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Photoshop Photoshop is a powerful image manipulation tool. It is commonly used to prepare images for the web. Photoshop is a standard application on all of the public computers in LITC, and every classroom with computer projection. It is a keyed program in which the number of licenses is tracked, so a computer must be on the college's network in order for Photoshop to run. Because the number of licenses are limited, we ask that you quit the program when you are done, so you free up the license for another person.
From a Windows public computer, select the start menu, select Standard Applications, and then Adobe Photoshop. From a Mac public computer, double click on Macintosh HD, Applications, Lab Applications, Adobe Photoshop. Select the File menu and choosing Open. An Open window will appear. Browse to find the location of the file on your computer and double click on it to open it. Resizing an image is important because most of the time you have a photo from a digital camera or a scanned image that is large in size. To put your image on Blackboard or into a PowerPoint presentation without making file size an issue in transport or to access over a network, you will need to make it smaller. Make sure your image is the active window in Photoshop, if it is not, click on it. To change the size of the actual image, go to the Image menu and choose Image Size. The Image Size window appears.
The image size or the print size can be manipulated. Constrain Proportions is automatically enabled meaning that if you change the height, the width stays proportionally the same. This prevents your image from becoming distorted. To change the size of the image for use on the Web or in PowerPoint, etc., change the Pixel Dimensions fields. Typically 500 pixels wide is sufficient, but you can change the settings to whatever you prefer. Most computer screens are 800 x 600 pixels or 1024 x 768 pixels in size, so keep that in mind when you resize your photos. You may also wish to print your photo. In this case, review the Document Size or Print Size settings below the Pixel Dimensions. The default measurement size is in inches but you change it to centimeters if you prefer. This is the size that your image will print. It is generally good practice to keep several versions of your image: the original, a version for displaying on computer screens, and another for printing. General Features (Undo, History, View and Colors) Photoshop is similar to other applications that utilize the Cut, Copy, Paste, and Undo commands within the Edit menu. Photoshop also has a History tab which can undo your past actions, several steps back, while keeping the most recent ones. For example, you could change the image size, add text, and then add another image and save the file. By selecting the History tab you are presented with each step taken. In this case you could select image size to set the size back to the original without editing the text or the second image.
The Navigator tab allows you to change the view size of the image you are working with. The current view is listed in the bottom left of this window as a percentage. The slider at the bottom of the window or the two buttons on either side of the slider change the view sizes. Zooming in on an image when you edit will give your changes finer detail.
The Color tab not only has a palette of colors to choose from but also includes a brushes tab. Here you can select the brush size.
Adjusting Light and Contrast Levels PhotoShop has some useful automatic editing features to improve the look of your images. Under the Image menu, select Adjust or Adjustments, depending on your version of Photoshop. Two menu options of interest are Auto Levels and Auto Contrast. Auto Levels adjusts the levels of light in your photo and Auto Contrast adjusts the contrast. These auto features generally provide pleasing results without much effort.
The Crop tool is useful if you have a picture in which you would like to focus on a specific area. The Crop tool is listed as one of the icons on the toolbar, to the left of the screen. Make a selection around the area of the picture you would like to keep. A preview of the new picture is shown while the rest of the original is darkened.
The box can be moved by clicking in the middle and dragging it to the desired location. The dimensions of the selection can be adjusted by clicking and dragging on any of the edges. The selection area can be rotated by clicking outside of the selection box and dragging. To complete the crop, either double click in the middle of the selection or click on the check box in the upper right hand corner. To cancel, click on the cancel box in the upper right hand corner.
Sometimes you may have a distracting background, or an object that you would prefer not be included in the image. These objects can be selected and painted over or deleted from the image. In cases in which the object is an awkward shape and/or the colors of the object are very similar to those for the rest of the image, the Extraction tool is helpful. Selection There are three tools used for selecting part of an image: the magic wand tool, the lasso tool, and the marquee tool.
To use the Marquee tool, hold down the icon and click the marquee shape you would like to use. Click and drag on the image to select the area you want. The Lasso tool can select an odd shaped area that you control by outlining the area by clicking and dragging the shape you wish to make. The Magic Wand tool works by selecting an area based on a sample color area. Depending on the tolerance setting it will select parts of the image similar to that selected. The higher the tolerance, the more area selected. You can use the selection tools to paint over or delete or otherwise modify parts of your picture. Extraction
The Cloning Stamp Tool (formerly known as the rubber stamp tool) allows you to copy—or clone—portions of an image and paint them onto any other part of the image repeatedly. This is particularly useful when editing out unwanted portions of an image and a simple ‘cut’ will not suffice. The example below shows a light pole in the original image, which can be covered up with the parts of the surrounding image.
Original Image Edited Image To use the cloning stamp:
Tip: the Clone Stamp Tool is easier to use when you zoom in on the area you would like to alter. Also, using a smaller brush diameter and working in one area at a time will help to create a more realistic looking image. To see a demonstration of how the Clone Stamp Tool works, view the flash movie (runtime approximately 3 minutes).
To add text click on the T icon in the left column, the Horizontal Type tool. Type in your text. You can change the text by highlighting it and editing the font options listed across the top of the screen. You can move the text by moving your mouse away from the text until it looks like and arrow and then clicking and dragging to the new location.
Photoshop allows an
image to be saved in many formats, depending on your
needs. For example, if these There are 2 ways to save your photos in Photoshop. Saving for the web compresses your photo and makes it quicker to load in Blackboard or PowerPoint.
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