<<<<Getting started with Photoshop >>>> Note: this is an awfully basic tutorial. I suck at telling easy things, but I'll try nonetheless. You can get a free trial of PS at www.adobe.com
So you have either bought or downloaded a copy of Adobe Photoshop. Way awesome, but how to use it? First, install it onto your hard disk, then in the Start Menu go to Programs (or All Programs)>Adobe>Photoshop [version] (the newest version at the moment is CS2. I have that and 7.0). This opens up PS. You'll get a screen similar to this:
(depends on your resolution and settings, this is how the basic PS7 layout looks in 1024x768) On the left side you can see Tools and on the right side Navigator, Color, History and Layers. Those are palettes. If you can't see them, go to Window (a menu on the top) and tick the pallettes you would like to see.
If you would like to open up an image, go to File>Open - find it and left-click on it, then OK.
In this tutorial I'll take you around Photoshop and show you a couple of basic things... just scroll down the window or pick a category below:
Basic tools
Filters
Adjusting
TOOLS
Rectangular marquee tool: selects a part of the image/whole image, the selection will be rectangular.
Lasso tool: selects a part of the image but the selection can be of any shape, it's used alot for blends.
Crop tool: crops/cuts away the pixels you don't want on your image, I use it alot.
Move tool: moves the image around the canvas. Also very useful tool.
Brush tool: becomes handy when you paint stuff on the image or when masking.
Paint bucket tool: fills pixels with a certain color.
Eraser tool: erases part of the image, i love this one.
Text tool: adds text to the image, duh.
Foreground and background colours: on the pic, the foreground color is black and background pale yellow. Tools use mostly foreground color. To pick another one, click on the upper box - and window will pop up and you can use it to find another colour.
There is a hell lot of tools and I have never used most of them but those mentioned above are the ones I think every PS user should know about.
FILTERS
I also love effects; filters, they make every image look different and usually better. You can access them by going to Filters on the top of PS window. Here are some of them:
Gaussian blur:
Filters>Blur>Gaussian blur, with radius 6,5px
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Sharpen:
Filters>Sharpen>Sharpen, only once
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Crosshatch:
Filters>Brush Strokes>Crosshatch (8,3,2)
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ADJUSTING
Image>Adjust; brightens & darkens, colorizes, makes black and white, changes jpg to bitmap etc. Just... adjusts. =P
Brightness and contrast:
Image>Adjust>Brightness/Contrast (brightness: 11, contrast: 16)
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Hue/Saturation/Brightness:
Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation/Brightness (H: 60, S: -48, L:16)
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You call find megatons of different and similar stuff in Photoshop, just remember to be creative and explore! If you make a mistake, go back by Edit>Step Backward. If you have any questions, mail me.
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