A Basic Tutorial
Photoshop can seem overpowering at first glance due to the program’s lack of simple tutorials and seemingly challenging interface. Cast your worries aside, because the basics of Photoshop are much easier than they might appear.
Photoshop is basically made up of four areas: the menu bar, at the top, the toolbar just below it, the toolbox on the left and the palettes on the right. As you navigate through the program, you will find that the menu bar and toolbox always stay the same. This is because they contain the different modes and options that you can choose. The toolbar however, changes according to context.
The palettes are there to show the current status of your image, including the history of all the actions you have used and a thumbnail overview of how the ‘big picture’ currently looks.
As an example of how the interface changes as you use it, select the type tool from the toolbox (looks like a capital T). Note how the toolbar changes completely to permit changes to the font name, size etc.
In the history palette, your use of the type tool will be added to your history, and a new layer will be created for your text and shown in the layers palette.
Whatever you’re trying to do in Photoshop, then, the chances are that your starting point will be either the toolbox or the menus. While the toolbox contains everyday tools such as selecting, filling and making shapes, the menus have more complicated functions like blurring, sharpening, and all the other effects Photoshop can achieve (mostly to be found under the Filter menu).
When you have selected a tool from the toolbox, you can alter its settings using the toolbar - options from the menu will generally open a dialog box. Finally, when you want to go back and alter something that you already put on the image, you can use the palettes, although they have some other uses too, notably changing colours.