PHOTOSHOP-1(BASIC TOOLS)

Tools Palette:-
Move Tool:-
Use to drag layers into their desired position; it will move only the selected layer. (You select a layer by clicking it on the Layers palette). You can also drag and drop between documents or between Photoshop and another application using the Move Tool.

Lasso Tool: freehand/polygon/magnetic:-
Use to select an area of the picture for cutting out layers. Use the Magnetic Lasso Tool for cutting out contrast parts of an image. The Magnetic Lasso works the same way as the Magnetic Pen tool - it draws a path laying fastening points down along the way – the distance apart can be set in the Options bar.
The path will follow the edge of greatest contrast within the brush width area. To reverse an outline, drag back over the outline drawn so far. When you reach a fastening point you can either continue on from there or hit DELETE to reverse your tracks to the fastening point before that. To complete a selection, click on the start point. The Polygon Tool can draw both straight line and freehand selections.

Magic Wand:-
Used to make rough selections based on color. The tolerence setting governs the sensitivity. When you click on an area in the image, Photoshop selects all the ajacent pixels whose color values are within the tolerances ranges specified either side of the selected pixel. You can use the Smoothing option in the Select menu to tidy up a Magic Wand selection. Use this tool only to make rough selections. You are better off using the Select>Color Range option.

Crop Tool:-
Optionally you can use the Width and Height options to specify an exact size in mm, cm or px (pixels). You can also rotate the angle of crop by dragging just outside the crop marquee.

Slicing Tools:-
Used to divide an image up into rectangular sections which will instruct Imageready how to cut up a single image into smaller blocks. You can then specify in ImageReady the settings for each individual slice (file format, compression, etc.)

Healing Brush Tool:-
Great for removing blemishes on skintone. Alt+Click on an area to source from, then click on the blemish; it works by caculating the average difference of the pixels and matching them up. Brush/Pencil Tools Airbrush - Mimics the effect of a real airbrush, producing a spray of paint. Paintbrush - Standard tool for retouching work. Pencil – Produces hard-edged, pencil-like drawing lines. Change the color in the color palette.

Clone Tool/Pattern Stamp:-
Press ALT+Click you select the area you clone from. This ‘source’ will move with you. The clone tool shouldn’t really be used on skin tone; use the Healing Brush Tool for blemishes. You can also of course clone between layers and documents. The clone stamp normally samples from a single layer only. The Use All Layers option permits the clone sample to be taken from merged layers.

History Brush:-
This brush it takes the area of the picture you brush over back to a predefined point that you can set. To set the History point go into the History Palette. On the left of the file name at the top you see the brush icon. This means the History Point is currently set to the the Original opened document. You may want to set this to another point e.g. after you color corrected. To do this click on the box to the left of the point you want. The little brush icon should move to this point.

Eraser Tool:-
The Eraser Tool removes pixels from an image and replaces it with the current background.
Gradient Tool
The Gradient Tool can be used to draw linear, radial, angular or diamond gradients. The dither checkbox should be kept on - this will add subtle noise, ensuring less risk of banding appearing in the gradient fill. You can also customize your own gradients. Gradients can also be applied as a fill layer. Go to the Layers Palette click on the adjustment layer and select Gradient Layer.

Paint Bucket:-
Most useful for filling inside the areas of a mask or quickmask outline. Can also be used for filling with a pattern as well as solid color. Choose the Pattern mode from the options bar and select pattern type.

Focus: blur/sharpen/smudge:-
Use the blur tool instead of the smudge tool to soften an edge. This is just like painting with one of the blur filters, useful for softening outlines after compositing. Use the sharpening tool sparingly.

Toning: dodge/burn/sponge:-
You can select this so the dodge and burn tools affect only the Highlights, Midtones or Shadows. So if you want to darken or burn the shadow portion of an image, choosing the burn tool in shadows mode will enable you to do this. The Sponge Tool has 2 modes – saturate and desaturate. This is useful when converting images from RGB to CMYK and there are small parts of the picture out of gamut. (go View>Gamut Warning). Use the desaturate mode of the Sponge Tool to draw on those areas before converting.

Text Tool:-
After adding text you can change the fonts, apply different colors to all the text or single characters, or enter new text. Layer effects can also be applied.

Pen and Path drawing:-
Paths are useful in several ways: either applying a stroke with one or more paint tools, for saving as a clipped path, or defining as a complex selection shape, which can be converted to a selection or applied to a layer clipping path to mask a layer. The Pen Tool is the professional’s selection tool for large files.

Notes Tool:-
Photoshop allows you to add either text or sound to a file. Annotated documents can be saved in PSD, PDF or TIFF formats. After you add an entry, the text will remain as a small icon floating above the actual image.

Eyedropper Tool:-
The eyedropper samples color values from any open image window and makes that the foreground color. The sample area can be set to Point, 3x3 average or 5x5 average. A 3x3 or 5x5 average may be more representitive of the color value of the pixels as you could be clicking on a ‘noisy’ pixel or some other artefact.

Measure Tool:-
Provides an alternative for measuring distances and angles as well as the standard document rulers. The measure Tool also has a protractor mode – after drawing a meauring line, Alt-click on one of the end points and drap out a second line.
Foreground/Background Colors
The default setting is with black as the foreground and white as the background color.

Overview - Brushes:-
Brush Size:-
The upper size limit is 1x1 pixel to 999x999pixels.

Opacity:-
Basically the strengh of the brush. 100% is full strength, at 30% the effect will be more subtle but will get more noticable each time you brush over the same area.

Hardness:-
This determines if there is any softening to the edge of the brush. If you want a soft edge when cutting out layers turn this down to about 40% and use a smaller brush.

Overview CMYK Output:-
Monitors work in the RGB colorspace while output to print relies on CMYK. Basically RGB (Red, Green, Blue) is an additive colorspace – it blends those colors together to create the entire spectrum.
CMYK is a subtractive colorspace (Cyan, Magneta, Yellow – the opposites of Red Green and Blue – and we need nominal K for Black because it a subtractive colorspace). You will only need to worry about converting to CMYK when outputting to print, all other images (e.g. for the web) should be RGB. Because there are fewer colors in CYMK than RGB you may get colors that are Out of Gamut when converting.
This is the bane of all print artists as the CMYK output always comes out different to the original. Go View>Out of Gamut to see, if any, what parts of your photo will be out of the CMYK Gamut should you convert, and use the Sponge Tool to desaturate those parts that are Out of Gamut or use Hue/Saturation to desaturate large portions of a photo. Also slightly more Sharpening is generally used when outputting to print.

Photoshop Layers:-
Photoshop files are either flat or have layers. A JPEG file does not save layers, it saves a flat image; if you have layers in your image save it as a .TIFF or the native .PSD file to retain the layers.

Quick Adjustments:-
Auto Levels/Contrast/Color:-
These provide a quick way to correct lighting or color sheens. Even photos taken by top end cameras will need adjustment of some kind. The auto functions will generally work in the way you want about 80% of the time. The rest of the time you will have to make adjustments manually.

Curves:-
Any adjustment that can be done using the Levels tool can be done using Curves but it is a matter of preference which tool you use. The linear curve line represents the tonal range from 0 (bottom left corner) to 255 (top right). The vertical represents the input values and the horizontal, the output values. Generally to add a little more contrast try a very slight ‘S’ curve. You can also use this tool to adjust color balance by adjusting the indivual channels.

Sharpening:-
Any sharpening should always be the last thing you do when you are otherwise happy with the image. Always use the Unsharp Mask. Generally for skin you shouldn’t apply dramatic sharpening.