Photoshop:

From Absolute Beginner To Professional -

How To Start Using And Mastering
Photoshop In Just 10 Days!
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Table of contents

Introduction
Chapter 1 Getting Started with Photoshop
Chapter 2 Photoshop Interface Layout
Chapter 3 Photoshop Navigation for Beginners
Chapter 4 Photoshop Layers and Channels
Chapter 5 Tips and Tricks for Photoshop Beginners
Conclusion
Introduction

Photoshop is a widely held image editing software program, which is a product of Adobe
Systems Incorporated. It is a graphic design tool, color painting program, image editing
and a photo retouching tool.
It is a digital alike of a dark room, which can be viewed as a creative tool chest, a scanning
package and translator of different characteristics.
It does manipulate your original artwork, slides and scanned images. However, Photoshop
is not an internet tool, a drawing package, a web page development tool, a movie making
program or a slide forming package.

Chapter 1 Getting Started with Photoshop

The very first thing that you need to do is to choose the ideal photo app. Photoshop is
designed to work in conjunction with Lightroom, but you can commence your activities in
Lightroom and then do additional transformative edits in Photoshop. Lightroom is a digital
dais that helps you to manage as well as edit your assortment of photos in one platform.
You can consider Lightroom to be your photography home base on both your mobile
device and PC.
You should use Lightroom to stay organized by sorting and tagging your entire collection
of photos. The major things that you can accomplish in this photography room include:
correcting image color and fixing distortion. Lightroom is the best and most resourceful as
well as versatile photography platform for a beginner. This is so since the platform is non-
destructive; therefore, you can experiment your editing skills and still revert to your
original image.
As much as Lightroom is a good starting point, you need to use Photoshop for more
satisfactory results, especially when you are dealing with sophisticated projects. As
mentioned earlier, Photoshop is a powerhouse as far as photograph manipulation is
concerned. You can do so much, including the following: creating panoramas; developing
exclusive images from texts, photos and videos; retouching and removing objects.
Photoshop is what you need to ensure that you produce your desired image.

Figure 1: Photoshop
How to Download and Install Photoshop
To be able to download, install and use Photoshop, you have to be a Creative Cloud
Member. You can access different Creative Cloud membership plans at
https://creative.adobe.com/plans. As a beginner, you can simply register for the individual
category; however, there are other categories, such as Business, Student and Teachers and
Schools and Universities. The individual category has various plans, including:
Photography; Single App; All Apps; and All Apps + Adobe Stock.
Among all the available plans, the most popular one is the All Apps plan. This plan
provides you with a collection of more than twenty desktop as well as mobile apps, which
include Photoshop CC. In addition, you will have your very own twenty gigabytes of
Cloud storage, premium fonts, portfolio website and illustrator CC. You can opt for the All
Apps + Adobe Stock plan, which has additional items and services, including cancel risk
free in the 1st month.
Regardless of the plan you subscribe to; the process of downloading Photoshop CC
remains the same. The following are the major steps you have to take for a successful
download:
Look for Photoshop in Creative Cloud apps catalog and hit the download icon.
You will be prompted to login by providing your Adobe ID ad passcode. All you
have to do is follow all the onscreen instructions.
The desktop app for Adobe Creative Cloud will appear the moment Photoshop CC
starts to download. The app will successfully manage the entire installation
process. The time your app takes to download does entirely depend on your
network speed.
Once Photoshop installation is through, you can launch it by clicking the
Photoshop icon in the Apps panel. Creative Cloud will display your installed
Photoshop and find additional apps section through which you can install other
digital platforms, such as Lightroom CC.
Your Desktop Creative Cloud app is quite a resourceful tool; you can use it to
download older versions of Photoshop. This simply means that you can download
and install more than one version of Photoshop on your PC.
Once you have launched the Creative Cloud app; go ahead and click on the Filter
& Versions section and select Previous Version. Additional apps will be displayed
click on the install button and select your desired version from the drop down
menu, such as CS6, CC, CC (2014).
Usually, previous versions of Photoshop will not overwrite the current version (s).
As mentioned earlier, you can successfully operate two versions of Photoshop at
the same time. However, this is not the same for Acrobat DC and Acrobat XI
(Windows).
Download Troubleshooting Problems
Error 201: You will experience this problem when the download is paused in the
presence of poor server response.
Error 204: You will experience this error when you face problems while accessing
a directory or a critical file during download.
Error 205: You will experience this problem when segment validation is
unsuccessful repeatedly.
Error 206: You will experience this problem when you have no network
connection.
Error 207: You will experience this problem in the event of the following events:
dead connections, http intermittent errors and timeout.
Error 403: This error is associated with Adobe Creative Cloud launching.
Error 1002: This error is associated with update failure for the Creative Cloud
Other basic errors that you can potentially experience include Error 1, Error
A12E1, Error 50 and Error 2.
You can eliminate most errors/ issues by doing the following: checking and rechecking
your network or internet connection; configuring your software firewall; always remember
to verify successfully verify your router setup; always remember to set up hardware
proxies or firewalls. You can find additional information on troubleshooting problems
along with reliable solution at https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/troubleshoot-
download-install.html.




Chapter 2 Photoshop Interface Layout

The first thing you will notice when you launch Photoshop is the dark interface color. You
can adjust the color by pressing SHIFT+F1 to darken the interface or SHIFT+F2 to lighten
the interface. You can also access these settings by going to Edit menu on the menu bar,
then click Preferences followed by Interface. Having known that, you can now go ahead
and navigate the different items on Photoshop interface layout. The first section of the
layout that should capture your eyes is the main menu.
The Main Menu (at the top of the interface) is incorporated with all Photoshop main
functions, including: Help, Window, View, 3D, Analysis, Filter, Select, Layer, Image, Edit
and File. The Toolbar is located on the left hand side of the interface, which presents you
with easy access of major tools. The section just below the Main Menu is the Palettes,
which provides you with functions for modifying as well as monitoring images. You can
find the following palettes on the right hand side of the interface: color, layers and history.

Figure 2: Photoshop Interface Layout

The image will display itself on the image part the moment you open an image file. The
image name is located at the top left section immediately above the image area as
illustrated on the interface layout.
The right hand section carries a number of items, including history, layer and color
palettes. These palettes allow you to do different adjustments with respect to the individual
functions. For instance, you can use the sliders under the color palette to adjust the
foreground as well as the background colors.

Chapter 3 Photoshop Navigation for Beginners

Launch Photoshop on your PC and then access the Workspace Menu and adjust the
settings to Essentials (see workspace menu on figure 2). You should also remember to
reset essentials whenever you make any changes in order to reset your workspace to
standard. The first thing you have to do is create new image (canvas) by going to File then
New or you can alternatively use the following keyboard shortcut Ctrl+N. Thereafter, a
new window will appear on your screen.
The New window has the following items: name, preset, width & height measurements,
resolution, background content, image size and advanced settings. You need to name your
new canvas, such as New Photoshop. Under Preset you have custom, default Photoshop
size, U.S. paper, international paper, photo, web, mobile & devices, film & video and so
on. Go ahead and select customs, it is the appropriate one for beginners.
You can adjust the width and height settings to your desired size. However, you should
first confirm the units by clicking on the drop down menu, which will present you with
pixels, inches, cm and so on. You should ensure that the figures and the units match
correctly or else you will end up with an overly large or extremely small canvas. As a
beginner, you should use 500 pixels by 500 pixels; the resolution should be 72; the color
mode should be RGB color; the background color should be white, but you can adjust
accordingly then press OK to open your first canvas.

Figure 3: New Window

 Figure 4: New Canvas

Once your new canvas opens you should go to workspace, which is fully customized. You
can move everything from the workspace to your desired location on the screen depending
on your preference. You can always reset your entire workspace to its original format by
going to Window, Workspace and then Default Workspace. The next items you should
access are the main menu, palettes and the toolbar. You have already started using the
main menu when you created the new canvas.
The tools that you will be using very often are the basic tools, which include but are not
limited to the following:
Move Tool (V): It allows you to move things around the canvas. You can activate
this tool by clicking and dragging at any point on the canvas.
Lasso Tool (L): Allows you to drag as well as select items within the Lasso area.
It also provides you access to polygonal lasso.
Marquee Tool (M): This tool allows you to choose a particular section of the
canvas in a particular shape.
Magic Wand Tool (W): This tool allows you to select a specific spot as well as
anything in the proximity of the spot.
Eyedropper Tool (I): This tool allows you to sample color at a specific point on
the canvas that you click.
Crop Tool (C): This tool works in a similar way as other cropping tools, since it
allows you to resize your image accordingly.
Healing Brush Tool (J): This tool allows you to sample a section of your image
as well as use that section to paint over a different section. Usually Photoshop
will go ahead and attempt to blend the painted section with the rest of the image.
Clone Stamp Tool (S): This tool allows you to sample a section and paint it over
a new section, but with no extra effects as it is with healing brush tool.
Paintbrush and Pencil Tool (B): This tool is in two parts; the first part emulates a
paintbrush while the second part emulates a pencil. There are various
paintbrushes that you can use, including airbrush and standard paintbrushes.
History Brush Tool (Y): This tool allows you to paint back in time. What happens
is that Photoshop tracks 50 of your past moves, which you can paint in your
present photo.
Paint Can Tool (G): This tool allows you to fill in a particular section with the
existing foreground color.
Gradient Tool (G): This tool lets you generate a gradient that allows you to blend
the background and the foreground.
Eraser Tool (E): This tool functions in the same manner as the paintbrush, but it
does not paint, instead it erases.
Smudge, Sharpen and Blur Tools: These tools function like paintbrushes; however,
the individual tools have unrelated effects on your image.
Pen Tool (P): This tool allows you to generate vector graphics and it also allows
you to generate paths.
Path Tool (A): This tool allows you to move around any generated paths, it
resembles the Move Tool functionality.
Type Tool (T): This tool allows you to type content horizontally. You can type
vertically by using the tools hidden below the horizontal type tool. You can also
use the hidden tools to generate vertical and horizontal text masks.
Shape Tool (U): This tool allows you to generate custom shapes, lines, polygons,
circles, rounded rectangles, and vector rectangles. These tools are highly
resourceful when crafting shape masks.
Hand Tool (H): This tool lets you click as well as drag within the canvas
conveniently. However, the tool is inactive when the canvas resolution is the same
as that of the screen.
3D Tools: What these tools do is tap the control of your graphics card in order to
provide you with unbelievably fast performance.
Zoom Tool (Z): This tool allows you to zoom out as well as in of the canvas, all
you have to do is click on a particular section. Usually, this tool will allow you to
zoom in, but you can zoom out by holding down the option key along with the
zoom tool.
Sponge, Dodge and Burn Tools: What the sponge tool does is saturate/de-saturates
color; what the dodge tool does is lighten up sections of your image; and what the
burn tool does is darken parts of your image.
Color Selection Tools (D & X): These tools allow you to regulate the colors that
are in use.
 Figure 5: Photoshop Toolbar

As a beginner, the basic tools that you can use more often are: move tool, rectangle, brush
tool, eraser tool, and zoom tool to mention a few. You can start using your new canvas by
practicing with the shapes tool. All you have to do is click on the desired shape and then
go ahead and draw it on the canvas. There are several shapes that you can draw, including:
rectangle, rounded rectangle, eclipse, polygon, line, and custom shapes. However, you can
access the custom shapes from the top toolbar.
From the shapes dropdown menu, you can generate different images on your canvas, such
as arrows, TM and hearts. Having done that, go ahead and access the rectangular Marquee
tool just below the Move tool. If you left click and drag on the rectangular Marquee tool, a
drop down menu will appear through which you can change the shape accordingly. For the
purpose of learning and practicing, go ahead and select the rectangular Marquee tool.
You can then draw the rectangle by left clicking and dragging on the canvas to your
desired size. You will make a rectangular selection the moment you let go of the pointer; a
selection refers to a working space. Therefore, whatever activities you do within the
selection will be displayed and whatever you do outside the selection will not be
displayed. Then go ahead and select the paint bucket tool, you can see the shape of the
tool from figure 5.
Then go ahead and pick a foreground color; first check if the default foreground color is
what you can work with. You can farther adjust the foreground color by clicking on the
Color Picker, pick red for now and click OK. Once you have selected the color, you will
observe a little paint bucket on your mouse. Then go ahead and click inside the selection
to activate the red color. Clicking outside the selection will have no effect because that
section is closed.
You can eliminate your current selection by pressing Ctrl+D on your keyboard. You can
click on the eclipse Marquee tool and create a circle by holding down shift key. Then click
on the color picker and select a different color for your new image, such as blue. You can
circle inside your rectangular selection by selecting your rectangular Marquee tool again.
Then go ahead and hold down shift as you draw a circle in your first selection.
You should be able to move the new circular selection; Photoshop will basically cut it out
for you. You can change your foreground and background color and press G on your
keyboard to fill your circular selection with white color. You can draw some zigzag lines
on your canvas by selecting the Polygon Lasso tool and then begin drawing zigzag lines
and make a simple selection. To display the zigzag line selection, select the paint bucket
tool and click on the selection.
You can go ahead and move your zigzag line selection to a different section of your
canvas; this action will simply copy the image to the new selection. You can make a more
precise selection by selecting the Lasso tool and then draw your selection and press G to
whiten up the selection.
You can put the magic wand tool to action by using it to select one of the selections you
have made; then go ahead and paint it white. The magic wand tool allows you to also
select what is close to your selection.

Figure 6: Creating Selections

 Figure 7: Creating Selections

Once you have done your work and you want to save it; you will have to go to File.
However, do not click save or save as, you can but this will create a PSD file, which can
be a bit challenging to edit in the future. Instead you should select Save for Web & Devices
under File, which will provide you with various file formats. Before saving under web and
devices, you can make a number of adjustments, including: changing color.
There are so many minor things you can do on your canvas as a beginner. However, you
should make a habit of creating selections and editing the colors. Do a lot of selections in
another selection and even move a smaller selection to another section of the canvas to
create a copy. Also practice erasing skills, deleting skills and so on. You simply have to
use the basic tools as they were described earlier in this chapter. This should give you a
good start with Photoshop.

Chapter 4 Photoshop Layers and Channels

Layers
This is one of the most important features of Photoshop for beginners. You should be able
to access layers palette from the right hand side of your screen. However, if the layers
palette is not displayed, then you can access it by clicking on Windows on the main menu,
then click on layers on the drop down menu. Every time you open a new image, it will be
in its own layer that exists at that time. You can duplicate your current layer to create a
copy.
What you should always know is that Photoshop allows you to separate different sections
of a photo on a layer. You can thereafter edit the individual layers as discrete artwork. This
promotes limitless flexibility as far as composing along with revising of an image is
concerned. You can click and drag your layers palette to any location on the screen. Under
the layers palette, you will observe a bunch of other objects.
You will see layer zero, text layer and the image layer, which are separate layers. You can
drag the individual layers above or below by clicking and dragging them. In addition, you
can lock a layer by clicking on the lock icon and you can unlock it by clicking the same
icon.
You can hide a layer by clicking on the icon located on its immediate left. This action will
not delete a layer; the layer will simply be hidden from the canvas. You can delete a layer
by holding and dragging it to the trash at the bottom.
You can rename a layer by double clicking on the layer and then input the desired title.
You can duplicate a layer or copy and paste the same layer by right clicking on the layer
and then select Duplicate Layer.
The duplicate layer dialog box will ask you to provide the name of the duplicate, such as
Photo Copy. You can have your duplicate stored in the current document or you can create
a new document and then click OK. The duplicated layer will appear on the layer panel
with the desired title.
There are so many things that you can do when you right click on a layer. Some of the
major actions that you can execute include: Blending Options, Duplicate Layer, Duplicate
Layer, Convert to Smart Object, New Smart Object via Copy, Edit Contents, Export
Contents, Replace Contents, Create Clipping Mask, Merge Visible, Flatten Image and so
on. If you have a number of layers that have to fit on a single folder, you can click and
drag a layer on top of another layer. You can also create a folder by clicking on the icon
folder located at the bottom of the layers palette.
The folder will be displayed on top of all the layers and it will be referred to as Group 1 by
Photoshop. Go ahead and click and drag all the layers into the recently created folder to
form a group. A group such as the one you have just created minimizes the number of
layers that are displayed on your screen. You can easily create a new layer by clicking the
new layer icon at the bottom of the panel (see figure 8 for the icon shape and location on
the panel). You can easily delete the new layer you have just created by clicking and
dragging it to the trash bin.


Figure 8: Layers palette

You can select a layer and add effects by selecting a specific layer and then click the fx
icon at the bottom of the panel. When you click on the fx icon, Photoshop will prompt you
to add a layer style. Go ahead and select add a layer style by clicking on the Bevel &
Emboss option on the drop down menu. In this case it is text; therefore, make the
necessary adjustments and click OK and the style effects will be added on you text
(image).
To see the deferent effects that are applied on each layer, just click on the individual layers
at a time. You can adjust the opacity of a layer, which is in percentage by changing the
opacity level, say from 70% to 100%. You can effortlessly change the layer mode/ blend
mode (see figure 8) by clicking the down arrow.
There are several blend mode groups, including: Component (hue, saturation, color,
luminosity); Inversion Cancelation (difference, exclusion, subtract, divide); Contrast (hard
mix, pin light, linear light, vivid light, hard light, soft light, and overlay); Lighten (lighter
color, linear dodge (add), color dodge, screen, and lighten); darken (darker color, linear
burn, color burn, multiply, and darken); Normal (normal and dissolve).
Most of the aforementioned blend modes can be called using keyboard shortcuts. You
must ensure that the tool currently in use is not any tool from the painting & editing part
of the Tools Panel in order to be able to use the blend modes keyboard shortcuts.
Usually, the tools found in the painting & editing part do have blend mode shortcut
settings too. Therefore, if they are on, then Photoshop will activate them other than the
blend modes keyboard shortcuts of the ones found in the layers palette.

Channels
Channels are the very building blocks of almost everything in Photoshop. Channels
existed before layers and they have been with since the first version of Photoshop. In
simple terms, channels refer to grayscale images that store numerous kind of information;
they constitute a variety of black and white images. The black and white images refer to
the red channel, the green channel and the blue channel.

Figure 9: Photoshop Channels

If you look in the channels panel (you can access the channels panel by clicking on
Windows, then Channels); you will observe the color intensity. You will see the red, green
and blue colors and you will observe that the place that is more whitish is where it is most
red on the canvas. If you look under the green color, you will observe that the most
whitish section is the most green on the canvas. If you look under the blue color, you will
observe that the most whitish part is the most blue.

Figure 10: Blue Channel, Red Channel, Green Channel

As far as the Red-Green-Blue mode is concerned where it is white is where that is most.
Figure 10 should give you an idea of what this means; when you combine all the channels
together, you will get a composite image of what all the colors are. If you have all the
three colors completely combined; where the red channel is all white, the green channel is
all white and the blue channel is all white, you are going to have a B white. If the red
channel is all black, the green channel is all black and the blue channel is black then it is
going to be black in the designated pixel.
You can best understand the abovementioned concept if you view the channels separately.
For instance, an image can have a particular part that it is all red in the red channel, all
green in the green channel and all blue in the blue channel. Such an image will be all
white when all the channels are combined together. You can change the color mode from
the RGB color mode to CMYK color. To do this click on Image on the main menu, then
mode and then CMYK color.
To understand and appreciate the importance of channels in Photoshop, you should load a
green stream photo on your canvas and then click on the individual channels to see what
happens. If you click on the individual channels; red will display black, green will display
white while blue will display black.
You can also do channels in the Lab mode, which breaks into lightness, a and b; a is a
gradation of colors from purple to green while b is a gradation of colors from yellow to
green. However, you should stick with the RGB mode until you are skillful enough to
handle other modes.
You can do some magic with the channels and that is where Photoshop gets more
interesting and challenging. If you want to turn an image into black and white, click on the
black and white icon located at the bottom of the layers palette (see figure 8). When you
click on black and white, the properties panels pop out on the screen. The properties panel
will present you with the following colors: red, yellow, green, cyan, blue and magenta.
The presented colors present the three channel of red-green-blue and the three channel of
cyan-yellow magenta. What you will actually be doing is mixing and matching the three
individually black and white images. It is a matter of how much of each you want to show.
If you go to curves under the black and white icon (see figure 8), you will be affecting a
number of things.
Chapter 5 Tips and Tricks for Photoshop Beginners

You can change the interface color by pressing Shift+F1 on your keyboard to
darken the interface or you can press Shift+F2 to lighten.
Photoshop has an auto save feature that ensures you never lose your progress. You
can adjust the frequency of auto saves by accessing the Edit menu, preferences,
and then file handling. You can actually tell Photoshop how frequently you want it
to save your files, such as 5 minutes, 10 minutes and so on.
Sometimes it can take you a considerable amount of time to find the right layer.
However, you can use the search section in the layers palette to find your desired
layer. You can search a layer by color, attribute, mode, effect, name and kind.
You can select multiple layers to change the blend modes, opacity and even apply
color labels.
You can create dashed as well as dotted lines by using shape layers. With shape
layers, you can easily create dash and dotted lines.
Make use of the crop tool; when you have the crop tool selected, Photoshop will
automatically create a crop box of your entire document so that you can just drag
the corners to crop. Moving the crop area works in the opposite direction; instead
of dragging the crop box, you will be dragging the image.
You can use content aware technology. To use this tech, select the patch tool and
set the mode to Content-Aware and then create a selection of your object and then
drag the selection to the area that you want Photoshop to fill from. The latest
content-aware tool allows you to move objects from one location to another.
There are new ways you can use the brush tool. The new brush tool allows you to
draw erodible lines from thin lines to thick lines. When a point on the line you are
drawing gets too thick, you will need to sharpen the tip by pressing the sharpen tip
in the brush palette.
Use the new text tools. If you are a web and graphics designer, then you should
definitely work hard to learn how to use this tool. You can use this tool to paste
random filler text. You can find many Type settings under the Type menu.
Use the adaptive wide angle filter. This function will provide you with more
control over wide angle photos. It corrects distortions in a manner that the lens
distortion filter cannot correct.
You can easily create a new layer by clicking on the new layer icon at the bottom
of the layers palette, and you can create a new folder by clicking on the new folder
icon at the bottom of the layers palette.
Conclusion

Photoshop is one of the most important software that you must learn how to use. There is
nothing difficult about this amazing widely held image editing software program. All you
need to get you started is concrete introductory knowledge. To be precise, what you need
are the basics of Photoshop and you will be up and running.
In fact, you can begin practicing immediately you finish installing the software. As a
beginner, you should strive to know the simple uses of Photoshop, such as creating
selections as you progress to more sophisticated ones, since this book is designed to help
you learn how to use Photoshop, the easy way.