Photoshop: Chapter 6: Photoshop Interface and Textbook Blog

Briefly describe the purpose of the following Photoshop tools:

• Elliptical Marquee Tool– Creates oval and circular selections
• Magnetic Lasso Tool – Creates freehand selections that snap to high-contrast edges in an image
• Quick Selection Tool – Selects shapes that it detects in the image
• Magic Wand Tool – Selects pixels that are similar in color to the one that’s clicked
• Crop Tool – Crops the image (unconstrained or fixed ratio)
• Eye Dropper Tool – Samples colors from an image
• Ruler Tool – Measures a distance or angle, or straightens the image
• Healing Brush Tool – Corrects flaws based on a sampled area
• Content-Aware Tool – Repositions or extends an area of an image
• Brush Tool – Applies brush strokes
• Mixer Brush Tool – Simulates traditional paint strokes; allows colors to mix and smudge
• History Brush Tool – Restores pixels from a history state or snapshot
• Background Eraser Tool – Erases a sampled color area to transparency
• Gradient Tool – Creates soft blends between two or more colors
• Sharpen Tool – Sharpens edges and details
• Smudge Tool – Smudges colors
• Dodge Tool – Lightens pixels
• Burn Tool – Darkens pixels
• Pen Tool – Draws curved or straight-edged shapes or paths
• Horizontal Type Tool – Creates horizontally oriented editable type
• Vertical Type Tool – Creates vertically oriented editable type
• Ellipse Tool – Creates oval shaped layers or paths
• Hand Tool – Moves a magnified image in the document window
• Zoom Tool – Changes the document zoom level
• Set Foreground Color Tool – Displays (and lets you change) the current Foreground color

Briefly describe the purpose of the following Photoshop panels:

• Actions panel – Record, store, edit, play, delete, save, and load actions
• Adjustments panel – Produces different kinds of adjustment layers, which you can use to apply flexible color and tonal edits and corrections to an image
• Brush panel – Choose brush tips and custom brush settings for tools
• Channels panel – Lists and displays the thumbnails for all the color channels in the current document
• Character panel – Choose attributes for the type tools
• Color panel – Choose colors by mixing them via the sliders or quick-select them by clicking in the color ramp
• Histogram panel – View a graph of the distribution of tonal (light and dark) values in the current image
• History panel – Displays all edits made to a document in the current work session
• Info panel – Provides up-to-the-minute data about your document
• Kuler panel – Access and browse color themes uploaded by users
• Layers panel – View the different layers in the document
• Navigator panel – Move a magnified image in the document window, change the document zoom level, or target an area for magnification
• Paragraph panel – Apply paragraph-level settings, including horizontal alignment, indentation, spacing before, spacing after, and automatic hyphenation
• Properties panel – Edit adjustment layers and mask options
• Styles panel – Save, load, and append style libraries (collections of styles)
• Swatches panel – Stores predefined and user-defined solid color swatches
• Timeline panel – Compose a sequence using audio clips and video files

PART 2: Photoshop & Illustrator Textbook Blog

Textbook Blog Post: SILHOUETTES

Explain the technique described in this posting and ways in which you could use it:

In this blog posting, the designer used the Quick Selection tool to brush the area of the document they wanted to copy, and then pasted it onto a new layer. This technique can be used to de-emphasize the background, add your silhouette to a collage, apply a layer effect to the silhouette, or place the silhouette into another document with a different background.

Scroll down to find the cup of coffee silhouette pasted on the café tables. Click the image, then save it, and paste it here:

Other Photoshop Blogs:

Blog Address (copy from address bar at the top of your browser window): http://abduzeedo.com/super-easy-colorful-effects-photoshop

Blog Posting (describe the technique discussed in the blog posting):

The designer creates different layers of brushed colors, merges them together and warps them with the transform tool. The designer then adjusts the levels, duplicates the image and sets the layer mode to overlay to achieve a colorful background.