Photoshop can be a confusing tool to get started with. The interface doesn’t do itself any favours here. Stack that with the huge amounts of confusingly labelled tools, and scary terminology, and it can be very difficult to get started using it. So before we start off diving into using Photoshop, let’s go through some of that jargon, and help pull away the veil on how Photoshop works.
How does Photoshop Work?
So, at it’s core, Photoshop is a rasterized image editor. This means it is for use editing images that are based on pixels. There are image formats that don’t use pixels, but we’ll talk about those another time. So then, what is a pixel?
A pixel is what we use to measure resolution in digital images. It is a collection of 3 lights; red, blue, and green. When these lights are combined and their brightness controlled with enough precision, they can replicate nearly any colour that we can see. They are packed together to create the image on the digital screen. You’ll see their values represented in a number of ways.
RGB – Red, Green, and Blue – This is closest to what you’re used to. Each value is reprsented on a scale. That scale is often either 0-1, or 0-255.
HSV – Hue, Saturation, and Value – You’ll find this used a lot in applications like Photoshop. Rather than the colours themselves, it represents the colour with a hue value that controls what colour you’re talking about, a saturation value that controls how strong that colour is, and a ‘value’ value (yes, it is an annoying name) that represents the brightness.
You may be familiar with all this already, but Photoshop uses a fourth channel that you may not be familiar with. The “A”, or Alpha, channel. This is used to tell Photoshop how transparent that pixel should be. This is maybe the most crucial part of how Photoshop works, transparency, and the ability to layer images, is the whole trick.
Non Destructive Editing
This is a term that we’ll be coming back to a lot through all of these workshops. It is the core of what makes digital editing so much more powerful and flexible. What is means is that when you make a change to your image, sound, or video, the original is not changed, and your change can easily be reverted. You will never lose anything in the process of editing as long as you’re keeping a non-destructive process.
Premiere and Audition make this much easier, making it very difficult to edit things in a destructive way. Photoshop however, does make it possible, however we’ll be covering techniques that will avoid that!
Layers
The next part of understanding Photoshop is understanding how it uses layers. The best way to think of it is to try to think about how you would edit an image in the physical world. You would use a knife to cut around the parts of the image that you want, and remove the parts you don’t, then stack different pieces to get the result that you want. In essence, this is what Photoshop allows you to do. Except Photoshop also allows you to go back and change how much you cut out, and how soft that cut is.
Each thing you add to your canvas in Photoshop will be added as a new layer. Whether it’s some text, or a coloured rectangle, or anything else, it will all be added as a layer. These layers can have different effects applied to them for various purposes, both stylistic, and practical. There are two layers that change things a bit though, and those are Adjustment Layers, and Masks.
Adjustment Layers
Adjustment layers are transparent layers that don’t add anything to your scene, but allow you to apply effects to any layers that fall underneath. This is great for keeping your composition and effects under control in an easy to find way, as well as keeping consistency of the effects that you’re using.
Masks + Masking
Masks are your best friend in Photoshop. They are a way of controlling what parts of an image are going to be transparent or not, without deleting any information in the image. While not technically layers themselves, they are accessed through the layer panel, and are applied to layers, so I’m placing them here. A mask essentially overrides the previous Alpha channel that the image had, and replaces it with one of your own creation, allowing you to paint in black and white what you want the new transparency to be. If you’re confused, don’t worry, you’ll see what I mean in the next step!
Image Formats + What They Do
Digital images have a lot of different formats that offer a lot of different things. There are types like openEXR (.exr files) that allow for massive numbers of different layers and channels, and are used for CG effects in big budget movies (or by people trying way too hard making Youtube videos). But we won’t have to worry about those. We’ll be focusing on the main three that you’ll find in your daily use.
PNG – This is an image format that you’ll use if your final output has any transparency in it. Logos, product shots, and images for use on websites typically use this format. They are typically larger files than the others in this list.
JPG – Also known as JPEG files are the smallest and most efficient image format, though they are known for their compression artifacts as they’re saved repeatedly. See the attached video for what that looks like.
GIF – I’m not going to get into how to pronounce it here, but this image format is one of the few that can contain an animation. It’s generally not very useful for anything else, and results in large image files. It is also limited in the colours it can hold, so I generally don’t recommend using it.
Now, I did say that there are 3 you will run into, however these days I’m finding I’m running into another format that’s making my life a little bit worse. WebP files are a format Google created, with the idea of making a more efficient format for the web, but they aren’t really any better than JPG, and have far worse compatibility. My advice is to avoid making these, and to just use a JPG or PNG. It’ll make your life easier in the long run.
So what I said about there being 3 you’ll run into, that was a little bit of a lie. There is another format you’ll run into, though it isn’t really an image format. PSD (.psd) files are what Photoshop uses to save it’s project files. These will keep all of the image layers and text so you can come back and edit it later. You won’t find these in the export menu, but will be able to save as this format when you go to the “Save as…” menu instead.
Photoshop’s Tools
Photoshop has a lot of different tools, some of them do the same thing, but work in slightly different ways. I’ll give you a list of the important ones, and what it is that they actually do!
Move Tool (Hotkey: V)
The Move Tool, represented by a cross-shaped arrow, allows you to move layers and selections around your canvas. You can use it to position elements within your design, making it one of the most frequently used tools.
Marquee Tools (Hotkey: M)
Marquee Tools are used for making selections and come in different shapes: rectangular, elliptical, single row, and single column. Once a selection is made, you can edit only that part of the image.
Lasso Tools (Hotkey: L)
The Lasso Tools offer freeform selection capabilities:
• Lasso Tool: Freehand selections.
• Polygonal Lasso Tool: Straight-edged selections.
• Magnetic Lasso Tool: Snaps the selection outline to edges in the image.Magic Wand Tool (Hotkey: W)
The Magic Wand Tool selects pixels based on color similarity. It’s great for quickly selecting large areas of similar color but can be imprecise. Adjusting the tolerance setting allows for more or less similarity in the selection.
Crop Tool (Hotkey: C)
The Crop Tool is used to trim, straighten, or change the perspective of an image. Cropping can help improve the composition and focus of your image.
Brush Tool (Hotkey: B)
The Brush Tool is one of Photoshop’s primary painting tools. It allows you to paint on your canvas in various colors, shapes, and textures. You can adjust the size, hardness, and opacity of the brush to get different effects.
Clone Stamp Tool (Hotkey: S)
The Clone Stamp Tool duplicates part of an image. You select a source area and then paint over another area with that sample. It’s useful for removing blemishes or duplicating objects.
Healing Brush Tool (Hotkey: J)
The Healing Brush Tool works similarly to the Clone Stamp Tool but blends the sampled pixels with the surrounding area. This makes it ideal for removing imperfections like spots or wrinkles.
Eraser Tool (Hotkey: E)
The Eraser Tool removes pixels from the canvas, effectively making those areas transparent (if working on a layer with transparency). It acts like a brush, and you can adjust its size and hardness.
Gradient Tool (Hotkey: G)
The Gradient Tool fills an area with a gradual blend between multiple colors. You can create linear, radial, angular, reflected, or diamond gradients. It’s commonly used for backgrounds and for creating effects like shading or transitions.
Type Tool (Hotkey: T)
The Type Tool allows you to add text to your canvas. You can customize the font, size, color, and other text properties. Photoshop treats text as a separate layer, making it easy to move and edit.
Pen Tool (Hotkey: P)
The Pen Tool is used for creating precise paths and shapes. It can be difficult to master, but it’s incredibly powerful for creating complex shapes, custom selections, and vector paths.
Hand Tool (Hotkey: H)
The Hand Tool allows you to move around the canvas when zoomed in, offering a quick way to navigate without altering your current selection or tool.
Zoom Tool (Hotkey: Z)
The Zoom Tool lets you zoom in and out of your canvas, giving you control over the level of detail you’re working with. It’s essential for precision editing.
So then, with all that out of the way, and the confusion and intimidation at what I can only assume is an all time high, lets go into Photoshop so I can show you what all that means!