Basic photoshop tutorial

This is where I learned photoshop



This tutorial only explains some of the basic tools and terminologies that I'll be using when I post my "ORIGINAL" tutorials (soon)

again this is completely for beginners only

Okay here we go


Tools Palette
The tools palette is something you're going to get used to very fast, it's the most important part of photoshop, without it you might as well un-install Photoshop.




If you're new to photoshop and i'm sure are if you're reading through this then when doing tutorials you might see them ask you to select a tool you cannot find on the tool palette, well right click the little black arrows in the bottom right, this will bring down a drop down with more tools, go through these till you find what you're looking for.

Another important part when using the tools palette is the tools settings, located under File, Edit, Image etc. This is where you can edit the settings for you tool, my preview below is the 'Rectangle Marquee' tool, here we can select what we want to do, such as 'Add to selection', 'Remove from selection', we can feather(blending) it. We can also set a width and height, then when you click it will have a marquee set your settings.



Layers Palette
Layers are tricky when first starting to learn photoshop, things can get pretty heretic when you're trying to create complex images, I'll tell you how to over come this with a few clicks.


The above image is located at the bottom of the layers palette. This has some interesting icons you should learn and use, the two i used the most are the little folder icon, which creates a folder and you can drag and drop layers into it(Very similar to how you organize files on your computer), the one to the right is also used alot by me and this duplicates the layer selected, it also carry s over the layers contents(An image? And blending options).

Here's an image on how you should organize your layers too, like i said before when creating bigger more complex images you'll need more layers and keep them with the default names will get very confusing



Blending Options
Blending options are part of the layers and are extremely usefull for little effects like drop shadow and inner shadow, these are used more than you'd think and can add great textures to your image using things such like pattern overlays, there's nothing i can really teach you about this because it will always vary on what you're creating. To get into blending options right click on the layer you wish add the effects to and find blending options.




*Duelo's Note: All of my designs are mostly done using the blending options. I suggest you master it. It's probably the most important part of Photoshop for a Lay-Out Artist like me.


This is the screen you'll be looking at(below), as you can see there's over 10 different things you can do to your layer, these are displayed on the left and on the right you'll find the settings which you can configure to suit your image, some common ones are drop shadow, inner shadow and stroke.




Basic Shortcuts
Shortcuts are pretty usefull for saving time but arn't needed at all, I use a few quite alot, so here's a list of keyboard shortcuts i use(There's many more).

CTRL + N : Open a new photoshop document
CTRL + A : Select everything on that layer(or whole document)
CTRL + D : De-Select current layer contents
CTRL + E : Merge down layer

additional...

Shortcuts
ctrl + shift + N = new layer
ctrl + shift + D = Desaturate (applies on active layer of course)
ctrl + shift + C = copy all layers (Press ctrl + V to apply image on new layer)
ctrl + F = last filter used
ctrl + shift + F = Fade (used in sharpen and blurrs)

Controls
Rectangular Marquee Tool (M)
Move Tool (V)
Polygon Lasso Tool (L)
Magic Wand Tool (W)
Crop Tool ( C )
Slice Tool (K)
Healing Brush Tool (J)
Brush Tool ( B )
Clone Stamp Tool (S)
History Brush Tool (Y)
Eraser Tool (E)
Gradient Tool (G)
Blur Tool ( R )
Dodge Tool (O)
Path Selection Tool (A)
Horizontal Type Tool (T)
Pen Tool (P)
Rectangle Tool (U)
Eyedropper Tool (I)
Hand Tool (H)
Zoom Tool (Z)

More to come

shortcuts...
ctrl+i (ata?)-selection inverse
ctrl+t- transform

add ko na l;ahn un iba

Some terms and resources:

Renders are images which are used for editing. Some sites for renders are Planetrenders and Gamerenders. People renders images through using the pentool then editing them after.

A great place for learning to make better graphics are the forums of planetrenders and gamerenders. National Sig League contains th best sig makers there is, and they can help you on your way to gfx godliness.

-topic pinned-

i have a basic photoshop tuto cd(2dvd disks)