How To Photoshop Photos
The best way to learn how to Photoshop photos is to open an image and start playing around with the tools. So go ahead and open Photoshop by double clicking on it's icon in your Applications folder. I currently have version CS5, but in the three versions of Photoshop I've used, the tools for retouching haven't changed enough to worry too much about which version of Photoshop you have. These are some of the main retouching tools we want to get familiar with (see the red pointers): Crop Tool, Healing Tool, Clone Tool, History Brush, and Dodge/Burn Tool. We will use other tools, of course, but this where we'll start.
Now that you've opened Photoshop, and have generated a logo, go to the upper left corner of your screen and click File-Open. A browser window will open so you can select one of your images. The name of the photo you select should end with ".jpg" Click Open and your photo will appear in a Photoshop window. The FIRST thing you need to do is click on File-Save As and rename your image to something like "Practice Photo", so your original will not be affected. THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT! Never Photoshop your original images. Open and Save As, then you can go back and start over if things get out of control. Next, hold your cursor over one of the tools along the left side of the screen for about three seconds and the name of the tool will pop up. Look at the image to the right and you'll also notice there is a little black triangle at the lower right corner of most of the tools. If you click on that triangle a list pops up of other tools associated with that tool, as well as the shortcut for selecting that tool -- in this case, the shortcut is "S", which means, whenever you hit "s" on the keyboard, the Clone Stamp Tool is selected. Towards the bottom of the tool panel you will see a curved double arrow and a small black box over a white box and a larger white box over a black box. This is your Set Foreground/Background color picker. If you click on the little curved double arrow, it switches the colors. If you single click on the large boxes below the double arrow, a Color Picker screen opens and your cursor turns into an eyedropper. In this window you can click anywhere in the big color box on the left to select another color. Another way to find a color is to click anywhere on the bar of colors going down the center of the Color Picker screen, or click and drag the little white triangles up and down the color bar. You can also click anywhere on the photo you opened to select a color. You'll see the colors in the New/Current box change as you click on different colors. Click OK to close the Color Picker screen and the color you picked will now show on the tool panel. To go back to black and white again just single click the little boxes to the left of the double arrow. |