Adobe Photoshop CS6 for Photographers

A professional image editor's guide to the creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC

Martin Evening

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136108211
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médias et arts de la scène
• Subtopic: Médias numériques

Renowned Photographer and Photoshop hall-of-famer, Martin Evening returns with his comprehensive guide to Photoshop. This acclaimed work covers everything from the core aspects of working in Photoshop to advanced techniques for refined workflows and professional results. Using concise advice, clear instruction and real world examples, this essential guide will give you the skills, regardless of your experience, to create professional quality results. A robust accompanying website features sample images, tutorial videos, bonus chapters and a plethora of extra resources. Quite simply, this is the essential reference for photographers of all levels using Photoshop.

Chapter 1

Photoshop Fundamentals

Let's begin by looking at some of the essentials of working with Photoshop, such as how to install the program, the Photoshop interface, what all the different tools and panels do, as well as introducing the Camera Raw and Bridge programs.

The Photoshop CS6 interface has seen a radical redesign, with the introduction of four themed appearance settings that offer users different levels of interface brightness. Even if you are already familiar with how Photoshop works, or have read previous editions of this book, I would still recommend you begin by reading through this chapter first in order to learn about some of the things that are new to this latest version of the program. You can also use this chapter as a reference, as you work through the remainder of the book.

Photoshop installation

Installing Photoshop (Figure 1.1) is as easy as installing any other application on your computer, but do make sure that any other Adobe programs or web browsers are closed prior to running the installation setup. After entering your serial number details, you will be asked to enter your Adobe ID or create a new Adobe ID account. This is something that has to be done in order to activate Photoshop and the reason for this is to limit unauthorized distribution of the program. Basically, the standard license entitles you to run Photoshop on up to two computers, such as a desktop and a laptop machine.

Macintosh and PC keys

Throughout this book I refer to the keyboard modifier keys used on the Macintosh and PC computers. Where the keys used are the same on both platforms (such as the

key ) these are printed in gray. Where the keys used are different on each system, I show the Macintosh keys in magenta and the PC equivalents in blue. So, if the shortcut used is Command (Mac) and Control (PC) this appears abbreviated in the text as:

and

.

Adobe Photoshop activation limits

You can install Photoshop on any number of computers, but only a maximum of two installations can be active at any one time. To run Photoshop on more computers than this requires a deactivation and reactivation only rather than a complete uninstall and reinstall. There is also the added benefit that registering your product entitles you to various reward goodies.

Figure 1.1 The Photoshop installer procedure is more or less identical on both Mac and PC systems. As you run through the installation process you will be asked to register the program by entering your Adobe ID or create a new Adobe ID account. If installing on a machine running an older version of Photoshop, you will also be asked if you wish to migrate the preset settings from the older program (see also page 720).

The Photoshop interface

The Photoshop CS6 interface shares the same design features as all the other CS6 creative suite programs, which makes it easier to migrate from working in one CS6 program to another. You can also work with the Photoshop program as a single application window on both the Mac and PC platforms (Figures 1.2 and 1.3). This arrangement is more in keeping with the interface conventions for Windows, plus you also have the ability to open and work with Photoshop image documents as tabbed windows. But note that now the Application bar is gone, the Workspace options can be accessed via the Options bar. Meanwhile, the documents layout options are now solely available via the Window

Arrange menu.

Macintosh default workspace

The Macintosh default workspace setting uses a classic layout where the panels appear floating on the desktop. If you go to the Window menu and select ‘ Application Frame’, you can switch to the Application window layout shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2 This shows the Photoshop CS6 Application Frame view for Mac OS X, using the default, dark UI settings. To switch between the classic mode and the Application Frame workspace, go to the Window menu and select or deselect the Application Frame menu item.

Figure 1.3 The Photoshop CS6 interface for the Windows OS. This has been captured using the middle light gray theme and the Photography workspace setting.

The Photoshop panels are held in placement zones with the Tools panel normally located on the left, the Options bar running across the top and the other panels arranged on the right, where they can be docked in various ways to economize on the amount of screen space that's used yet still remain easily accessible. This default arrangement presents the panels in a docked mode, but over the following few pages we shall look at ways you can customize the Photoshop interface layout. For example, you can reduce the amount of space that's taken up by the panels by collapsing them into compact panel icons (see Figures 1.27 and 1.28).

Creating a new document

To create a new document in Photoshop with a blank canvas, go to the File menu and choose New… This opens the dialog shown in Figure 1.4, where you can select a preset setting type from the Preset pop-up menu followed by a preset size option from the Size menu. When you choose a preset setting, the resolution adjusts automatically depending on whether it is a preset intended for print or one intended for computer screen type work (you can change the default resolution settings for print and screen in the Units & Rulers Photoshop preferences). Alternatively, you can manually enter dimensions and resolution for a new document in the fields below.

The Advanced section lets you do extra things like choose a specific profiled color space. After you have entered the custom settings in the New Document dialog these can be saved by clicking on the Save Preset… button. In the New Document Preset dialog shown below, you will notice that there are also some options that will allow you to select which attributes are to be included in a saved preset.

Note that if you make a selection, such as Select All and follow this with Edit Copy, when you choose New Document it will do so using the same pixel dimensions as the selection. And, when you do this in Photoshop CS6, it also retains the color space.

Pixel Aspect Ratio

The Pixel Aspect Ratio is there to aid multimedia designers who work with stretched screen video formats. So, if a ‘non-square’ pixel ...