Introduction to Photoshop (3/28) Presentation Notes
What is Photoshop? Picture editing software.
What is the differences between regular Photoshop and Photoshop Essentials 14? Photoshop
Essentials cost $70+ (with tax) and regular Photoshop costs about $600. Photoshop Essentials
edits, organizes your photos and makes scrapbook pages, card and calendars, as well as sharing
your photos you have edited.
When you open PhotoShop Essentials, click on the Expert menu option.
Throughout the documentation – click represents right click.
The Zoom tool on the navigation tool bar enlarges or compresses pictures.
How to Use the Healing Brush tool
1. Select the Healing Brush tool in the Tools panel
2. Find an area in the image that looks good and then Alt-click – using your mouse
(Windows) or Option-click (Mac) to sample that area.
a. For example, if you want to eliminate wrinkles on a face, choose a wrinkle-free
area of skin near the wrinkle. (Try to choose an area relatively close in skin tone.)
3. Position the mouse cursor over the area to be repaired and start painting.
4. The Healing Brush tool goes into action, blending and softening to create a realistic
repair of the area.
5. Repeat Steps 2 and 3 as necessary to repair the blemish, wrinkles, or scratches.
Add Rulers to PhotoShop Screen
Click on View > Rulers to display rulers in Photoshop Essentials
Add Guides and/or Grid
Click on View > Show/Hide Guides
Click on View > Show/Hide Grids
Creating a guide
Drag from the horizontal ruler to create a horizontal guide,
OR
hold Alt and drag from the
vertical ruler to create a horizontal guide. The pointer changes to a double-headed arrow (
) when you drag a guide.
• Drag from the vertical ruler to create a vertical guide, OR hold Alt and drag from the
horizontal ruler to create a vertical guide. The pointer changes to a double-headed arrow (
) when you drag a guide.
Move a Guide
Select the move tool and position the pointer over the guide (the pointer turns into a
double-headed arrow).
To move the guide do the following:
• Drag the guide to move it.
• Change the guide from horizontal to vertical, or vice versa, by holding down Alt (Windows)
or Option (Mac OS) as you click or drag the guide.
• Align the guide with the ruler ticks by holding down Shift as you drag the guide. The guide
will snap to the grid if the grid is visible and View > Snap to Grid is selected.
To lock all guides – View > Lock Guides
Remove guides from an image
• To remove a single guide, drag the guide outside the image window.
• To remove all guides, choose View > Clear Guides.
To turn snapping to guides or the grid on or off:Choose View > Snap to Guides or Snap to
Grid, respectively.
To set guide and grid preferences:
• Choose File > Preferences > Guides & Grid.
• For Color, choose a color for guides or the grid, or both. If you choose Custom, click the
color box, choose a color, as described in Using the Color palette, and click OK.
• For Style, choose a display option for guides or the grid, or both.
• For Gridline Every, enter a value for the grid spacing. For Subdivisions, enter a value to
subdivide the grid. If desired, change the units for this option. The Percent option creates a
grid that divides the image up into even sections. For example, choosing 25 for the Percent
option creates an evenly divided 4 by 4 grid.
• Click OK.
Resize a Picture
Image > Resize > Image Size > Click on Resample Image > Change pixel sizes for width & height.
What is a pixel? The pixel (a word invented from "picture element") is the basic unit of
programmable color on a computer display or in a computer image. Think of it as a logical rather than a physical - unit. The physical size of a pixel depends on how you've set the
resolution for the display screen. If you've set the display to its maximum resolution, the
physical size of a pixel will equal the physical size of the dot pitch (let's just call it the dot size) of
the display. If, however, you've set the resolution to something less than the maximum
resolution, a pixel will be larger than the physical size of the screen's dot (that is, a pixel will use
more than one dot).
Can you go back and make changes? Yes using History.
Lasso Element
The Lasso tool is useful for drawing freeform segments of a selection border.
Photoshop actually gives us three variations of lasso to work with. The one we'll be looking at in
this tutorial is the standard Lasso Tool, which you can access by clicking on its icon in the Tools
panel. It's the tool that looks like the sort of lasso you'd find a cowboy swinging at a rodeo:
Selecting the standard Lasso Tool.
For a faster way to select the Lasso Tool, simply press the letter L on your keyboard. There are
two other types of lasso tools as well - the Polygonal Lasso Tool and the Magnetic Lasso Tool,
both of which are hiding behind the standard Lasso Tool in the Tools panel. We'll look at both of
these tools in separate tutorials, but to access either of them, simply click and hold your mouse
button down on the standard Lasso Tool until a small fly-out menu appears, then select either
tool from the menu:
Each of the three types of lasso tool gives us a different way to draw selections.
All three lasso tools share the letter L as their keyboard shortcut for selecting them, so
depending on how you have things set up in Photoshop's Preferences, you can cycle through
the three tools either by pressing the letter L repeatedly or by pressing Shift+L
What does the capital letter T represent in the toolbox? Textbox
In Photoshop Elements, you may have an occasional need to add text to an image: a caption, a
headline, or maybe even a short paragraph. Elements provides ample tools for creating, editing,
stylizing, and even distorting type.
You can enter text in Elements in two different modes: point type and paragraph type.

Point: Use this mode if you want to enter only a few words or so. To create point type,
select the Type tool, click in your image, and, well, type. The text appears while you type
and continues to grow. In fact, it even continues past the boundary of your image!
Remember that point type never wraps around to a new line. To wrap to the next line,
you must press Enter (Return on a Mac).

Paragraph: Use this mode to enter longer chunks (or constrained blocks) of text on an
image. To create paragraph type, click and drag your type tool to create a text bounding
box, and then type. All the text is entered in this resizable bounding box. If a line of text
is too long, Elements automatically wraps it around to the next line.
Creating point type in Elements
The majority of your type entry will most likely be in point type mode. Point type is useful for
short chunks of text, such as headlines, labels, logos, and headings for Web pages.
Point type is so called because it contains a single anchor point, which marks the starting point
of the line of the type.
Point type doesn’t wrap automatically, and can run off the edge of your image.
Follow these steps to create point type:
1. Open the Editor and choose Edit Full mode.
2. Open an image or create a new, blank Elements file (File→New).
3. Select the Type tool from the Tools panel.
You can also press the T key.
4. On the image, click where you want to insert your text.
Your cursor is called an I-beam. When you click, you make an insertion point. A small,
horizontal line about one-third of the way up the I-beam shows the baseline (the line on
which the text sits) for horizontal type.
5. Specify your type options from the Options bar.
Type tool settings on the Options bar.
6. Type your text and press Enter (Return on a Mac) to begin a new line.
When you press Enter (or Return), you insert a hard return that doesn’t move.
7. When you finish entering the text, click the Commit button (the check mark icon) on the
Options bar.
You can also commit the type by pressing Enter on the numeric keypad or by clicking
any other tool on the Tools panel. A new type layer with your text is created. Type layers
appear on your Layers panel and are indicated by the T icon.
Creating paragraph type in Elements
If you have larger chunks of text, it’s usually more practical to enter the text as paragraph type.
Entering paragraph type is similar to entering text in a word-processing or page-layout
program, except that text is contained inside a bounding box. When you type and come to the
end of the bounding box, Elements automatically wraps the text to the next line.
To enter paragraph type, follow these steps:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Open the Editor and choose Edit Full mode.
Open an image or create a new, blank Elements file.
Select the Type tool from the Tools panel or press the T key.
On the image, insert and size the bounding box by using one of two methods:
o Drag to create a bounding box close to your desired size. After you release the
mouse button, you can drag any of the handles at the corners and sides of the
box to resize the box.
Hold down the Alt (Option on the Mac) key and click the image. The Paragraph
Text Size dialog box appears. Enter the exact dimensions of your desired
bounding box. When you click OK, your specified box appears, complete with
handles for resizing later.
5. Specify your type options from the Options bar.
6. Enter your text; to start a new paragraph, press Enter (Return on a Mac).
o
Each line wraps around to fit inside the bounding box. If you type more text than can
squeeze into the text box, an overflow icon appears. Just resize the text box by dragging
a bounding box handle.
7. Click the Commit button (the check mark icon) on the Options bar or press Enter on the
numeric keypad.
Elements creates a new type layer.
Feathering
You can smooth the hard edges of a selection by anti-aliasing or feathering. Anti-aliasing
smoothes the jagged edges of a selection by softening the color transition between edge pixels
and background pixels. Because only the edge pixels change, no detail is lost. Anti-aliasing is
useful when cutting, copying, and pasting selections to create composite images.
You can select anti-aliasing with the Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, Magnetic Lasso, Elliptical Marquee,
and Magic Wand tools. To anti-alias, you must select the Anti-Alias option before making the
selection; you cannot add anti-aliasing to an existing selection.
1. In the Edit workspace, select the Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, Magnetic Lasso, Elliptical
Marquee, or Magic Wand tool.
2. Select Anti-aliased in the options bar.
3. Make a selection in the image window.
Blur the edges of a selection by feathering

You can smooth the hard edges of a selection by feathering. Feathering blurs edges by
building a transition between the selection and surrounding pixels. This blurring can
cause some loss of detail at the edge of the selection.
You can create a feathered selection with the Elliptical Marquee, Rectangular Marquee,
Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, or Magnetic Lasso tool. You can also add feathering to an
existing selection by using the Select menu. Feathering effects are apparent when you
move, cut, copy, or fill the selection.
Original image (left), and after making a feathered selection, applying the Inverse
command, and filling with white (right)
Define a feathered edge for a selection tool
1. In the Edit workspace, do one of the following:
o Select any of the lasso or marquee tools from the toolbox, and enter a Feather
value in the options bar to define the width of the feathering. The feathering
begins at the selection border.
o Select the Selection Brush tool, and select a soft-edged brush from the brushes
pop-up panel in the options bar.
2. Make a selection in the image window.
1. In the Edit workspace, use a selection tool from the toolbox to make a selection.
2. Choose Select > Feather.
3. Type a value between .2 and 250 in the Feather Radius text box, and click OK. The
feather radius defines the width of the feathered edge.
Pattern Stamp Tool
The Pattern Stamp tool paints with a pattern defined from your image, another image, or a
preset pattern.
1. From the Enhance section in the toolbox, select the Pattern Stamp tool. (If you don’t see
it in the toolbox, select the Clone Stamp tool, and then click the Pattern Stamp tool icon
in the Tool Options bar.)
2. Choose a pattern from the Pattern pop-up panel in the Tool Options bar. To load
additional pattern libraries, select a library name from the panel menu, or choose Load
Patterns and navigate to the folder where the library is stored. You can also define your
own pattern.
3. Set Pattern Stamp tool options in the Tool Options bar, as desired, and then drag within
the image to paint.
You can specify any of the following Pattern Stamp tool options:
Brush
Sets the brush tip. Click the arrow next to the brush sample, choose a brush category
from the Brush drop-down, and then select a brush thumbnail.
Impressionist
Paints the pattern using paint daubs to create an impressionist effect.
Size
Sets the size of the brush in pixels. Drag the Size slider or enter a size in the text box.
Opacity
Sets the opacity of the pattern you apply. A low opacity setting allows pixels under a
pattern stroke to show through. Drag the slider or enter an opacity value.
Mode
Specifies how the paint that you apply blends with the existing pixels in the image.
Aligned
Repeats the pattern as a contiguous, uniform design. The pattern is aligned from one
paint stroke to the next. If Aligned is deselected, the pattern is centered on the pointer
each time you stop and resume painting.
Adjust Lighting for an Image
Photoshop Elements has several simple, manual tools you can use to adjust image lighting if the
Auto Fix tools don’t produce the desired results. The manual tools offer more control over
adjusting overall contrast, as well as bringing out details in shadow, midtones, and highlight
areas of your images. Note that all lighting adjustments can be found in both Edit Full and Edit
Quick modes.
The Shadows/Highlights command offers a quick and easy method of correcting over- and
underexposed areas. This feature works especially well with images shot in bright, overhead
light or in light coming from the back (backlit). These images usually suffer from having the
subject partially or completely surrounded in shadows.
1. In Edit Full or Edit Quick mode, choose Enhance→Adjust Lighting→Shadows/Highlights.
The Shadows/Highlights dialog box opens. Make sure the Preview check box is selected; the
default correction is automatically applied in your preview.
2. Move the sliders to adjust the amount of correction for your shadows (dark areas),
highlights (light areas), and midtones (middle-toned areas), as necessary.
You want to try to reveal more detail in the dark and light areas of your image. If, after you do
so, your image still looks like it needs more correction, add or delete contrast in your midtone
areas.
3 Click OK to apply the adjustment and close the dialog box.
If you want to start over, press Alt (Option on the Mac) and click the Reset button.
Can you remove wrinkles in a photo? Yes you can – use the Healing Touch Brush tool.
What is a paper pattern in a photo? Usually those are ‘cracks’ within the photo.
Filter > Blur on Images
The Blur tool in Photoshop Elements can be used for both repair and more artistic endeavors.
You can use the Blur tool to soften a small flaw or part of a rough edge. You can add a little blur
to an element to make it appear as though it was moving when photographed.
You can also blur portions of your image to emphasize the focal point. The Blur tool works by
decreasing the contrast among adjacent pixels in the blurred area.
1 Choose the Blur tool from the Tools panel in Edit Full mode.
2. Press Shift+R to cycle through the Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge tools.
3. Select a brush from the Brushes Preset Picker drop-down panel.
Be sure to use a small brush for smaller areas of blur. Larger brushes produce more extreme
effects.
4. Select a blending mode from the Mode pop-up menu.
You have several choices, including Hue, Saturation, Color, and Luminosity.
5. Choose the strength of the blur effect with the Strength slider or text box.
6. Paint over the areas you want to blur
Gaussian Blur
The Gaussian Blur filter quickly blurs a selection by an adjustable amount. Gaussian refers to
the bell-shaped curve that Photoshop Elements generates when it applies a weighted average
to the pixels. The Gaussian Blur filter adds low-frequency detail and can produce a hazy effect.
You can set the blur radius in the filter options to determine how far the filter searches for
dissimilar pixels to blur.
Google has a photo editor called Photo Editor and Pixlr Editor. Here is the link to both:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zentertain.photoeditor&hl=en
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pixlr-editor/icmaknaampgiegkcjlimdiidlhopknpk