Fundamentals Of Photoshop

Adobe essentials include Adobe Photoshop, which is the designer’s main tool for designing and editing various photos and also used by the professional photographers to photoshop photos and videos. You can learn basic photoshop skills through basic photoshop tutorials. Learning to use photoshop is important to make a career in creative field. The basic photoshop skills are important and the best way to learn photoshop is to practice a lot and know about the basic photoshop skills. Learning photoshop for beginners is little difficult especially for the ones who are not from the field of design or any other creative field.  

To learn photoshop fundamentals free there are various online courses on udemy, coursera and many other online educational websites where you can learn step by step photoshop skills. Here are the basics learning of the tools which are there in photoshop. To learn the photoshop basics, take a look.

Layer Tool:

Layers are the most important element of photoshop and often people get confuse as to what layer they are in which creates frustration if you do not use separate layers and do not rename it. A layer can be used to add image, text, pattern or color and you can use layers separately without affecting the whole project.

The bottom right of the screen contains layer by default. To add a layer, go to layer> New> Layer will be added. To delete any layer right click on the layer and duplicate layer option will be there. To know which layer you are in you will see highlighted it in blue and you can even toggle layers by clicking on the ‘eye’ symbol before each layer. To duplicate any layer just right click and the duplicate layer will be added. 

Always name the layer to keep you work organized. Remember once you learn the basics of Photoshop you can play with layers to make animation. 

Select Tool:

This tool helps in selecting graphics, elements in Photoshop. It is one of the basic tools which come in square and circle dotted lines. It helps in cutting or copying any piece of layer and pasting it to another layer. You can anytime deselect it by using shortcut ctrl+D for Windows and cmd+D for Mac. Drag the select tool to select a particular portion and then paste it to the desired layer.

While the marquee and lasso tools will be the main means of selecting once you reach to an intermediate or advance level of photoshop to refine the selection. 

Brush Tool:

You can add your own brushes and use from the brush list and can change the size, shape, transparency of the brush strokes with brush settings. Once you click on the brush options you will be flooded with various pre installed brushes on your photoshop screen. Changing the brush styles and settings can give various different styles and looks to your project or digital artwork you are working on.

History brush tool can let you paint back the area you did before making any changes to the canvas picture. It can take you back to the previous unedited portion by simply brushing it on the area you want back. 

There are various photoshop courses to learn photoshop online and create amazing artworks and graphics but first as a beginner you should go through photoshop guide and basic tools.

Move Tool:

This tool allows you to move individual item or element on the screen. It works as a whole and also for individual layers. You can right click the object for various other options of free transform like scaling, rotate, move or flip the selected element of picture. 

Eraser Tool:

This function works a lot like brush tool but it helps in erasing unwanted objects or background areas in Photoshop. It is one of the most useful tools in photoshop. You can even increase or decrease the size and hardness of the eraser. The eraser works only on the selected layer. Background eraser is used when you want a transparent background with an image. You can select it by long press and holding the eraser tool.

Eyedropper Tool:

It helps in extracting colors from the image on the screen. You simple just have to pick the color by clicking and it can be added to the clone. You can double click that color to find its various shades. It gets saved in color box so that you can use it in future also.

Blending Options:

It includes various features like drop shadow, outer glow, inner glow, etc. To add, double click on the layer you want the styles to appear on and a dialogue box will open stating all the options from which you can choose. Put tick to the preview so that you can have an idea of what it will look like. It lets you add great effects to any element or graphics.

Crop Tool:

The crop tool is used to crop by specifying the exact size and proportion of the picture you want from the whole page or artboard. It works like any other crop tool you see on your phone or any other editing application. 

Text Tool:

This tool also works like any other text tool you have used in any application. Just drag to make a box where you need to type the text and along with that there are various text options like choosing size, color, font, font style, etc. You can also change the spacing between each alphabet which is called kerning. You can even adjust gutter space of each word in Photoshop. Here is a type on line tool which helps you write text on selected line marked with pen tool. You can always specify space and width through the properties panel. 

Pen Tool:

It is the most important tool on photoshop which helps you draw vector graphics. It can be used to create paths and you have the option of choosing the border width and color along with the fill color. 

Burn, Dodge and Sponge Tools:

They are the paint brush like tools that helps in manipulating light and color intensity. The burn tool helps in making the area darker giving shade to an artwork. The Dodge tool can make them lighter. The sponge tool helps in saturating or desaturating color in the area.

Blur, Sharpen and Smudge Tools:

They act like paintbrushes for any artwork. The blur tool will blur a particular area. The sharpen tool will sharpen the area and the smudge tool will help to blend the drawing nicely and beautifully around the canvas. 

Applying Patterns:

To apply pattern you have the option of preinstalled patterns and you can make one if you have time. Choose Layer> New layer> Pattern and add it to the areas or selection. 

Paint And Gradient Tool:

You can change the style, angle and scale while using gradient tool and can even add colors of gradient you want to match. You can create a gradient that blends with the foreground and background tool. Through paint tool you can simply fill in specific area with the current foreground color.

Clone Stamp Tool And Healing Brush:

Clone stamp tool helps in cloning some part of the picture over another part. Press Alt and click on the area you want to clone and lifting the alt button, click to the area you want as clone. Healing brush lets you heal some part of the photograph by painting it to the surrounded area part. You can hide blemishes from a photograph and can make it clean and blemish free.

Adjustments:

The most common use is for color correction namely levels and curves adjustments, hue, saturation and many other features are there. It is used mainly for professionally editing pictures. They are non destructive layers and you can simply turn off the layer without affecting the actual picture. You can learn photoshop editing tutorials online but first you need to know about the tools. There are various photoshop tricks that you will know once you start using it.

Learning Adobe Photoshop is very powerful software to work on. The basics of photoshop tool have been described here if you are confused by seeing so many tools on your photoshop screen. You will find various filters and color palettes you can work with and could create some amazing artworks. You can watch basic photoshop tutorials to how to use photoshop. Various Adobe photoshop tutorials and Photoshop learning videos are available online where you can learn the application of tools mentioned here visually. The best way to learn photoshop is to know the use of each tool and practice and then start learning advanced photoshop tutorials. Go create and uplift your visual element game with these tools!