General Information
FAQ, and other basic stuff
For answers to “How do I…?" FAQs, go here.
For answers to FAQs about technical problems, go here.
Q: Which version of Photoshop is featured on this site?
A: Photoshop 7.01, 6.01, and 5.5 for Windows.
Q: There are so many tools, commands, shortcuts, and procedures,
where should I start?
A: Anywhere. Relax. Play with the buttons, sliders, menus,
pop-ups, dialog boxes, tools, filters, and anything else that shows up
on the screen. You don’t have to try to learn anything specific; let the
program lead you where it may.
Q: I have a specific thing I have to do by tomorrow
and I don’t know how. What should I do?
A: Call in sick. If you try to force yourself to learn Photoshop
in a small amount of time, you’ll end up hating it.
Q: What’s on this site that’s not in the Adobe Photoshop
owner’s manual?
A: All of the information provided here comes from the
manual. However, of necessity, the Adobe manual has been written for all
levels of experience, from beginner to expert. My site has been created
specifically for total beginners.
Q: Are you affiliated with Adobe in any way?
A: Good grief, no! I'm an amateur, just like you.
Q: What are the most common mistakes you make?
A: Forgetting to select the layer I want to work on before
starting, and forgetting to check a tool’s options settings. I tend
to click on a tool and charge merrily along without noticing that I’m
on the wrong layer, the wrong opacity, and the wrong blend mode. Boo.
Q: How do I download images from this site?
A: Windows users, right-click on the image and choose Save Picture
As from the menu. Mac users, Control-click on the image. Remember to make
a note of where you save the image so you can find it later.
Q: What is feathering?
A: It fuzzes the edges of selections just a tiny bit to make them
appear more natural. In real life, objects have depth, and light falls
off gradually around their outline. If you create razor sharp edges on
your image’s objects, they look funny and unrealistic.
Q: What is anti-aliasing?
A: Pixels are square. They're stacked up in a grid with vertical
sides, and horizontal top and bottoms. They fill vertical and horizontal
lines just fine, but curvy, or slanted lines necessarily use the pointy
edges of the square pixels. This creates a jagged edge. Anti-aliasing
smooths the appearance of these pixels by softening the color transition
between the edge color, and the background colors. You do have to remember
to choose it before using a tool.
Q: What does Preserve Transparency do?
A: When this option is chosen in the Layers
palette, it prevents you from adding pixels to transparent areas on
a layer, as you would expect. As you might not expect, it also prevents
you from creating any additional transparent areas on that layer. For
example, dragging the eraser tool across
a colored area of a layer which has transparency locked will fill the
erased area with the background color, not transparency. Preserve Transparency
prevents editing of the layer’s transparency in any fashion, plus
or minus.
Q: Where is the GIF89 feature for exporting transparent GIFs from
Photoshop 6.0?
A: It’s not installed automatically, anymore. It’s on
the Photoshop installation disk at GOODIES\Optional Plug-Ins\Photoshop
Only\Export\GIF89aExport.8be. Copy it into your plugins folder,
and you’ll be in business.
For a answers to frequently asked questions about poor performance of Photoshop, printing problems, installation difficulties, and a myriad of other topics such as how to remove red eye, and make the copyright symbol in Photoshop, try the FAQs in the Adobe User to User forums.
If you have technical problems with the program, check the Photoshop Top Issues page at the Adobe site.
Whenever Photoshop starts behaving badly, crashing, freezing, or not performing procedures properly, it is recommended that you try deleting your preferences file. A corrupt preferences file is often the cause of problems in Photoshop.
The fastest, easiest and best way to delete your preferences files is to press Alt-Ctrl-Shift the instant you launch the program. You'll get an alert box asking if you're sure you want to delete preferences. Click Yes. This is a very common, safe and often useful process for making Photoshop behave properly.
Sometimes Photoshop won't even launch, or you've uninstalled the application and want to delete the old preferences files before reinstalling (prefs are not removed by the uninstall process. So, where is the darn thing?
To find the 7 preferences file, Adobe recommends that you use Find and search for the file, as it installs to different locations on different systems. You need to make sure Hidden Files are shown. In Window Explorer, click on the Tools menu. Choose Folder Options and then click on the View tab. Scroll down to find the Hidden files and folders section. Click the Show hidden files and folders radio button.
On my computer using Windows XP it's at C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop\7.0\Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Settings. In version 6 on Windows 2000 or 98 (I can't remember) it was at C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop\6.0\Adobe Photoshop 6 Settings. The 5.5 version is in this folder, C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 5.5\Adobe Photoshop 5.5 Settings. You want to delete the Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Prefs.psp file.
I don’t cover ImageReady on this site, but you may also want to try deleting the ImageReady preferences file. The procedure for doing that is different than for Photoshop where you simply go into the folder, and delete the file.
In ImageReady, what you need to do is press and hold Alt-Ctrl-Shift immediately after launching ImageReady. Then click “Yes” in the dialog box that appears to delete the preferences file.
Shown below are two of the dialog boxes where you can set overall Photoshop preferences. These are found at Edit > Preferences in version 6.0, and File > Preferences in version 5.5. You will have to redo them if you delete your preferences file (see above), but in any case, you should take a look at them and at least pick a cursor style. I prefer Brush size for Painting, and Standard for Other.
Note that if Caps Lock is in effect, your cursor choices will be affected. For example, if you have chosen Brush size in preferences, it will be changed to Precise on the screen.
A useful tip to remember; in many of the Photoshop dialog boxes, pressing the Alt key will change the Cancel button to Reset. Clicking this, (while pressing Alt) will reset all the dialog box’s settings to their defaults. Handy if you’ve made a really big mess, but don’t want to exit the dialog.
The General Preferences shown below are from version 6.0. Note that the number of saved history states is now set in this box, and not in the History palette.
If you’re looking for recommended books about Photoshop, and related topics, find them on my Recommended Books page. You will not find any Amazon affiliate links there.
I have an extensive, categorized list of links to other people’s Photoshop tutorials. Many feature special effects, textures, buttons, and unusual graphics that I don’t (and won’t) cover here.
When you read the Adobe manual, and look at a lot of the Photoshop sites on the Web, you will get the feeling that there is a ‘right’ way to do things; that images are better with a histogram that looks like such and so, and you should sweat blood to get your colors to be precisely, exactly one particular way.
Unless you are working for a commercial outfit, this is baloney.
You need to learn how to use all the features in Photoshop so that you can make them serve your vision. The real world doesn’t have pure colors, or perfect shadow and highlight detail, or spotless surfaces everywhere. There are no ‘bad’ colors, or ‘wrong’ ways to illustrate your ideas. If you can comfortably, and intuitively use Photoshop to express what you want to show or illustrate, then it’s doing its job.
It is my opinion (and I think I’m a minority of one within the Photoshop community) that the fact that you have the power to manipulate your image in Photoshop means only that you should be that much more aware of the need not to do so.
While the human eye and brain are extraordinarily capable of responding to visual input—color and detail—and sensing when something is wrong or, in particular, false (as in a manipulated image), I believe that our conscious mind is quite inept at knowing what it is that we are responding to.
To say that there is a correct color is a philosophical question, as well as one of the brain’s conscious ability to know what that correct color is. Included in the philosophical issue is the idea that there is such a thing as a white, black, or neutral gray within an image from which one can work via color data numbers.
In order to locally correct an image’s color or tones (i.e. override what the camera has recorded from reality), you must believe that you know what is correct. You must believe that neutral gray, white and black exist, and are to be found within your image, if you are correcting by the numbers. I don't believe this.
Global, image-wide corrections such as sharpening or using Levels are fairly safe and are less problematic. Using Curves, or corrections made within selections, or layer-masked manipulations, on the other hand, are all about local changes, which I think are frequently unneeded, incorrect, and make for a false image.
I have no objection at all, in fact I am very much in favor, of deliberate manipulation of images for artistic ends. However, Photoshop is frequently used to ‘enhance’ and ‘correct’ landscapes, and scenes which are intended to be accurate depictions of reality. To this, I am very much opposed.
Please note: if you wish to email me, do not send attachments. My server is set up to delete any mail over a modest size, so I will never see your mail. Please ask before sending any pictures or attachments of any kind.
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