Adobe Photoshop Basic Tutorial

Photoshop changed the photographic world when it arrived on the market in 1988 because it took the tedious process of working in a darkroom out into the light. Darkrooms were smelly places that took years to master. With Photoshop, all the techniques available in the darkroom--plus many new ones--became available to the novice as well as the pro. Here are some tips to get started.

Basics

Photoshop allows the user to manipulate digital photos--whether taken with a digital camera or scanned from film--for tone, color, style, exposure and other hallmarks of good images. It does this with computer language mathematics rather than light.

To get started, go to File>Open and select your digital photo. Then go to Image>Image Size and adjust it to make it the right size and resolution for print. In the bottom section of the popup window, make the width 8.5 inches and the height 11 inches for a vertical photo. Then set the resolution to a minimum of 200 dots per inch; 300 is the optimum. Save a copy of your photo so you can work on it without destroying the original.

Toning

The next thing to do is to tone the photo. On older versions of Photoshop, go to Image>Adjustments>Auto Levels. In CS4, go to Image>Auto Tone. For most reasonably exposed photos, this will automatically adjust the lights, darks and mid-tones without further work. You also can select Auto Color and Auto Contrast.

If you want to have more control, go to Image>Adjustments>Levels. This will give you control over each tone separately. In the popup window, there are three eyedroppers. The one to the left is for blacks, the one to the right is for whites and center one is for mid-tones. Go to Window>Info to see the numbers for the tones. Select the black eyedropper and move it around the photo until the K level is the closest to 100 in the Info box and click. Go to the white eyedropper and find the K value that's closest to zero and click. This will balance the photo's tone.

Effects

References

• Photoshop Tutorials