Adobe Photoshop CC 2015

 During the lesson, you will learn:

• The pixel and vector computer graphics
• Resolution and size of the image
• Photoshop interface, palettes and toolbox
• Layers in Photoshop
• Marker tool
• Working with images, changing brightness and other image components
• Colors, changing the color scheme of the image
• Making a collage
• Usage of effects and filters (explore on your own)
• Saving the document

Computer Graphics
Computer graphics cover two main categories:

1. Object graphics or vector graphics, which are based on Bezier curves,

contours and fills (mathematical formulas). They remain crisp even during
extreme magnification. Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, and Freehand are
examples of programs that create vector graphics.
2. Bitmap or pixel graphics consist of small squares—pixels of different colors
that together form an image. You are editing pixels and not a form. Used when
working with photographs and paintings. Pixel graphics depends on the image
resolution (the amount of pixels per dimension: inches, cm). The higher the
resolution, the greater the amount of pixels you have per dimension; the image
contains more color information and is more detailed. When the image is
magnified, the picture becomes blurry and pixelated. One of the most popular
programs that deals with bitmap or pixel graphics is Photoshop.

Example of pixel graphics

Size of the image and document size in Photoshop

The size of the image means the dimensions of the image, which is shown either in
pixels, when it comes to images online, or in centimeters (or Mm), in the case of print
documents. Document Size is also called the image size and is shown in kilobytes; it
describes how much hard drive space the picture takes up.

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Open the image "Island Girl" from Live @ Lund.
If you choose IMAGE - IMAGE SIZE, you will get all the information about the image.

You can also select various options in the status bar by clicking the arrow. You can
find which tools to use and what each tool does.

Options Panel.Changes depending on Paletts

activated tools

Document size in KB

Size in pixels for the

document to be
displayed on a screen

Size in cm for the

document to be printed

Resolution in pixels per

inch (inches). If you
mark off "resample
image", which breaks
the link between the
resolution and pixels,
you can change the
resolution of the image.
NOTE! The resolution
for printing must be at
least 200 ppi!

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Toolbox, selection tools, text tools

Toolbox. Clicking on the arrows to the left,

you change the look of it.

Various selection tools.

In each tool, you can find different
"hidden" options.
Depending on what form should be
selected, select square, elliptical selection
tool, lasso or magic wand.
Shift key selects the symmetrical shapes
square or circle.

When using the “magic wand” you have

to be aware of “tolerance” in the
properties panel, which determines how
much color is selected.

"Quick selection" tool is the easiest to use.

Text tool
Cropping tool. You must select the part
you want to keep in the picture. Anything
Foreground and outside of this space will be cropped
background
colors

To make any changes to the picture, the given field should almost always be
selected in advance (the exception is if you want the change to affect the
entire image). As the selection of one area of a pixel based image is not easy
to do, you have to select the selection tool that you think works best
depending on the form (different lasso tools), color (magic wand with
different tolerance) and contrast (the magnetic lasso, for example). The
easiest is to use the Quick selection tool first.

Color
There are different systems to describe colors. Some of these systems are used
more often than the others, depending on what the aim of the project is.

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 Additive colors RGB
Used in electronic devices and
television.
Basic color is black (no light).
With different combinations of
additive primary colors the eye
sees color combinations in
between.

Subtractive color CMYK

Used in printing.
The starting point is the white paper. By
filtering, with plots we get different
colors.

We will mostly work in the RGB color system, which is used for the screen.

Color palette appears when you double-click

the foreground or background color in the
toolbox. If you choose a color that is not
printable, an exclamation mark and color
replacement option appears.

Different palettes, History palette

among them. If you lack any palette,
you have to go to the "windows"
selection on the tool bar and choose
the desired palette.

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Layers
Layers function as transparent "overheads" with different content that can
freely change location using the arrow tool.

Layers pallet in
Photoshop

Areas that change

look of the layers.
(try out:
effects, and
transparency)

If you use the tool to create vector graphics (see the picture on the first
page), it automatically creates a new layer. Layers with vector objects look a
bit different than regular Photoshop layers. They cannot work in the same
manner as the layers with pixel graphics.
Layer containing
vector graphics.
Consists of a fill with
the foreground color,
A A and an object B
B which actually masks
the filling

Layer containing pixel

graphics

Processing images
All images that we will use are available to download from Live @ Lund.

Download and open the image "Island Girl" from Live @ Lund. Change the
brightness by going to: Image - Adjustments - Levels. If you move the arrows
to the left, the image becomes brighter, to the right - darker. You can use the
eyedropper tool to sample the white and black pixels in the image and
improve picture contrast. Try also: Image - Adjustments - Auto Levels. Select
the image with the Quick marker tool and use Image - Adjustments - Auto
Levels on the marked area.
If you use pallet Adjustments, and choose Levels there, you can maintain the

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image because it creates a separate layer that can be removed if you later
decide it is not needed.

Change the colors of images: If you want to change the color of the photos,
you cannot just fill the selected area or the entire image with color because
then you would lose image details. You can use the command Image -
Adjustments - Hue and Saturation to change the color of the existing image,
or use the pallet ethylene Adjustments, just as before.

Hue 71 on the whole picture Change the Hue of the Hue Change the selection
selected area, the edges with Select - Modify Feather
are sharp and the transition 70
is not attractive

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Making a collage (put together two or more images)

Open the file Water Lilies. Go to Select - Similar Go to the layers palette and
Highlight the dark area with double-click the
the magic wand with the “background”. Write 0. Now
normal (first) option you can work with it.

With the Backspace key Open the file Sunset. With the The Sunset layer now
delete the selected area. pill tool move the image to covers Lilies layer.
Deselect by pressing (Ctrl D) the Lilies file. A new layer is Drag the Sunset layer
automatically created. down.

With the arrow tool bring the Select the top part with the Mark any remains with the
LIillies layer down wand, Tolerance 50. Remove lasso tool and remove
the area. them.

The final result may be

different depending on
Select “hard light” effect With “Crop” tool crop the which effect you use and
from the menu in the Layers image however you want. how you crop the image.
palette. You can try other 7
options too.
You can also write on the image. Select the text tool and click anywhere in
the picture. Note that it automatically creates a new layer “T” in the layers
palette, type "Welcome to Paradise". Select the font that you think fits best.

Layer effect
(Style)

Here you can select different styles of

the layer (text in our case) and the
different properties of shapes and
shadows. Try different options.

Try using the Shadow effect under the Layers palette.

Try also Filter menu, which works in different ways. Adobe Photoshop is a huge
and complicated program with lots of features and it is impossible to learn
everything, but you can learn the most important functions by training and
just trying things out.

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 In the Filter menu you can choose
many options. Here Artistic and
watercolor filters are applied. Under
Rendering, you will find light filters.

1. File formats
File format is a standard for how a file is stored and identified by a suffix.
Photoshop's own format is .psd, which cannot be recognized by other
applications (Word, PowerPoint or web). As usual, you work in .psd format until
you finish working with the image, and then save the image in a different
format, depending on your goal (printing, etc.).

.Tif is a file format that has a big size, but the quality remains good and,
therefore, it is used for printing. It Preserves transparency and is supported by
all paint, image-editing and page-layout applications.
Most formats are compressed (made smaller) as to not take too much space
on the hard drive.

File format used for screen display:

Gif - only contains 256 colors and is not good for photographs.
JPEG - is a compression method and file format that works well on the
Internet. The disadvantage is that every time you save the image in JPEG
format, you compress the image and you lose pixel information, thus,
decreasing the quality of the image.
PNG – sometimes not supported in some browsers.

Adobe Photoshop for the Web

1. Photoshop settings: set the ruler to pixels to facilitate the work. Then you
know how big the image will be in the browser. When creating graphics for
the web, use the pixel dimensions of the image size, not the document size for
the print.

It is always better to have the size of the image as needed (in pixels) already
in Photoshop when working with images for the web. Size change is possible in
programming, but it can be complicated.

The resolution of images do not need to me more than 72, because they only
appear on the screen.

2. The command “Export-Save for Web” optimizes JPG files. You can monitor
the file size and the download time by changing the quality of the image for
the web. You can use 4 different windows to compare the different qualities.

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Optimize GIF files. Try different variations. More color hues sometimes give
better image but also result in bigger files.

PNG alternative is also available, but it is still not supported in all browsers.

Remember to not have Swedish or German letters, spaces, exclamation

points or question marks in the file name you are saving for the web.

This manual is meant as a start-up manual for beginners. There are lot of video
lessons, manuals and books that can improve your knowledge in Photoshop,
but you should try them on your own. Good luck!

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