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BasicSkills

Now that you’re amiliar with Photoshop, you’re probablyeager to get right into it! This chapter covers some o the basic tasks that Photoshop users should master, such asresizing and rotating documents and layers, working withmasks, creating curves and custom shapes, working withtransparent images, and more!This chapter covers undamental solutions that we’ll callupon throughout the remainder o this book. And as anadded bonus, I’ll show you how to create a coupon box withdotted borders—no doubt you’ve always wanted to makeyour very own one o these!

ThePhotoshopAnthology 

PlacingaGraphicinyourFile

Oten you’ll want to import existing graphics and artwork into your Photoshopdocument. A problem or Photoshop? Not at all—in act, there are several ways youcan do this!External graphics can be placed in Photoshop as raster layers or Smart Objects.First, I’ll show you how to place these graphics, then we’ll talk about the dierence between raster layers and Smart Objects.

Solution

placing artwork rom a web page

Copy the artwork rom the web page, then select

Edit

> Paste

or press

Ctrl-V

(

Command-V

on a Mac) to paste it into your Photoshop document. Photoshop willcreate a new layer containing the artwork, or place it into a selected empty layer.The artwork will be on a raster layer.

placing artwork rom fattened image les

A fattened image le—such as a GIF, JPEG or PNG—contains artwork on a singlelayer. Open the le in Photoshop and use

Select

> All

or press

Ctrl-A

(

Command-A

)to create a selection o the entire document. Click on your Photoshop documentthen select

Edit

> Paste

or press

Ctrl-V

(

Command-V

) to paste it. Photoshop willpaste the document into a new or selected empty layer as it does when pastingartwork rom a web page. The artwork will be on a raster layer.

placing layers rom a dierent Photoshop document

Position the document windows so that both are visible. Select the window o the document you wish to import rom, to bring up its

Layers

palette. Select anddrag the necessary layers over to the new window and release the mouse buttonwhen you see a thick, black outline around the window. This will copy the layersacross as shown in the example at the top o the next page. The copied layerswill retain their original properties.

Order the print version o this book to get all 286 pages!

TheBasics

Copying.a.layer.rom.one.Photoshop.document.to.another

placing artwork rom Illustrator

Paste

.dialog.box

Open Illustrator and select the artwork you wish to exportto Photoshop. Copy the artwork using

Ctrl-C

(

Command-C

on a Mac). Switch to Photoshop while Illustrator is stillopen and paste your copied artwork using

Ctrl-V

(

Command-V

)..A dialog box will appear, asking you whether you wish topaste the artwork as a

Smart Object

Pixels

Path

or a

Shape Layer

placing artwork as a Smart Object

Select

File

> Place

and choose the le you wish to import. Click

Place

to importthe le into your Photoshop document as a Smart Object. For PDF and Illustratorles, Photoshop will display a dialog box that asks you to select the pages youwish to place. Choose the pages you want and click

The.bounding.box.or.an.image.pasted.as.a.Smart.Object

The Smart Object will initially be placed with a bounding box surrounding it, as shown here. You canuse this bounding box to move, rotate, scale, or makeother transormations to the object. When you’re done,double-click inside the bounding box to commit theSmart Object to its layer.

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