Introduction
Congratulations on buying one of the most complicated pieces of software ever created. Fortunately, it’s also one of the most rewarding. No other program on the market lets you massage, beautify, and transform your images like Photoshop. It’s so popular that people use its name as a verb: “Dude, you Photoshopped the heck out of her!” You’d be hard-pressed to find a published image that hasn’t spent some quality time in this program, and those that didn’t probably should have.
The bad news is that it’s a tough program to learn; you won’t become a Photoshop guru overnight. Luckily, you hold in your hot little hands a book that covers Photoshop from a practical standpoint, so you’ll learn the kinds of techniques you can use every day. It’s written in plain English for normal people, so you don’t have to be any kind of expert to understand it. You’ll also learn just enough theory (where appropriate) to help you understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Note
This book focuses primarily on the standard edition of Photoshop CS5, which runs about $700. Adobe also offers Photoshop CS5 Extended, which costs about $1,000 and offers more features primarily designed for folks who work in fields like architecture and medical science. About This Book lists some of the new Extended-only goodies.
What’s New in Photoshop CS5
Adobe has added some amazing new features to Photoshop and incorporated many items that have been on customers’ wishlists for years (such as changing the Fill and Opacity settings of several layers at once!). Here’s an overview:
Workspace updates. If you’re upgrading from CS4, the workspace doesn’t look much different than it did, although the Tools icons got a facelift to look more modern. Also, the Application bar now includes a live workspace switcher (they’re really workspace buttons) that you can drag leftward to hold as many saved workspaces as you want. In fact, the Hand and Rotate View tools were removed from the Application bar to make room for this new feature.
If you’re upgrading from CS3 or an older version, your whole Photoshop world now exists within a compact frame that you can move around and resize (this was new in CS4 for Mac users, anyway). Using the Arrange Documents menu (Arranging Open Images), you can see and work with several documents at once, whether they’re side by side or stacked on top of each other. And you can create even more room for your images by collapsing panels with a double-click (Working with Panels). The Application bar (The Application Bar) gives you quick access to zoom controls, extras such as guides and grids, as well as screen modes. The Rotate View tool (now only in the Tools panel, Zooming with the Navigator Panel) lets you spin your canvas around so you can work with it at an angle.
Mini Bridge. To give you easier access to files through Adobe Bridge (see Appendix C, online), Adobe gave Bridge its very own panel inside Photoshop. It’s named Mini Bridge because of its size and the fact that it can’t quite do everything Bridge can (although you can still use full-blown Bridge anytime you want). You can drag files from the Mini Bridge panel into a Photoshop or In-Design window, search for files, get a full-screen preview by pressing the space bar, and run commands on multiple files such as the new “Merge to HDR Pro” option you’ll read about on Creating High Dynamic Range Images.
Speaking of Bridge, the regular version sports an improved Batch Renaming dialog box (for renaming multiple files at once), its “Output to PDF” option now lets you add a watermark to your files (a slightly opaque symbol or text overlay to discourage image theft), plus you can save your custom PDF and web-gallery settings to use again later. Yippee!
Content-Aware Fill. Arguably one of the most useful new features in CS5, this option makes zapping unwanted content from photos easier than ever. It compares your selection to nearby pixels and attempts to fill the selected area so it blends seamlessly with the background. It works with the Spot Healing brush and the Edit→Fill command.
Puppet Warp. If you ever need to move your subject’s arms, legs, or tail into a better position, this new tool can get it done. You begin by dropping markers (called pins) onto the item you want to move, and then Photoshop automatically generates anchor points, handles, and a grid-like mesh that you use to move and distort the item. It works with pixel-based layers as well as Smart Objects.
New painting tools. The painting engine (the brains behind Photoshop’s painting features) got an overhaul in CS5 that improves the program’s overall performance anytime you’re using a brush cursor. The new Bristle Tips make existing brushes—and tools that use a brush cursor—behave like their real-world counterparts, letting you create more natural paint strokes. A new Brush Preset panel lets you see what the new bristles look like and the new Mixer Brush lets you mix colors right there on your Photoshop canvas. You can even determine how wet the canvas is, how much paint you’re mixing from canvas to brush, and how many colors you want to load onto your brush tip. Heck, there’s even a brush-cleaning option that doesn’t involve turpentine! You can also change brush hardness with the same keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-Option-drag on a Mac, or right-click+Alt+drag on a PC). And if you’ve used the Rotate View tool to spin your canvas so it’s at a more natural angle, your brushes won’t rotate.
Other painterly improvements include keyboard shortcut access to a “heads-up” version of the Color Picker (it appears on top of your document, making it easier to swap color while you’re painting), improved support for graphic tablets (like the option to make tablet settings override brush settings), and a new sample ring for the Eyedropper, which shows the current and new colors, making it easier to grab the color you want.
Refine Edge enhancements. One of the most exciting features of CS5 is the Refine Edge dialog box, which was redesigned so it’s easier to use and now sports several options for making tough selections easier (like hair and fur). For example, a new Smart Radius option detects the difference between soft and hard edges, and the new Color Decontamination option all but eliminates any leftover pixels from the object’s original background. You can also control exactly where the new selection goes—to the current layer, a new layer, a layer mask, a new layer with a mask, a new document, and so on—from within the Refine Edge dialog box!
HDR Pro. If you’re a fan of HDR photography—taking multiple exposures and merging them into a single image—you’ll love CS5’s improvements related to it. The “Merge to HDR Pro” dialog box (Using Merge to HDR Pro) was redesigned so it’s easier to use, and it includes several useful presets (built-in recipes for various HDR settings) for creating beautiful images right out of the box. The programming code was revamped so Photoshop merges your images faster, and a de-ghosting option was added, which is helpful if something in your image moved or shifted between shots. You can also apply HDR settings to normal images by using the new HDR Toning option in the Image→Adjustments menu.
Lens Correction. This filter got an upgrade and a new home: It leapt out of the Distort filter category right into the main level of the Filter menu. The Lens Correction dialog box now lets you import specific lens profiles so its distortion-removing voodoo works a lot better and, out of the box, the annoying grid option is off so you can actually see your image while you’re tweaking it—a handy improvement over CS4. These lens profiles are also used by other tools such as Auto-Align Layers (Auto-Aligning Layers and Photomerge), “Merge to HDR Pro” (Creating High Dynamic Range Images), and Photomerge for panoramas (Building Panoramas with Photomerge).
64-bit support in Mac OS X. The new buzzword in computing circles is “64-bit.” All it really means is that Photoshop lets you open and edit huge files—ones that are over 4 gigabytes—as well as use more memory (RAM), which can make the program run faster. See the box on What Does “64-bit” Mean? for more info.
Improved Camera Raw. The newest version of the Camera Raw plug-in (Opening Raw files) now includes better noise reduction for zapping grain introduced by shooting in low light at a high-light sensitivity setting (ISO). Other enhancements include more options for adding post-crop vignettes (such as a soft, darkened edge) and improved sharpening that pays attention to an image’s tone, contrast, and fine details. Camera Raw is discussed throughout this book, but the bulk of the coverage lives in Chapter 9.
Layer management. Layers got a few upgrades, too. For example, you can now adjust the opacity and fill of multiple layers at once, nest layers into a deeper folder structure, save your favorite layer style settings as defaults from within the Layer Style dialog box, drag and drop files from your computer’s desktop into another open Photoshop document, drag content from an open window onto another document tab, and so on. Other additions include a ghosted outline as you drag layer content using the Move tool (helpful when moving small items), visual feedback when you’re dragging layer styles from one layer to another (you see a big, partially transparent fx as you drag), a new option that lets you control whether or not the word “copy” is added to layers’ names when you duplicate them, the ability to create a layer mask from transparency, and a new Paste Special menu that lets you do all kinds of neat pasting tricks (Pasting into a Selection). Whew!
CS Review. This new online subscription service lets folks share and post their projects on the Web so clients and/or colleagues can give them feedback. It works with several Adobe Creative Suite programs including Photoshop, In-Design, Illustrator, and Premiere.
There are also a few features that you’ll only find in Photoshop CS5 Extended:
Repoussé. This new option (pronounced “Rep-poose-ay”) lets you easily create 3-D versions of a variety of 2-D items such as text, paths, layer masks, and selections. It creates a 3D layer that you can use with Photoshop’s full arsenal of 3-D tools.
Enhanced 3-D editing. Adobe has added even more features to its 3-D resume, such as the new Ground Plane Shadow Catcher, giving you an easy way to generate a realistic shadow cast on the ground (on, in this case, mesh) beneath a 3-D object. CS5 also sports faster 3-D Ray Tracer rendering (you can think of Ray-Tracing as tracing the path of light rays reflected off an object and back to the camera for a more photorealistic look), which lets you render a selection, pause and resume rendering, and change render quality. They also added a slew of new materials, light sources, and overlays, the ability to change 3-D depth of field, new 3-D preferences, and more.
There are also tons of little changes in Photoshop CS5, too, that are the direct result of Adobe’s customer feedback initiative called Just Do It (JDI). For example, Photoshop now automatically saves 16-bit JPEGs as 8-bit (see Setting Size and Resolution for more about image bit depth); Adobe added a Straighten option to the Ruler tool (finally!); the Crop tool has a rule-of-thirds grid overlay; the Save dialog box includes an “apply to all” checkbox; there’s a preference that lets you turn off gestures on laptop trackpads; the Shadows/Highlight adjustment is set to 35% from the factory instead of 50%—the list goes on and on. The activation process (Appendix A, online) also got simpler, as the program now automatically gets registered and activated when you install it.
With the good comes a little bad: To accommodate the new programming code that allows for 64-bit processing on the Mac, some plug-ins and filters now only work in 32-bit mode. Thankfully, it’s easy to switch between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the program (About This Book tells you how), so your favorite add-ons will still work (and rest assured those companies are hard at work updating them for 64-bit mode!).
About This Book
Adobe has pulled together an amazing amount of information in its new online help system (Appendix B), but despite all these efforts, it’s geared toward seasoned Photoshop jockeys and assumes a level of skill that you may not have. The explanations are very clipped and to the point, which makes it difficult to get a real feel for the tool or technique you’re learning about.
That’s where this book comes in. It’s intended to make learning Photoshop CS5 tolerable—and even enjoyable—by avoiding technical jargon as much as possible and explaining why and when you’ll want to use (or avoid) certain features of the program. It’s a conversational and friendly approach intended to speak to beginners and seasoned pixel pushers alike.
Some of the tutorials in this book refer to files you can download from this book’s Missing CD page on the Missing Manuals website (www.missingmanuals.com/cds) so you can practice the techniques you’re reading about. And throughout the book, you’ll find several kinds of sidebar articles. The ones labeled “Up to Speed” help newcomers to Photoshop CS5 do things or explain concepts that veterans are probably already familiar with. Those labeled “Power Users’ Clinic” cover more advanced topics for the brave of heart.
Note
Photoshop CS5 functions almost identically on Mac and Windows computers, but the screenshots in this book were all taken on a Mac for the sake of consistency. However, the keyboard shortcuts for the two operating systems are different, so you’ll find both included here—Mac shortcuts first, followed by Windows shortcuts in parentheses. In a few instances, the locations of certain folders differ and in those cases, you get the directions for both operating systems.
About the Outline
This hefty book is divided into six parts, each devoted to the type of things you’ll do in Photoshop CS5:
Part One: The Basics. Here’s where you’ll learn the essential skills you need to know before moving forward. Chapter 1 gives you the lay of the land and teaches you how to work with panels and make the Photoshop workspace your own. You’ll also find out the many ways of undoing what you’ve done, which is crucial when you’re still learning. Chapter 2 covers how to open and view your documents efficiently, and how to set up new documents so you have a solid foundation on which to build your masterpieces.
Chapter 3 dives into the most powerful Photoshop feature of all: layers. You’ll learn about the different kinds of layers and how to manage them, the power of layer masks, and how to use layer styles for special effects. Chapter 4 explains how to select part of an image so you can edit just that area. In Chapter 5, you’ll dive headfirst into the science of color as you explore channels (Photoshop’s way of storing the colors that make up your image) and learn how to use channels to create selections; you’ll also pick up some channel-specific editing tips along the way.
Part Two: Editing Images. Chapter 6 starts off by explaining a variety of ways you can crop images, both in Photoshop and in Camera Raw. The chapter then demystifies resolution once and for all so you’ll understand how to resize images without reducing their quality. In Chapter 7, you’ll learn how to combine images in a variety of ways, from simple techniques to more complex ones. Chapter 8 covers draining, changing, and adding color, arming you with several techniques for creating gorgeous black-and-white images, delicious duotones, partial-color effects, and more. You’ll also learn how to change the color of almost anything.
Chapter 9 focuses on color-correcting images, beginning with auto fixer-uppers, and then moving on to the wonderfully simple world of Camera Raw and the more complicated realm of Levels and Curves. Chapter 10 is all about retouching people and is packed with practical techniques for slimming, trimming, and beautifying the faces and bodies that grace your pictures. It also explains how to use the Dodge and Burn tools in ways that won’t harm your images. Chapter 11 covers all kinds of ways to sharpen images to make them look especially crisp.
Part Three: The Artistic Side of Photoshop. This part of the book is all about creativity. Chapter 12 explains the many ways of choosing colors for your documents, and teaches you how to create a painting from scratch. Chapter 13 focuses on using the mighty Pen tool to create complex illustrations and selections, along with how to use Photoshop’s Shape tools. Chapter 14 teaches you the basics of typography and then moves on to how to create and format text in Photoshop. You’ll find out how to outline, texturize, and place text, among other fun stuff. Chapter 15 covers the wide world of filters; you’ll come away with at least one practical use for one or more of the filters in each filter category.
Part Four: Printing and the Web. In Chapter 16, you’ll learn about printing your images, beginning with why it’s so darn hard to make what comes out of your printer match what you see onscreen. You’ll learn about the different color modes and how to prepare your images for printing, whether you’re using an inkjet printer or sending your files to a commercial printing press. Chapter 17 focuses on preparing images for the Web, and walks you through the various file formats you can use, explains how to protect your images online, and shows you how to use Bridge to create Web galleries. Rounding out the chapter is info on using the Slice tool on a web page design, and step-by-step instructions for creating an animated GIF.
Part Five: Photoshop Power. This part is all about working smarter and faster. It starts with an entire chapter devoted to using actions (Chapter 18), which help you automate tasks you perform regularly. Chapter 19 covers installing and using plug-ins (small programs you can add on to Photoshop) and recommends some of the best on the market today.
Part Six: Appendixes. Appendix A covers installing and uninstalling Photoshop. Appendix B gives you some troubleshooting tips, explains Photoshop’s help system, and points you to resources other than this book. Appendix C gets you up to speed on using Adobe Bridge to import, organize, and export your images. Appendix D gives you a tour of the mighty Tools panel. And finally, Appendix E walks you through Photoshop CS5’s 258 menu items.
Tip
All the appendixes are available on this book’s Missing CD page at www.missingmanuals.com/cds.
For Photographers
If you’re relatively new to digital-image editing or you’ve always shot film and are taking your first brave steps into the world of digital cameras, you’ll be amazed at what you can do in Photoshop, but there’s a lot to learn. By breaking Photoshop down into digestible chunks that are most important to you, the learning process will feel less overwhelming. (There’s no sense in tackling the whole program when you’ll only use a quarter of it—if that much.)
The most important thing to remember is to be patient and try not to get frustrated. With patience and practice, you can master the bits of Photoshop that you need to do your job better. And with the help of this book you’ll conquer everything faster than you might think. As you gain confidence, you can start branching out into other parts of the program to broaden your skills. Here’s a suggested roadmap for quickly learning the most useful aspects of the program:
Read all of Chapters Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 (or at the very least skim them).
These two chapters show you where to find all of Photoshop’s tools and features and explain how the program is organized. You’ll learn how to open, view, and save your images, which is vital stuff to know.
If your photos aren’t on your computer already, read Appendix C (online) about Adobe Bridge.
Bridge is an amazingly powerful image organizer and browser that can help get your images onto your computer. It takes care of importing, renaming, and even backing up your precious photos.
If you’re shooting in Raw format (Working with Raw Files) and need to color-correct your images in a hurry, skip ahead to the section on editing in Camera Raw in Chapter 9 (Correcting Images in Camera Raw).
This chapter includes an entire section on practical editing techniques you can use in Camera Raw, and a quick reference that points you to where you’ll find other Camera-Raw techniques throughout this book.
If you’re not shooting in Raw and you need to resize your images before you edit them, read Chapter 6.
This chapter explains resolution and how to resize images without reducing their quality.
Proceed with Chapters Chapter 8, Chapter 9, and Chapter 10 to learn about color effects, color-correcting, and retouching people, respectively.
When you’re ready to sharpen your images, read Chapter 11.
Finally, when you want to print your photos, read the section on printing with an inkjet printer in Chapter 16 (Printing on an Inkjet Printer).
This chapter walks you through printing your photos, and includes advice on how to print borderless images.
That’s all you need to get started. When you’re ready to dive more fully into Photoshop, pick back up at Chapter 3, which covers layers, and then move on through the book as time permits.
The Very Basics
This book assumes that you know how to use a computer and that, to some extent, you’re an expert double-clicker, drag and dropper, and menu opener. If not, here’s a quick refresher:
To click means to move the point of your mouse or trackpad cursor over an object on your screen and press the left mouse or trackpad button once. To right-click means to press the right mouse button once, which produces a menu of special features called a shortcut menu. (If you’re on a Mac and have a mouse with only one button, hold down the Control key while you click to simulate right-clicking.) To double-click means to press the left button twice, quickly, without moving the mouse between clicks. To drag means to click an object and use the mouse to move it while holding down the left mouse button. Most selection buttons onscreen are pretty obvious, but you may not be familiar with radio buttons: To choose an option, you click one of these little empty circles that are arranged in a list. If you’re comfortable with basic concepts like these, you’re ready to get started with this book.
You’ll find tons of keyboard shortcuts along the way, and they’re huge timesavers. If you see “Press ⌘-S (Ctrl+S on a PC) to save your file,” that means to hold down the ⌘ (or Ctrl) key while pressing the S key. Press one and keep holding it as you press the other. (This book lists Mac keyboard shortcuts first, followed by Windows shortcuts in parentheses.) Other keyboard shortcuts are so complex that you’ll need to use multiple fingers, both hands, and a well-placed elbow. Use them at your own risk!
About→These→Arrows
In Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual (and in all Missing Manuals, for that matter), you’ll see arrows sprinkled throughout each chapter in sentences like this: “Choose Filter→Blur→Gaussian Blur.” This is a shorthand way of helping you find files, folders, and menu choices without having to read through painfully long and boring instructions. For example, the sentence quoted above is a short way of saying: “At the top of the Photoshop window, locate the Filter menu. Click it and, in the list that appears, look for the Blur category. Point to the word Blur without clicking and, in the resulting submenu, click Gaussian Blur” (see Figure 1).
About MissingManuals.com
On the Missing Manuals website (www.missingmanuals.com), you’ll find this book’s Missing CD page, which includes links to downloadable images mentioned in this book’s tutorials, in case you want to practice techniques without using your own photos.
A word about the image files for the tutorials: To make life easier for people with dial-up Internet connections, the file sizes have been kept pretty small. This means you probably won’t want to print the results of what you create (you’ll end up with a print about the size of a matchbook). But that doesn’t really matter because the files are only meant for onscreen use. You’ll see notes throughout the book about which practice images are available for any given chapter.
On the website, you can also find articles, tips, and updates to this book. If you click the Errata link, you’ll see any corrections we’ve made to the book, too; if you find something in these pages that you think is wrong, feel free to report it by clicking that link. Each time the book is printed, we’ll update it with any confirmed corrections. If you want to be certain that your own copy is up to the minute, this is where to check for any changes. And thanks for reporting any errors or suggesting corrections.
We’d love to hear your suggestions for new books in the Missing Manual line. There’s a place for that on www.missingmanuals.com, too. And while you’re online, you can also register this book at www.oreilly.com (you can jump directly to the registration page by going here: www.tinyurl.com/yo82k3. Registering means we can send you updates about this book, and you’ll be eligible for special offers like discounts on future editions.
Safari® Books Online
Safari® Books Online is an on-demand digital library that lets you easily search over 7,500 technology and creative reference books and videos to find the answers you need quickly.
With a subscription, you can read any page and watch any video from our library online. Read books on your cellphone and mobile devices. Access new titles before they’re available for print, and get exclusive access to manuscripts in development and post feedback for the authors. Copy and paste code samples, organize your favorites, download chapters, bookmark key sections, create notes, print out pages, and benefit from tons of other timesaving features.
O’Reilly Media has uploaded this book to the Safari Books Online service. To have full digital access to this book and others on similar topics from O’Reilly and other publishers, sign up for free at http://my.safaribooksonline.com.
Get Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
