of paint, and swatches of color, ready to tackle the canvas in front of you.

Getting a Warm Welcome

When you launch Photoshop CS for the first time, you’re greeted by Photoshop’s rendition of the friendly neighborhood welcome wagon. The handy Welcome Screen, provides a virtual plethora of goodies for everyone from the beginner to the advanced user. New feature descriptions, tutorials, tips, tricks, and help with setting up color management are all at your fingertips. Don’t worry about exploring every item when you first launch Photoshop. You can call up the Welcome Screen anytime by choosing Help➪Welcome Screen. Some of the information provided is in PDF (Portable Document Format) format, which can be read in Adobe Acrobat Reader (a free download from www.adobe.com). Other information is available through links to the Adobe Web site. There’s even a movie that details all the new features. So grab some popcorn and enjoy.

If you prefer to access the Welcome Screen at your own leisure and don’t want it to appear every time you launch Photoshop, deselect the Show This Dialog at Startup option in the bottom left corner of the Welcome Screen window.

Converting Type to Paths

The type possibilities in Illustrator are nigh infinite. To make them truly infinite, you need take only one step — convert the type to paths. You gain absolute control over every point of every letter of every word of type. Edit carefully and spell-check the text before you convert it. After you convert text to a path, you can’t edit it as type. You also can’t highlight it with the Type tool and retype it, change the font, or anything editorial like that.

You may want to make this conversion for the following reasons:

-To manipulate type like you do any other object in Illustrator: Type stops being type and becomes just another Illustrator path, at which point you can do absolutely anything to it that you can do to other paths.

-To bypass the need for the font files associated with the type: If you give someone a graphic file containing a type that isn’t installed on the recipient’s computer, the graphic won’t display or print properly if opened in Illustrator or placed into a page-layout program. Converting the type to paths creates a file that displays and prints exactly as you created it, regardless of the fonts installed on the recipient’s computer.

This action is also a good way to make sure that the text can’t be retyped. You should always convert text to paths for any logo that you send to other people, which helps guarantee that the logo will always look how you created it.

To convert type to paths, follow these steps:

1. Use the Selection tool to select the type that you want to convert to a path.
Okay, you’re altering type, so you should be able to do this by using the Type tool — but you can’t. This is just one of those little frustrations that have been around for years in Illustrator.

2. Choose Type➪Create Outlines.
All the points that make up the type suddenly appear, enabling you to edit the Type while you edit any other object in Illustrator. Why the name Create Outlines? Only some long-gone Adobe programmer knows for sure. A better name might be Create Paths from Text, which is what this command really does.

Using Type as a Mask

Illustrator enables you to do a remarkable number of things to your type, but some modifications seem forbidden. For example, if you try to fill type with a gradient, the type just turns black. And what if you want to get really fancy and fill text with another piece of artwork that you create in Illustrator? There’s just no way you can do that!

Or is there?
By using the Clipping Mask feature, you can create the appearance that text is being filled with a gradient, artwork, or anything that you can put the text in front of. And what can’t you put text in front of? Absolutely . . . nothing! (Say it again, y’all. . . .)

A clipping mask is a special feature of Illustrator: It uses the front-most object (called the clipping object) to hide the objects behind it in a unique way. Everything outside the clipping object is hidden, and the fill and the stroke of the clipping object become transparent, enabling you to see whatever’s behind and apparently filling the clipping object. A type mask is what you get when you use type as your clipping object. This may sound strange but will make a lot more sense after you create a type mask of your own.

Creating a type mask is simple. Here’s how:
1. Create the artwork you want to fill your type with.
This can be absolutely anything. The only catch is that it must be bigger than the type that you want to use as fill.

For example, if you want to fill your text with a gradient, you create a rectangle (or any other object, provided that it’s larger than your type)and fill it with a gradient, or create the artwork that you want to fill the type with. You can even use a pixel-based image, such as a scanned photograph of your loved one. The only stipulation is that whatever you fill the text with must be larger than the text. Think of the text as a cookie cutter and the object you’re filling the text with as cookie dough. You cut away everything outside the text.

2. Create type in front of whatever you want to fill the text with.
Create your type by using the ordinary Type tool. Using the Character palette, choose a font size large enough so that the type is almost (but not quite) as large as the artwork behind it. If you already created your type, select it with any selection tool and choose Object➪Arrange➪Bring to Front and drag it in front of your object.

3. Use any selection tool to select the text and the object or objects behind the text and then choose Object➪Clipping Mask➪Make.

To select multiple objects, just hold down the Shift key while clicking each of them with any selection tool.
After you choose Object➪Clipping Mask➪Make, the fill and stroke of the text disappear and are replaced by the contents of whatever is behind the text. Anything outside the area of the text becomes invisible, or masked-out.
With type masks, the text is still ordinary text. You can highlight the text, change the font, type in different words, and so on, while retaining the masking properties. Any time that you want to make the text stop masking out what’s behind it, select the text and choose Object➪Clipping Mask➪Release.

Adjusting the Path (Not the Type)

After you create path type, area type, wrapped type, or linked blocks of type, you may discover situations in which you want to change only the path and not the type. By default, if you select the path and the type together, you change only the type. So how can you change the path?
The secret to changing the path is to use the Direct Selection tool to select the path and then make your changes to the fill and stroke.

Flowing Type from Path to Path

Any text that’s within a shape (area type or rectangle type) can be linked to other paths so that the text flows from one path to another. For instance, a story about a pesky fruit fly can start in a path in the shape of a banana and then continue automatically into normal rectangular columns of text.
Whenever changes occur in the text within the banana shape, the text in the rectangle moves accordingly.
This process works by selecting the path that currently has text in it along with another path (or paths). You then choose Type➪Blocks➪Link. The text flows from shape to shape in the chronological order that they were created.
If you don’t see any change when you choose Link, your first text box probably doesn’t have enough text in it to overflow into the linked box. Just type more in the first text box, and flowing will prevail. To undo the link, choose Type➪Block➪Unlink.

Typing around a Path

Typing around paths is sort of the opposite of typing within an area; type flows around the outside of a shape (or shapes) rather than within a shape.
This technique is referred to as a text wrap or a type wrap. You don’t have a special tool for flowing type around paths, but you do have to choose a command with both the type and the path selected.

To flow text around the outside of a shape, follow these steps:
1. Create a text box by clicking and dragging with the Type tool.
2. Type text into the box until it’s full.
3. Create a path by using any of the Illustrator tools and place the path in front of the text.
You get the best results by using a closed path rather than an open one.
You can use as many paths and text boxes as you want. All text wraps around all paths.
4. Choose the regular Selection tool from the Toolbox.
5. Select the text and the path by holding the Shift key while clicking each of them.
6. Choose Type➪Wrap➪Make.
The text flows around the shape.
The most important thing to do when you wrap text around a path is to make sure that the path is in front of the text. Typically, if you try to make text wrap around a path and the procedure doesn’t work, the shape is probably behind the text. If this happens, click the path with the Selection tool and choose Object➪Arrange➪Bring to Front, which moves the object in front of the text. Select the path and the text again and then choose Type➪Wrap➪Make. To undo the wrap, choose Type➪Wrap➪Release.
You can use several shapes for the text to wrap around, or you can add a shape later by selecting the new shape with the Selection tool, along with the existing text and/or shape objects, and choosing Type➪Wrap➪Make.

Typing inside a Path

An interesting feature in Illustrator is the typographical capability to flow text within any shape. The shape acts as a container for the text, and the text fills the shape — matching it as closely as possible. For example, you can have a listing of the members of the California House of Representatives flow within a shape of the state of California.
To get text to flow within a specific shape, follow these steps:
1. Create a path by using the Pen, Pencil, or any of the basic shapes tools.
This works best with a closed path, but the one shape you shouldn’t flow text into is a rectangle because that’s identical to creating a text box, which defeats the purpose.
2. Select the Area Type tool from the Toolbox.
3. Click the path through which you want type to flow.
4. Start typing.
While you type, text flows within the object.
For best results with text, make sure that you activate (click) Justify All Lines in
the Paragraph palette. This feature spreads lines of type evenly to the left and right edges of the path. In addition, use fairly small type because large letters usually can’t fill in the details of the path.
You can adjust the path of area type just as you do any other path by clicking and dragging a point with the Direct Selection tool or by using the Pencil tool to edit the path.

Solving the age-old type-on-a-circle

To place type on a circle, you simply click a circle (path) with the Path Type tool and begin typing. Putting text on both the top and the bottom of a circle (without half the text turning upside-down), however, isn’t as easy. All the type on a path must have the same orientation, which can be right-side up or upside down but not a mix of the two.

Read through the following steps to discover how to place type on the top of a circle. Then read through the next set of steps to discover how to put type on the bottom of the same circle.

Here’s how to put type on the top of a circle:

1. Select the Ellipse tool (which looks like an oval) from the Toolbox to draw a circle. Press the Shift key while you draw to change the oval into a perfect circle. Putting type on the top of a circle.

2. Select the Path Type tool from the Toolbox and click the top of the circle. A blinking insertion point appears on the top of the circle.
3. Type your text. Notice that the type starts to run down the right side of the circle. Don’t worry; it’s all part of the plan.

4. In the Paragraph palette, click the Align Center button. You can find the Paragraph palette by choosing Window➪Type➪Paragraph. The Align Center button is the second button from the left along the top row of buttons in the Paragraph palette. After you click the Align Center button, the text centers itself on the top of the circle.

Here’s how to put type in the bottom of a circle.

1. Select the regular Selection tool from the Toolbox and then click the circle text that you created in the previous step list. An I-beam cursor appears at the point where you click.

2. Press the Alt key (Option on a Mac), hold down the mouse button, and with the Selection tool drag the I-beam to the bottom of the circle. Don’t release the mouse button until you move the cursor up into the circle just a bit.

Holding the Alt key (Option on a Mac) duplicates the text while you drag it. Doing so also duplicates the circle that the text is on — but because that circle is invisible, you won’t see it. Moving the cursor into the circle flips the type so that you can read it right-side up on the bottom and at the top of the circle.

3. In the Character palette, click the down triangle of the Baseline Shift field until the type appears outside (below) the circle. The Baseline Shift field is at the bottom left of the Character palette. If it isn’t visible, choose Show Options from the Character palette’s pop-up menu.

4. Select the Type tool from the Toolbox and then select the type at the bottom of the circle.

5. Type the text that you want to appear at the bottom of the circle. In this set of steps, you actually create two separate circles with type on them. Because the circles overlap precisely, however, you get the illusion that the type is on just one circle. If you click and drag the circle with the Selection tool, you drag away the circle with the text in the bottom, thus destroying the illusion.

Studying Advanced Typography

In this chapter, we describe how to get the most out of type and how to turn Illustrator from a glorified word-processor into an astounding typemodifying tool that can do just about anything to type, such as put it on irregularly shaped paths, wrap it around objects, give it an irregular shape, and put objects in it — and that’s just for openers.

Typing on a Path

Many people think that Illustrator is paths. A path is a series of anchor points and straight and curved line segments that define shapes. And putting type on a path has long been one of the greatest capabilities of Illustrator. That said, you’re up against a bizarre learning curve when using type in Illustrator. Initially, getting the type onto the path is pretty straightforward — but manipulating the type after that is a bit harder, and the effort required, such as for putting type on both sides of a circle, is downright silly.

Getting type to stick to a slippery slope

To place type on a path, follow these steps:

1. Select the Pen or Pencil tool from the Toolbox. Using the Pen or Pencil tool, create the path on which you want to place your type.Don’t be concerned with the fill and stroke of the path; they become invisible as soon as you type on the path.

2. Select the Path Type tool from the Toolbox. The Path Type tool is hidden in the Type toolslot.
3.Click the path at the place where you want the text to begin. A blinking insertion point appears at that juncture.

4. Start typing. The text runs along the path while you type. When you’re done typing, select the regular Selection tool. After the type appears, you can edit it just as you would edit regular type — with the exception that the type is stuck to your path.

However, with the type attached to the path, you can move the type along the path in either direction. Just follow these steps:

1. Using an arrow Selection tool, click the path that contains the path type.
An I-beam cursor appears at the left edge of the type.

2. Click the I-beam and drag it along the path.
The type moves while you drag.

3. Release the mouse button when the type is where you want it.
Be careful when you drag the I-beam cursor along the path. If you accidentally move the tip of your cursor below the path, the type flips upside down on the path. (As industry wags say of weird stuff that consistently happens onscreen, “That’s a feature, not a bug!” In this case, it is a feature, believe it or not.) Don’t panic; just move the cursor back above the path and watch while the type rights itself.

Press the Alt key (Option on a Mac) to duplicate text while you drag it along a path. Doing so duplicates both the type and the path. (Even though you don’t actually see the duplicated path, it’s there.) In the next section, you find out how to use this technique to create type on both the top and bottom of a circle.

Illustrator for Dummies
Ted Alspach
Group Product Manager, Illustration
Products,Adobe Systems, Inc.
Barbara Obermeier
Coauthor of Photoshop 6 For Dummies