A Basic Tutorial

By David Peters

Photoshop can seem overpowering at first glance due to the program's lack of simple tutorials and seemingly challenging interface. Cast your worries aside, because the basics of Photoshop are much easier than they might appear.

Photoshop is basically made up of four areas: the menu bar, at the top, the toolbar just below it, the toolbox on the left and the palettes on the right. The menu bar and toolbox always stay the same, as they contain the different modes and options that you can choose, but the toolbar changes depending on context.

An updated status of your image is provided by the palettes. This includes a history of all of the actions and changes you have made along with a thumbnail image of the current results.

As an example of how the interface changes as you use it, select the type tool from the toolbox (looks like a capital T). Note how the toolbar changes completely to permit changes to the font name, size etc.

As you make these changes, they are noted in the history palette. The use of the type tool will be added to your history, and the layers palette will list the addition of a new layer for your text.

Whatever you're trying to do in Photoshop, then, the chances are that your starting point will be either the toolbox or the menus. While the toolbox contains everyday tools such as selecting, filling and making shapes, the menus have more complicated functions like blurring, sharpening, and all the other effects Photoshop can achieve (mostly to be found under the Filter menu).

When you have selected a tool from the toolbox, you can alter its settings using the toolbar - options from the menu will generally open a dialog box. Finally, when you want to go back and alter something that you already put on the image, you can use the palettes, although they have some other uses too, notably changing colours.

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