Photoshop Basics Part 1: Photoshop setup + workspace overview

This guide is for first-time, novice Photoshop users. More advanced image manipulation techniques will be covered later.

Have you ever wanted to learn to use Photoshop, but thought it was intimidating? With the shift from film to digital photography, Photoshop brought the dark room to the masses. It provided the tools to make our images better and to unleash our creativity!

This guide will break down the basics you need to start using it. Remember, this guide covers the basics, so there will be no advanced image manipulation. In this post I’ll walk you through setting up Photoshop on your computer as well as getting used to the workspace.


1. Setting up Photoshop.

After launching Photoshop, you’ll see the screen shown below. Intimidating? Perhaps, at first. So there are some tool bars with buttons… no big deal. I’ll walk you through each feature, so that you know what it means, what it does and how to use it.

This is your workspace. It has a toolbar on the left, your layers palette and navigator on the right, menu bar on top; the photo you’re working on would be in the middle. The menus have all of the commands you need to work on an image, like opening a file, cropping, changing brightness/contrast, etc. Using keyboard shortcuts (covered further in this guide) is faster of course, but first you’d want to get comfortable using the menu items and moving around the workspace first.

Click on the screenshots to see a larger image

 

Next, we’ll need to check the settings. Default settings might also work ok, but proper setup will make things better for you in the long run.
Go into Edit > Preferences > General:

These setting are self-explanatory. The only thing you’d want to make sure Color Picker is set to Adobe. Photoshop is much better equipped to manage color space than Windows (or MacOS).

Next click on Interface (on the left side). Make sure that Remember Palette Locations is checked.

Click down on the next setting: File Handling. Set it up according to the image below:

Next setting down is Performance. This is an important setting that will influence Photoshop performance. Make sure your Memory Usage is set within the Ideal Range. The most important setting on this screen is Scratch disks. This is how Photoshop manages image manipulation operations during image editing. Ideally, you should have a separate hard drive dedicated to scratch disk operation. Alternatively, you can setup a partition on C:drive to act as a virtual scratch disk for Photoshop. I have a lot of free space on my laptop’s hard drive, so I didn’t partition it, but it is not the optimal setup.

Next two menu items are Cursors and Transparency / Gamut. You can experiment with these settings to find what you like the best.

Units and Rulers is another one you’d want to pay attention to. Print resolution should be set to at least 300 ppi. Screen resolution can be 72 or 96 ppi.

 

Set up the last 3 options as shown below. Gides, Grid, Slices, & Count can be set as you desire. Plug-ins will be discussed later in this guide.

2. Around the workspace.

Now that your settings are, well, setup, lets talk about navigating around your workspace. Click OK to close the Preferences box. One of the main tools on your workspace is the Toolbar, located all the way to the left.

This bar has the tools to perform variety of image editing and manipulation: move tool, selection tool, lasso, magic wand, crop, slice, spot healing, brush, clone stamp, history brush,eraser, gradient, blur, dodge/burn, pen, type, path selection, rectangle, notes, eye dropper, hand tool, zoom tool, and color selection tools. As you learn Photoshop, you’ll use most of these tool to perform various operations on your image. For now, the ones in bold should be the ones you learn to use.

Move tool allows you to move different elements (layers) of the image around.

Selection tool will be used to make a shape-based selection of various elements.

Lasso allows you to make freehand selection, which is handy if you want to cut out and replace a person’s face with another, for example.

Eraser does what it’s suppose to: erases parts of the image.

Color selection tools allow you to pick a color for color-fill operations.

Next, on the right side of the screen is the Navigator. It allows you to adjust the zoom level, and move around the image at high magnification. There’s also a Histogram tab (which we’ll talk about later in this guide). To the left of the Navigation box, there’s a secondary toolbox. For right now the ones you need to know are: history (lets you undo changes step by step), Character, and Paragraph (make adjustment to type).

Below the Navigator box is the meat and potatoes of Photoshop: Layers. Everything that you do to your image should be done on separate layers, thus giving you the freedom to experiment with different effects, without affecting your original image layer.

Finally, on top of the workspace is the menu bar as well as some options that change depending on the tool you are using. We’ll get more into it further in this guide.

For now, go to File > Open, and select any image to practice on. Play with the tools, go to different menus, get comfortable around the workspace. See, its not that intimidating, once you know what’s where and what it’s for.

Our next step will be making basic image manipulations: cropping, adjusting color/brightness/saturation, making selections, and working with layers.

Stay tuned!

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