Introduction to Adobe Photoshop

What is Photoshop?
  Adobe Photoshop is a professional image editing software package that can be used by experts and novices alike. While this handout offers some very basic tips on using the tools available in Photoshop, more comprehensive guidance can be accessed on the web or in the help menu of your version of Photoshop. The version used for this tutorial is Adobe Photoshop CS.


About the Work Area
  The work area can be intimidating to work with because of all the complex functionality but with a quick breakdown of the available features and their uses, you will be ready to comfortably navigate the work area with ease. The work area in Photoshop has the following basic functionality and features:
• Menu Bar – this is where you can access most of the commands and features in Photoshop
• Drawing Palette – where the image being worked on will appear
• Options bar
• content sensitive display of tool options – changes as different tools are selected
• display using Window > Options or Click a tool in the toolbox.Lasso options bar
• Tool box - for creating an editing images (display or hide using Windows > Tools)
• Palettes - to monitor and modify images (there are 5 palettes by default)
• Palette Well - to organize palettes in work area
• Drag a palette’s tab into the palette well to store it in the palette well
• Once in the palette well click on the palette tab to use it

Resizing Images and Size Guide
When working with images for a website, you will need to resize your images to suit your particular purpose. Here is a basic guide that can help you decide on what is suitable. (The units used here are pixels, which are standard units across all computer platforms. The conversion between pixels and inches is roughly 1” = 72 pixels or 1cm = 28 pixels) To use this particular unit of measure you will need to adjust you preference settings by selecting Edit > Preferences > Units and Rulers and changing the units and rulers to measure in pixels.
Type of picture's Size in Pixels
Background
1024 x 768
Standard personal picture of yourself for a personal website
200 x 200
Title bar e.g. Google title bar on the Google homepage
276 x 110
To resize a picture look on the menu bar and select Image > image size