Introduction

This guide is intended for absolute beginners and will guide you through some of Photoshop's essential and comprehensible tools to get you started with the program.

What will be covered in this guide:

• The Photoshop Interface
• The Photoshop Toolbar
• Image Resolution
• Creating a New File
• Opening, Saving, and Exporting Files
• Cropping an Image
• Basic Adjustment Layers

• The Photoshop Interface
• The Photoshop Toolbar
• Image Resolution
• Creating a New File
• Opening, Saving, and Exporting Files
• Cropping an Image
• Basic Adjustment Layers

There are many tools available to edit your images in Photoshop. To the right, you will see an image of the default Photoshop toolbar with the name of each tool listed. Each tool with a white triangle in the bottom-right corner also has hidden tools that you may use. Right-click the icon with the white triangle to see the "hidden" tools for each.

You will not need to use all of the tools in the toolbar for every project. Listed below are some of the most common tools that you will use and what they do.

• Move Tool: With the move tool you can click and drag to move everything on the layer(s) you have selected.
• Quick Selection: The quick selection lets you drag along edges in your image to create a selection that you can delete or edit.
• Cropping: The crop tool allows you to delete portions of the outer edges of your image. This tool will be covered in more detail later in this guide.
• Eyedropper: The eyedropper tool allows you to select (or sample) a color from another part of the same image or a different image. It will then automatically switch your foreground or background color to that image. This is an extremely useful tool if you plan to use any color in your project.
• Healing Brush: The healing brush allows you to click on a spot within your image and the tool uses the surrounding pixels to essentially "hide" the portion of the image you clicked on. It is recommended to use this tool for small selections so it looks more natural.
• Paint Brush: The paintbrush allows you to apply colored pixels to the layer you have selected. You have options for brush size and characteristics in the Context bar, and you paint by clicking and dragging in the Workspace.
• Eraser: Just as it sounds, this tool allows you to erase part of your image by clicking and dragging the eraser tool around the section you want to erase. Be aware that it will not replace the background at all - it will literally erase it, leaving you with whatever background or image is behind the layer you are erasing.
• Horizontal Type: Click once to start adding text, or click and drag to draw a text box. Options for font, size, color, and more are in the Context bar when you have the tool active.
• Rectangle/Shape Tool: This tool allows you to add simple shapes such as rectangles, circles, and triangles to your image by clicking and dragging your computer cursor across the area you choose to place the shape. After you have created the shape, it will be the color you have set as your foreground color. You can change the color in the color selection section of the tool bar.
• Color Selection: There are two boxes for selecting color, the one in front is the foreground color and it is the one that affects the vast majority of tools. If you double click on this box the color picker will come up, allowing you to choose any color you want. You can also change the background color the same way, but you won't need to use the background color as often as the foreground color. The foreground and background colors can be switched by clicking on the right angle arrows.

What is Image Resolution?

Resolution can be a tricky thing to get a handle on, but generally higher resolution is better. The images above are all zoomed in 500% to show a clear different between each resolution. The lower your pixels per inch ratio, the larger your individual pixels will be. This means less of them will fit in the image and is how you get a "pixelated" look/image. This directly effects how crisp your image is/can be. So when you are looking for (or taking) images to use, go big.

Creating a New File in Photoshop

There are two ways to create a new file from the Photoshop homepage. Each method will give you the same pop-up window that you will use to make your new Photoshop file.

The first way is to click "File" in the top toolbar of the Photoshop program window. Then, click "New" in the dropdown menu.

The second way is to click the blue "New File" button in the top, left corner of the Photoshop program window. 

Customizing Your New Document Settings

There are two primary ways in which we can create a new document in Photoshop. The first, and easiest, is to use a pre-designed template. The second is to create a fully customized document by setting the document dimensions and settings yourself.

Templates

If you decide to use a template to get started, there are two ways you can begin. 

1. Use a generic template that creates a blank document based on the template's pre-determined size listed (shown at the top of the image)
2. Use a pre-designed template from the Adobe Stock options and edit from there (shown at the bottom of the image)

Once you have decided on one, simply click the icon (or image) of the template you want to use and Photoshop will open the template for you to edit.

Creating a Document from Scratch

If none of the templates listed by Adobe Photoshop match what you need, you can always create a custom-sized blank document by following the steps below.

After you click the blue "New File" button on Photoshop's homepage (shown at the beginning of this section of the guide), a new window will appear with document settings that you can customize to fit your needs.

In the image below, you will see some preset templates for blank documents on the left, which was discussed in the previous section, and a list of editable information on the right in a column called "Preset Details." This is where we can customize our document to match our project needs.

Customizing Your Document

This column has multiple sections that you can use to customize the layout of your new document. We will only discuss the following sections in this guide:

• Width, Height, Orientation, and Resolution 
• Color Mode
• Background Contents

Width, Height, Orientation, and Resolution

Simply put, the width and height will determine how wide and tall your document will be. Typically, Photoshop will use points, picas, or pixels as the default measurement, but you can click on the dropdown menu beside the "Width" textbox to choose from a list of available measurements.

Once you click on a measurement type, the numbers in the width and height textboxes will automatically convert their current value into the new value.

For example, if the width and height were originally in pixels, once you click "inches" in the dropdown menu, the width and height will automatically change from their measurements in pixels to the equivalent size in inches.

Color Mode

Color Mode tells Photoshop what type of color output your document will be. As a beginner, you will probably only need to use one of three that are listed: RBG Color, CMYK Color, or Grayscale.

RGB Color is used when your document or image will be viewed on digital devices such as websites, videos, mobile apps, etc.

CMYK Color is used when your document or image will be printed out and viewed on things such as flyers, brochures, banners, greeting cards, etc.

Grayscale is used when your image will be viewed in grayscale, as the color mode says. 

Background Contents

The Background Contents dropdown menu will allow you to choose what color you want your canvas background to be.

* If you want a transparent background, make sure you choose "Transparent." When you create the file, a gray and white checkered background will still be visible. This simply indicates that the background is transparent and when you export the file, the checkered background will not be a part of the image file anymore.

Exporting an Image File in Photoshop

Access saving options by going to: "File > Export > Export As..." in the toolbar at the top of the screen.

Being able to save your files correctly is one of the most important things in Photoshop. Here are the most essential formats.

.PSD: This is Photoshop’s project file format. This means that a .psd saves all of your layers, edits, and resources at the highest possible quality.

.JPEG: you are probably familiar with .jpg as it is the most standard format for compressed photos.

.PNG: These are uncompressed images, which means that the files will be larger than a .jpg, but they preserve every detail, including transparency. Use .png for graphics, high-quality printing, and preserving transparency. Avoid this file format for photos that you are going to post online.

Opening a File/Image from Your Computer

To open an image in Photoshop go to File > Open... and navigate to the image you want to use.
 

Saving an Image in Photoshop with the "Save" Action

The "Save" action will overwrite the changes you have made onto the same file that was opened originally IF that file is a Photoshop file (.PSD). If the image has not been saved as a Photoshop file (.PSD) it will automatically open the "Save As" window and prompt you to save it as one of the files listed in the image in the next section, which will cover the "Save As" window.

Saving an Image in Photoshop with the "Save As..." Action

The "Save As..." action will not overwrite your Photoshop (.PSD) file. Instead, it will assume that you want to create a brand new save file with a different name than the opened file. Therefore, once you click the "Save As..." menu item under the File menu, Photoshop will open a new window that will allow you to choose the location where you would like to save your file, the name of your file, and the file type you want your image to be. 

An example of this window is shown in the image below. 

If you are new to Photoshop, there are only two on this list you really need to pay attention to - "Photoshop (*.PSD; *.PDD; *.PSDT)" and "Photoshop PDF (*.PDF; *.PDP)".

Photoshop (*.PSD; *.PDD; *.PSDT) File: This is Photoshop’s project file format and is typically saved under the .PSD file name. This means that a .PSD saves all of your layers, edits, and resources at the highest possible quality.

Photoshop PDF (*.PDF; *.PDP) File: This option will save your image as a PDF file.

To crop an image, click the Crop Tool icon in the toolbar. You will see 8 white bars appear around your image - 4 in the corners and 4 on the sides of the image. Click and drag at least one of these toward the center of the image. This will cause part of the image to darken while keeping the rest of the image in its original color. When you press the check mark on the top-right section of the context toolbar, the darker part of your image will be cropped out. 

You can also click your image and drag it around to select a different portion of the image to crop. In the context toolbar, you can change the ratio of the cropping frame to fit your specific needs. There are size presets available based on the most commonly used ratios such as a 1:1 square and a 16:9 rectangle.

What Are Adjustment Layers?

Adjustment layers allow you to change the overall look of your image layer. Simply put, you can think of adjustment layers as adjustable filters to make your image brighter, darker, more vibrant, a different color, etc. You can get very creative and create some really cool color combinations with adjustment layers the more you experiment with them.

To keep things simple, in this guide, we will focus on only two adjustment layers: 

1. Brightness & Contrast
2. Black & White

Navigating to the Adjustment Layers Panel

Click on the Adjustment Layers icon at the bottom of the layers menu. This will bring up the list of adjustments that you can use.

The Brightness & Contrast Adjustment Layer

This adjustment layer allows you to adjust the overall brightness of your image and the contrast between objects within the image. Each has a slider bar that will affect how strong the effect will be on your image. Moving the slider to the left will decrease the amount, and moving the slider to the right will increase the effect.

Adjusting the Brightness

Each of the images above has been changed from the original using the Brightness slider. The image on the left has been changed to negative 150. The image on the right has been changed to positive 150.

Adjusting the Contrast

Each of the images above has been changed from the original using the Brightness slider. The image on the left has a contrast of negative 50. The image on the right has a contrast of positive 50.

The Black & White Adjustment Layer

This adjustment layer simply turns your photo into a grayscale image; however, it provides several options to adjust the color values within your photo to get the precise look you want. Play with these values and you'll notice the wide range of results you can achieve.