Get the Image You Want: Essential Photoshop Editing Techniques

Introduction

Start by calibrating your monitor

Before you even open an image in Photoshop, the first thing you should do is take a moment to optimize your workspace. Since your medium in the digital realm is essentially pixels, and pixels are displayed on your monitor, this means you need to make sure your monitor is properly adjusted to give you accurate color and needed detail.

While there are nearly universal standard color settings for graphics and imaging, there are none for monitors. The relationship between the voltage applied to a monitor and the brightness emitted is non-linear. In other words, if an RGB pixel is at the maximum value of 255, changing the value to 127 (half of the original) won't produce a visual result of half brightness. ...