Photoshop CS6: The Missing Manual

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 the program 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 CS6. Adobe also offers Photoshop CS6 Extended, which costs more and offers extra features primarily designed for folks who work in 3D, as well as fields like architecture and medical science.

What’s New in Photoshop CS6

Adobe has added some amazing new features to Photoshop and incorporated many items that have been on customers’ wish lists for years (such as being able to change the blend modes of several layers at once and create dashed and dotted lines). ...