7 Basics

page one
This is a broad overview of the Photoshop 7 window, its main features, and a few of the more important menus.
      Shown below is the opening screen you will see with the palettes, tools, and options bar in their default configurations.
      Numbers have been added to identify the main features. They are:

1. menu bar
2. options bar
3. toolbox
4. status bar

The area on the right side of the window surrounded by a green box contains the palettes. The small yellow outline above the palettes marks the palette well.
     I'll make very brief comments about each of the areas, starting with the menu bar (#1 in the illustration). File is used for getting stuff into and out of the application. Edit contains a variety of commands including Preferences and Color Settings. Layer and Select contain only commands related to layers (in the Layers palette) and selections.
      The View and Show menus will be discussed on the next pages. The other menus will be learned as you use Photoshop. The meaning of the various commands can best be understood in context.
     The options bar (#2 in the illustration) shows the options of whichever tool is currently selected in the toolbox. When you select a tool in the toolbar, it’s very important to remember that you need to set the proper options before using the tool.     

Older Tutorials
Quick Mask
Rubberstamping
More Adjustments
Sharpening
Filters
Color

The tools fall roughly into the following categories:

Selection tools - used for creating closed boundaries. Once a selection has been made, editing can only occur within the selection outline. To remove a selection, or make it inactive, choose Select > Deselect from the menubar, or press Ctrl-D.
Tools in this category include the marquee tools, lassos, magic wand, and quick mask.

Painting tools - used for adding color by using the mouse like a brush, or by simply filling areas with a selected color. These include the brush, history brushes, airbrush, gradients, paint bucket, and pencil tool.

Retouching tools - used for editing existing colors and image details. These include the new healing brush and patch tool, the clone stamp (formerly known as the rubber stamp), erasers, dodge, burn, sponge, blur, sharpen, and smudge tools.

Vector tools - used for creating, and editing vector shapes. These include the pen, path select, shape, and line tools.

Change view tools - used for moving and magnifying the view of an image, without affecting the image, itself. The hand, and zoom tools are workhorses you’ll be using constantly.

And, then there’s the powerful type tool, the crop tool for chopping images down to size, the move tool for moving selection contents or layers, the notes tool for adding little sticky notes to an image, the eyedropper for collecting color data, and the big foreground/background color squares you see near the bottom of the toolbox that are where you can make your color choices.
     There are two menus, View, and Window, that have basic commands that you need to be aware of any time you use Photoshop. Find out about the View menu, next.
Continue on the next page

Copyright © 2004 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2004 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com