Adobe Photoshop CC For Dummies

Peter Bauer is highly respected Photoshop instructor and author. He has been honored with membership in the Photoshop Hall of Fame and was named a Pioneer of Photoshop by the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (now KelbyOne.com). He has written more than a dozen books on Photoshop, digital photography, and computer graphics.

Introduction 1


About This Book 1


Conventions Used in This Book 2


Icons Used in This Book 3


How to Use This Book 3


Part 1: Getting Started with Photoshop CC 5


Chapter 1: Welcome to Photoshop! 7


Exploring Adobe Photoshop 7


What Photoshop is designed to do 8


Other things you can do with Photoshop 9


Viewing Photoshop’s Parts and Processes 10


Reviewing basic computer operations 10


Launching Photoshop 10


Working with images 11


Saving your files 11


Keyboard shortcuts 12


Photoshop’s incredible selective Undo 12


Installing Photoshop: Need to know 14


Chapter 2: Knowing Just Enough about Digital Images 17


What Exactly is a Digital Image? 18


The True Nature of Pixels 18


How Many Pixels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin? 21


Resolution revelations 21


Resolving image resolution 22


Changing the size of your artwork with the


Image Size command 23


Picking an image resolution 28


File Formats: Which Do You Need? 30


Formats for digital photos 31


Formats for web graphics 33


Formats for commercial printing 34


Formats for PowerPoint and Word 35


Chapter 3: Taking the Chef’s Tour of Your Photoshop Kitchen 37


Food for Thought: How Things Work 38


Ordering from the menus 38


Your platter full of panels 39


The tools of your trade 42


Get Cookin’ with Customization 43


Clearing the table: Custom workspaces 44


Sugar and spice, shortcuts are nice 46


Spoons can’t chop: Creating tool presets 47


Season to Taste: The Photoshop Settings 48


Standing orders: Setting the Preferences 49


Preferences ? History Log 50


Preferences ? Tools 50


Preferences ? Interface and Preferences ? Workspace 50


Preferences ? File Handling 51


Preferences ? Performance 52


Preferences ? Scratch Disks 53


Preferences ? Cursors 53


Preferences ? Transparency & Gamut 54


Preferences ? Units & Rulers 54


Preferences ? Guides, Grid & Slices 54


Preferences ? Plug-Ins 55


Preferences ? Technology Previews 55


Ensuring consistency: Color Settings 55


When Good Programs Go Bad: Fixing Photoshop 57


Chapter 4: Getting Images into and out of Photoshop 59


Bringing Images into Photoshop 59


Downloading from your digital camera 60


Scanning prints 62


Determining scan resolution 63


Preventing moiré patterns 65


Keeping Your Images Organized 66


Creating a folder structure 66


Using Adobe Bridge 67


Renaming image files easily 70


Printing Your Images 71


Cropping to a specific aspect ratio 71


Remembering resolution 73


Controlling color using File ? Print 74


Considering color management solutions 75


Printing alternatives 76


Sharing Your Images 77


Creating PDFs and websites 78


Emailing your images 78


Chapter 5: What’s New in Photoshop CC? 79


Improvements and New Features 79


The new features you’re most likely to love 79


Additional new features 83


New to Camera Raw 85


More Sensei Coming Soon to Photoshop 87


What is Sensei? 87


The coolest capabilities 87


Part 2: Easy Enhancements for Digital Images 89


Chapter 6: Making Tonality and Color Look Natural 91


Adjusting Tonality to Make Your Images Pop 92


Histograms Simplified 92


Using Photoshop’s Auto Corrections 94


Levels and Curves and You 95


Level-headed you! 96


Tonal corrections with the eyedroppers 99


Adjusting your curves without dieting 100


Grabbing Even More Control 102


Using Shadow/Highlight 103


Changing exposure after the fact 106


Using Photoshop’s toning tools 106


What is Color in Photoshop? 107


Which color mode should you choose? 109


Does a color model make a difference? 111


Why should you worry about color depth? 112


Making Color Adjustments in Photoshop 114


Choosing color adjustment commands 116


Brightness/Contrast, Levels, Curves, Exposure 116


Vibrance 117


Hue/Saturation 117


Color Balance 118


Black & White 119


Photo Filter 120


Channel Mixer 120


Color Lookup 120


Invert 120


Posterize 121


Threshold 121


Gradient Map 122


Selective Color 123


Shadow/Highlight 123


HDR Toning 124


Desaturate 124


Match Color 124


Replace Color 126


Equalize 127


Manual corrections in individual channels 127


The People Factor: Flesh Tone Formulas 129


Chapter 7: The Adobe Camera Raw Plug-In 131


Understanding the Raw Facts 131


What’s the big deal about Raw? 133


Working in Raw 133


Working in the Camera Raw Plug-In 135


Tools and preview options 135


Before and After 136


Trash 136


Zoom, Hand, and White Balance 137


Color Sampler 137


Targeted Adjustment 137


Crop and Straighten 137


Transform 139


Spot Removal 139


Red Eye Reduction 140


Adjustment Brush 140


Graduated Filter 140


Camera Raw Preferences 141


The histogram 143


The preview area 143


Workflow Options and presets 144


The Basic panel 146


The Tone Curve panel 147


The Detail panel 149


HSL, grayscale, and split toning 150


Compensating with Lens Corrections 152


Adding special effects 153


Camera profiles, presets,


and snapshots 154


The Camera Raw buttons 155


Chapter 8: Fine-Tuning Your Fixes 157


What is a Selection? 158


Feathering and Anti-aliasing 160


Making Your Selections with Tools 162


Marquee selection tools 162


Lasso selection tools 166


The Quick Selection tool 167


The Magic Wand tool 167


Select and Mask 168


Your Selection Commands 170


The primary selection commands 170


The Color Range command 171


The Focus Area command 173


Selection modification commands 173


Transforming the shape of selections 174


Edit in Quick Mask mode 176


The mask-related selection commands 176


Masks: Not Just for Halloween Anymore 177


Saving and loading selections 177


Editing an alpha channel 178


Adding masks to layers and Smart Objects 179


Masking with vector paths 180


Adjustment Layers: Controlling Changes 180


Adding an adjustment layer 181


Limiting your adjustments 182


Chapter 9: Common Problems and Their Cures 185


Making People Prettier 186


Getting the red out digitally 186


The digital fountain of youth 187


Dieting digitally 189


De-glaring glasses 190


Whitening teeth 191


Reducing Noise in Your Images 191


Decreasing digital noise 191


Eliminating luminance noise 192


Fooling Around with Mother Nature 193


Removing the unwanted from photos 193


Eliminating the lean: Fixing perspective 197


Rotating images precisely 198


Part 3: Creating “Art” in Photoshop 201


Chapter 10: Combining Images 203


Compositing Images: 1 + 1 = 1 203


Understanding layers 204


Why you should use Smart Objects 206


Using the basic blending modes 207


Opacity, transparency, and layer masks 210


Creating clipping groups 211


Making composited elements look natural 212


Making Complex Selections 213


Vanishing Point 216


Creating Panoramas with Photomerge 219


Chapter 11: Precision Edges with Vector Paths 221


Pixels, Paths, and You 222


Easy Vectors: Using Shapes 223


Your basic shape tools 223


The Custom Shape tool 225


More custom shapes — free! 226


Changing the appearance of the shape layer 228


Simulating a multicolor shape layer 229


Using Your Pen Tool to Create Paths 231


Understanding paths 231


Clicking and dragging your way down the path of knowledge 232


A closer look at the Paths panel 235


Pick a path, any path 235


The Paths panel buttons 237


Customizing Any Path 239


Adding, deleting, and moving anchor points 239


Combining paths 241


Tweaking type for a custom font 242


Chapter 12: Dressing Up Images with Layer Styles 245


What are Layer Styles? 245


Using the Styles Panel 247


Creating Custom Layer Styles 249


Exploring the Layer Style menu 249


Exploring the Layer Style dialog box 251


Layer effects basics 252


Bevel and Emboss 253


Stroke 254


Inner Shadow 255


Inner Glow 255


Satin 256


Color Overlay 256


Gradient Overlay 257


Pattern Overlay 258


Outer Glow 258


Drop Shadow 260


Opacity, fill, and advanced blending 260


Saving Your Layer Styles 263


Adding styles to the Styles panel 264


Preserving your layer styles 264


Chapter 13: Giving Your Images a Text Message 267


Making a Word Worth a Thousand Pixels 268


A type tool for every season, or reason 270


What are all those options? 272


Taking control of your text with panels 275


The panel menus — even more options 279


Working with Styles 281


Putting a picture in your text 282


Creating Paragraphs with Type Containers 284


Selecting alignment or justification 286


Ready, BREAK! Hyphenating your text 287


Shaping Up Your Language with Warp Text and Type on a Path 287


Applying the predefined warps 288


Customizing the course with paths 289


Chapter 14: Painting in Photoshop 293


Discovering Photoshop’s Painting Tools 294


Painting with the Brush tool 296


Adding color with the Pencil tool 298


Removing color with the Eraser tool 299


Working with Panels and Selecting Colors 300


An overview of options 300


Creating and saving custom brush tips 303


Picking a color 303


Fine Art Painting with Specialty Brush Tips and the Mixer Brush 306


Exploring erodible brush tips 307


Introducing airbrush and watercolor tips 307


Mixing things up with the Mixer Brush 308


Filling, Stroking, Dumping, and Blending Colors 310


Deleting and dumping to add color 310


Using gradients 311


Chapter 15: Filters: The Fun Side of Photoshop 313


Smart Filters: Your Creative Insurance Policy 314


The Filters You Really Need 315


Sharpening to focus the eye 316


Unsharp Mask 316


Smart Sharpen 318


Shake Reduction 319


Blurring images and selections 320


The other Blur filters 323


Correcting for the vagaries of lenses 324


Cleaning up with Reduce Noise 328


Getting Creative and Artistic 329


Photo to painting with the Oil Paint filter 329


Working with the Filter Gallery 330


Push, Pull, and Twist with Liquify 332


Do I Need Those Other Filters? 335


Adding drama with Lighting Effects 335


Maximum and Minimum 336


Bending and bubbling 336


Creating clouds 337


Part 4: Power Photoshop 339


Chapter 16: Streamlining Your Work in Photoshop 341


Ready, Set, Action! 342


Recording your own Actions 343


Working with the Batch command 348


Find It Fast with Search 349


Creating Contact Sheets and Presentations 350


Creating a PDF presentation 350


Collecting thumbnails in a contact sheet 352


Scanning Multiple Photos in One Pass 354


Sticking to the Script 355


Chapter 17: Working with Video and Animation 357


Importing and Enhancing Video Clips 357


Getting video into Photoshop 358


Adjusting the length of video and audio clips 360


Adding adjustment layers and painting on video layers 361


Transitioning, titling, and adding special effects 362


Transforming video layers 364


Rendering and exporting video 365


Creating Animations in Photoshop 366


Building frame-based animations 366


Creating frame content 367


Tweening to create intermediary frames 368


Specifying frame rate 369


Optimizing and saving your animation 370


Part 5: The Part of Tens 371


Chapter 18: Ten Specialized Features of Photoshop CC 373


Using Smart Object Stack Modes 374


The Mean Stack Mode 376


Working with 3D Artwork 376


Creating 3D objects 377


Importing 3D objects 377


Rendering and saving 3D scenes 377


Measuring, Counting, and Analyzing Pixels 378


Measuring length, area, and more 378


Calculating with Vanishing Point 379


Counting crows or maybe avian flu 380


Chapter 19: Ten Reasons to Love Your Wacom Tablet 381


More Natural Movement 381


Health and Safety 382


Artistic Control 382


Extended Comfort 383


Gestures, Programmable ExpressKeys, Touch Rings, and Touch Strips 383


The Optimal Tablet 383


The Pen’s Switch 384


Setting Preferences 384


The Accessories 385


Cintiq for the Photoshop Pro 385


Chapter 20: Ten Things to Know about HDR 387


Understanding HDR 388


Capturing for Merge to HDR Pro 389


Preparing Raw “Exposures” in Camera Raw 390


Working with Merge to HDR Pro 391


Saving 32-Bit HDR Images 394


HDR Toning 394


Painting and the Color Picker in 32-Bit 395


Filters and Adjustments in 32-Bit 396


Selections and Editing in 32-Bit 396


Printing HDR Images 396


Appendix: Photoshop CC’s Blending Modes 399


Index 403