Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop is one of the most versatile professional image editors, used for a wide range of tasks related to digital graphics: photo processing, design, modeling, etc. It is now the most popular program, which is commonly used in professional circles. New versions are becoming easier to learn for novice users, and they are constantly adding new features and improving existing ones.

Unfortunately, Photoshop is not free. On the developers’ site you will be offered several options for using the program. All of them involve the purchase of a subscription for a certain period of time. Depending on the type of subscription, the program’s functionality may vary. You should also understand that one article won’t be able to review all the features of this program, as it will take a whole series of articles. Therefore, we will consider only the most important ones.

Toolbar

This is where the most basic tools for working in the program are located. However, they can also change depending on which workspace you have previously selected. Working environments allow you to quickly adapt the program interface to solve any typical tasks, such as those related to drawing, 3D modeling, typography, etc. Most of these tools will remain in this panel regardless of which workspace you have selected.

Initially, it may not seem like there are many tools here and you could look at each of them in more detail. However, almost every one of them will hide some additional tool that corresponds to the overall theme. For example, the Brush tool hides the Pencil tool, the Color Swap tool, and the Mixed Brush tool.

Almost every tool you select can be customized in the top panel. For example, you can specify brush size, hardness, transparency, shape, direction, type, etc. In fact, Brush has a lot of options that don’t fit in the top settings panel. Even with such a seemingly simple tool as “Crop” (image cropping) you can set crop proportions, percentages, adjust perspective and many other parameters.

Interaction with Layers

The presence of layers and the functionality to work with them is the main “feature” of the program. All the layers you work with in the current document are located in the lower right part. Layers are divided into several types. Here are the main ones:

• A regular layer with a bitmap image;
• A layer with a smart object. In its case, you can make changes to this layer as a separate document;
• Adjustment layer. This may contain some kind of mask, brightness/contrast settings, levels, and more, depending on the user’s settings;
• Text layer. Here you work directly with the text.

You can give each of the available layers its own name and arrange them into folders (called “groups” in the program). You can also adjust the transparency of a particular layer or group and set the type of overlay.

In fact, there are many functions related to working with layers in Photoshop. You can add different masks that can be used to hide/crop/render only a certain area of the image or to apply an effect to that area without touching the rest of the document. You can also add to a normal layer quick adjusting masks that will be applied only to it. For example, this way you can change the brightness/contrast of a certain object, adjust its color scheme, etc. Additionally, for each of the layers you can set its own style – shadows, patterns, textures, gradients, etc.

Of course, when working with layers you can lock a certain element for editing, select it with some color in the Layers panel, add a special marker, hide the display of the layer in the image.

Correcting an image

Photoshop has extensive options regarding image correction. All the available functions and tools can be viewed using the “Image” tab at the top of the program interface. Some of these options are applied to the image using the keyboard shortcuts you set in the program. There are also those that have to be called from a special menu. There are a lot of image correction parameters, so there’s no sense in explaining each of them. You can briefly see all of them in the screenshot below.

If you need to perform advanced image correction, for example, to apply not only a black-and-white filter, but also to adjust the color parameters, it is recommended to call the tool you need from the “Image” – “Correction” menu. In that case, you will see a special dialog box where you will be able to adjust the parameters as you see fit. If you apply the tool by means of a combination of “hot” keys, the last parameters set by you will be automatically applied. Almost every one of the items in the screenshot above has an impressive list of settings that can change depending on your preferences.

Also worth mentioning in this header are the options concerning image transformation. You can find them if you open the “Edit” tab at the top and go to the “Transform” section. In addition to the most trivial functions, like horizontal/vertical image reflection and n-degree rotation, there are interesting features. For example, the tool “Perspective” will allow you to change the proportions of the object.

Normal object transformation is invoked by the Ctrl+T key combination. You can access the transformation tools if you right-click on the object you want to change.

Working with filters

There is a separate tab in the upper part of the program because there are so many of them. In addition to the “standard” filters used in many photo editors, such as pencil and watercolor, there are other, more interesting filters. For example, you can add “Lighting Effects” to a photo. This filter implies arranging virtual light sources on the image. However, it is not available to all users, because there are specific requirements for your video card.

All of the filters presented, whether they are simple blur or advanced light source placement, can be customized to your needs. For example, you can adjust the degree of blur, the sharpness of the blur, the degree of brush pressure in the case of art filters, and so on. Among other things, you can apply filters not only to any image, but also to individual layers and even to each other. In that case, they become something like regular layers – you can specify their opacity, set the blending mode.

However, you should understand that some filters may not be available to you due to specific hardware and/or file requirements. With other filters, however, problems may arise where they take a long time to be applied and/or are applied incorrectly in the end. This most often happens because of high performance requirements of your computer or because some elements of the file do not display correctly.

Adding text

Thanks to the advanced tools for working with text, Photoshop has become of interest not only to photographers but also to designers. The available tools are enough to create a professional typography. Text is added with a special tool on the left toolbar. By choosing this tool, you can either just click on the necessary area of the image and start writing or select an area for text with the left mouse button pressed and write in this area.

The written text will be displayed as an editable text layer in the Layers panel. It can be rasterized as needed. This allows you to apply certain filters and effects to the text, but you won’t be able to edit the text itself. For a text layer, you can adjust the font size, the font itself, the indentation between letters and words, the height and width of characters, and apply standard effects like bold, italic, underline, and so on. Text can also change color, and you can set a different color for each character on the same layer. And you can easily add shadows, gradient fills, ambient and internal glow to text.

Working in 3D

This program is not a full-fledged 3D-editor, so working with complex 3D-objects and scenes in it will be difficult. However, if you need to convert the text into a 3D object, apply some styles to it, add light sources and conduct other small procedures, then the functionality of the program will be quite enough. Of the basic features when working with 3D, it’s worth noting:

• Change the color of the object;
• Add textures;
• Inserting a background from a file or several separate files (combining several images as a background);
• Setting up lighting and shadows.

Working with animation

Photoshop too can not be called a full-fledged editor to create animation, but it has the right tools for small GIF-images. With the right level of skill or mastery of the program, you can make beautiful animated images here.

By default, the animation mode is hidden. To open it, you need to open the “Window” tab. There, from the context menu, select the option “Time Scale”. At the bottom of the interface after this a special field will be displayed, where you can set the animation for the various layers, linking it to the time. Additionally, you can apply various effects to the animation, such as smooth appearance, etc.

Adding plugins and extensions

Photoshop itself turned out to be a very versatile program. However, due to the fact that it supports working with third-party plugins and extensions, you can significantly expand the existing functionality and / or customize it to your needs.

Development of plug-ins are both ordinary users of the program, and the whole studio, including a special division of Adobe – the developer of the program. The add-ons themselves are distributed on both a paid and free basis. The installation process can also be different for different types of add-ons. For example, new brushes in the program can be added simply from a special interface.

Workspaces

If you already use Photoshop professionally as a working tool, you may be interested in the workspaces the program has to offer. A workspace is a specially configured program interface for performing certain tasks. In total, by default, the program has the following workspaces:

• Main workspace. It is launched by default. It is more suitable for newcomers who are just mastering the program or for people who perform various tasks in it which are not closely related to any of the fields presented below;
• 3D adjusts the interface of the program to work with 3D objects. Appropriate tools are prominently displayed;
• Graphics and Internet. This version of the program interface is more suitable for web and print designers;
• Motion. A workspace designed specifically for working with GIF-animation;
• Drawing. Most often used by artists;
• Photography. Creates optimal interface settings for photo processing.

Setting up automatic saving

In fact, Photoshop has a lot of different settings that affect the program’s performance, interface, file handling convenience, and some other parameters. However, in this section we’ll consider only the ability to automatically save a file.

In older versions of the program there was either no automatic saving at all or it was rather difficult to customize. In modern versions, it is enabled by default. A backup copy of the file you were working on is created by default, with all changes once every 10 minutes. There is a separate item in the program settings dedicated to the auto-save function. Here you can set values from 5 minutes to 1 hour. However, the auto-save feature still does not work quite correctly, therefore, sometimes the file may not be saved, so it is better to save it yourself.

Advantages and disadvantages of the program

In this article, we went over only the most basic features of Adobe Photoshop. From these, you can get a basic idea of the product, highlighting its advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages of the program include:

• Great possibilities of editing images;
• The interface of the program can be customized to the requirements for different professions, including those that are not so closely related to the processing of photos;
• There are many sites and courses on Photoshop, where you can learn to work with the program on a professional level with minimal time and money;
• There is a free version, which allows you to use all the features of the program for 30 days for free. However, at the end of those days, you will still have to buy a subscription;
• It is possible to expand the already great range by adding various plugins and extensions.

However, the program has certain disadvantages:

• The program is not free and is expensive, especially frustrating is the fact that you do not buy the whole program, but only a subscription to it;
• Rather high computer requirements;
• The program can be hard to learn for beginners.

Adobe Photoshop is one of the best and most widespread graphic editors, with which you can create real graphic masterpieces, if you can understand its functionality.