Adobe Photoshop Lab Instructions

September 17, 2003

Exercise 1: Starting a New Project

(creating a new canvas, saving, copying, pasting, moving, spatial arrangement)

1. Open the image called izd-1000.jpg (coalitionpilots.jpg).

2. Suppose you want to use the picture in the top half as an image of hospitality, but you do not want to include the message about coalition pilots. Instead of trying to erase the text from this image, you would like to start from a blank slate, so you will create a new canvas.

3. Create the new canvas.

Go to the “File” menu and select “New”. A dialog box will pop up with several choices for what the kind of new canvas you want. You can always change these later (see step 3z).

Canvas Settings:

• Name the new canvas so that you will recognize it later. Replace the words “Untitled-1” with a title, such as “hospitality”.
• If the image width and height are in pixels, change them to inches to get an idea of how big your new canvas will be

• You can choose a standard paper size like width=8.5 inches and height=11 inches for a full page, or width=4 inches and height=6 inches for a large index card.
• To see how many pixels that is, change the units back to pixels.
• If you prefer a standard digital image size, choose width=320 pixels by height=240 pixels.

• Change the mode to RGB.
• Under “Contents”, choose “White”.

4. Zoom

· Arrange both the original picture and your new canvas so that they are side by side by resizing and moving them so that they do not overlap.

· Look at the title bar of each image: each one should have the name of the canvas and a number like “100%” or “67%” or “227%”. This tells you how much you are zoomed in or out of each picture, and you want the two to be zoomed the same amount.

· A simple way to change the zoom is to click on the title bar of the first image and go to the “View” menu and select “Actual Pixels”. The number in the title bar should change to 100%. Do the same to the other picture.

· If the images look too large or too small, you can change the zoom by going to the “View” menu and selecting “Zoom In” or “Zoom Out”. Make sure that when you are done, both images have the same magnification because it will make it easier to copy things from the original to the blank canvas.

5. Preparing to copy the image.

· You are now ready to copy the dinner scene. Click on the original image, and then click on the tool in the main tools window that looks like a rectangle with dashed lines.

· If you put the mouse over the rectangle without clicking, it should tell you that this is called the “Rectangular Marquee Tool”.

· If you cannot find your tool menu, go to the “Window” menu and click on “Show Tools”.

6. Copying the image.

· Now that the marquee tool is selected, you should see a cross-hair (plus sign) when you move the mouse over the image you want to copy from. If you do not see the cross-hair, click on the title bar to make sure that you are working in the right image.

· Now go to the upper left corner of the part of the image you want to copy and click and drag the mouse to the lower right corner of the part of the image you want to copy. A dashed rectangle should show up surrounding the image.

· If you do not like the part of the image that is selected, click once outside of the rectangle to get rid of it. Then repeat the process until your dashed rectangle is surrounding the part of the image you want to copy.

· Go to the “Edit” menu and select “Copy”.

· Now click on the title bar of your blank canvas. Go the “Edit” menu and select “Paste”. The image will show up on a random place on your canvas.

7. Moving the image.

· You probably want to move the image on your new canvas to a better position.

· Look on the tools window and click on the black arrow, also called the “Move Tool”. Again, hover over the tool with the mouse without clicking to see what it is named.

· Now the mouse should look like a black arrow when you move it over your canvas. If not, make sure you have clicked on the title bar of your canvas first.

· Hold down the mouse and drag the image around until you like where it is.

8. Save!

· Now that you have done some work, save your canvas before you lose anything!

· Go the “View” menu and select “Save”. The name and format will be prechosen for you. It is important that the format be Photoshop so that you can keep working on this canvas. If you change the format to jpeg, it will be harder to work on this canvas when you re-open it.

· Later, when you are done with this image, you can save the final version as both a Photoshop image and a jpeg or gif file to be used printed, mailed, put on a web page, or whatever you plan to do with it.

9. Practice

· Repeat this process for any other parts of images you want to copy into your canvas. You may notice that each time you paste something new and move it around, you can’t seem to move the images you pasted earlier anymore. You will learn how to handle this in the next exercise.

Checkpoint: You now know how to isolate a rectangular part of an original image and copy it into a blank canvas that holds your design.

Exercise 2: Layers

(understanding layers, changing the canvas size, background and foreground)

1. Open the canvas you worked on in Exercise 1. It should have a white background and the image that you pasted and positioned.

-naming layers

-image size/rotate/warp (marquee/right click)

-frame using layers

-history window

-background color

-soften edges, blending

-text