By Mathew Maj

P3&M2
User Guide

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By Mathew Maj

Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 3
Tool ......................................................................................................................................................... 3
Move ................................................................................................................................................... 3
Paint .................................................................................................................................................... 3
Text ..................................................................................................................................................... 3
History Brush....................................................................................................................................... 4
Masking ............................................................................................................................................... 4
Magic Wand ........................................................................................................................................ 5
Filters................................................................................................................................................... 5
Colour Swatches.................................................................................................................................. 5
Transform............................................................................................................................................ 5
Select ................................................................................................................................................... 5
Colour Balance .................................................................................................................................... 6
Eraser .................................................................................................................................................. 6
Why Certain Tools are better? ................................................................................................................ 6
Why Certain Resolutions are required? .................................................................................................. 6
What Does Colour Depth Do? ................................................................................................................. 7
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................... 7

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By Mathew Maj

Introduction
In his report I will be making a user guide on how to use the tools in Photoshop to edit an image.

Tool
Move
The move tool is one of the most basic tools that
Photoshop has to offer, its job is basically what it says on
the tin, it is used to move layers on the canvas. Its
shortcut key is V and it looks like a pointer with four
arrows pointing North, West, South and East.

Paint
The Paint tool is another one of Photoshops most basic tools it is used to
paint to paint the canvas or any layers that the user has selected, it paints
each layer separately, meaning that if you have two layers each with
different information, you can paint over the information of one layer but
not the other. The Shortcut for brush on keyboard is B and the icon
looks like a brush

Text
The text tool in Adobe Photoshop is pretty much the same as Text Tool in
any other software be it in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Paint and performs
the same function, once selected you can click a region in which you wish
to type, it will create its own layer after which you can begin to type your
words, it has the same icon as most of Text Tools and its shortcut is T

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By Mathew Maj

History Brush
History brush is extremely similar to a normal brush except its function is to
revert any changes done, under the brushes area, back to its original outlook
and state. The shortcut for the History Brush is Y.

Masking
Masking is a tool that is used to create different layers called Masks, they are
black and white coloured channel that is created, it is most commonly used
to save selections and is the most used way to create Masks. They are
created by selecting an area with select tool, left clicking on the area and
selecting the Save Selection Tab, you will then get a Save Selection window in
which you enter a name of the mask and then click OK, the Mask Layer will be
created and made visible under the channels tab

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By Mathew Maj

Magic Wand
A magic Wand is one of the select tools and is used to
select areas that contain one colour. The shortcut for
Magic Wand is W and the symbol on the tool bar looks
like a magic wand.

Filters
Filters are a set of tools in Photoshop to help the artist create special
effects such as blur, brush strokes or add filters that completely
change the picture into a coal drawing or stained class artwork.

Colour Swatches
Colour Swatches is a set of pre-set colours that are
available to an artist and acts as a colour pallet from
which an artist can choose and use it whenever they are painting
using the brush tool.

Transform
The transform tool is used to transform selected layers or areas of the
layer, its functions include increasing or decreasing size by percentage
width wise or height wise, rotating the layer or selected region and
skewing the image. To access the transform tool you click on a layer that
you wish to transform or highlight an area of the layer using the select
tool and hit Ctrl+T

Select
There are a number of select tools available in Photoshop
one of those was Magic Wand. Another way to select areas
in Photoshop is by using the Colour Range, which selects
areas based on the colour and unlike the magic wand it
selects from the whole layer and not from on spot. Another
method is the Select Layers which selects all of the
information that is contained within the layer.

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By Mathew Maj

Colour Balance
The colour balance tool is used to highlight or bring out certain colours, in the
colour balance you have three choices in which to edit, you can edit, the
highlights, mid tones and shadows. The Colours bar ranges between Cyan
Red, Magenta Green and Yellow Blue. Colour Balance can be accessed via
the Ctrl+B Shortcut.

Eraser
The eraser tool is the same as with any editing
software, it is used to erase an area underneath the
brush. It can be accessed bu pressing the E Key or
clicking on the eraser symbol on the tool bar

Why Certain Tools are better?

Certain Tools are better suited in editing a software
as they are more versatile and easier to use and
adapt to a situation. For example if you want to erase
an area, you are better off using the eraser tool
instead of using a select tool to select an area and
then hitting delete, I advise this as eraser tool leaves
smooth edges while just selecting an area with the
select tool and hitting delete can leave jaggedly lines
that look not too appealing and losing quality.

Why Certain Resolutions are required?

Certain Resolutions are required depending on what the graphic image will be
used for. For example a graphic image that would be put on a shirt needs to be large in order to
preserve quality when it is printed and needs to contain detail, if you created an image that is too
small and then enlarged it you would lose quality, in Graphics it is usually better to make something
too large as you can scale it down without losing quality.
However a specific size is needed if you are for example creating a desktop background, most
commonly 1920x1080, this is because if you make the image to small the computer will normally
centre the image and create black border around the image to fill in the missing pixels, however if
you make it too big the computer will again centre the image but cut off any image that is over the
edge.
This is why it is important to create the graphics that is right size for the job, to avoid losing quality if
its too large or having black borders created around it or losing parts of the image if it is too large.

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What Does Colour Depth Do?

Colour Depth or Pixel Depth refers to the number of bits per pixel on a computer monitor to
represent specific colour as colours in the digital world are made up of primarily three colours, Red,
Green and Blue. The more the bits per pixel an image has the more colour variety the image possess
and higher the quality of the image. The main choices of colour depth nowadays are 16bits, which
possess 65,536 colours, 24 bit, which possess 16,777,216 colours and 32 bit, which possess
16,777,216 and additionally Alpha channels which are responsible for hue between black and white
either darkening the colour or lightening it, giving a total of 4,294,967,296 colour combination.

Conclusion
In conclusion I have talked about the different tools and explained what each does in Photoshop and
also discussed why is it important to work in correct resolution, what is colour depth and also why
certain tools are better at certain jobs.

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