Photoshop Basics For Beginners

By David Peters

My nephew made the leap and finally bought Photoshop. He had been saving up for a while now, and believed it would make his life a lot easier. He saw a future where he would make top quality images by merely thinking about it. Just close your eyes hard enough and 'poof', it was done. Then he sat down to use Photoshop, and realized he had no idea what to do!

You shouldn't have to go through this tragedy. You deserve better. Photoshop may be expensive, but anyone who knows how to properly use it will tell you it's worth every cent. Like anything else you will have to make mistakes and learn by yourself, exploring the interface of the software. One way to help is to go to 'Preferences'. Here you can improve the performance of your Photoshop.

You will realize sharp edges are created and few will be jagged. The 'Nearest Neighbor" manipulates the pixel sizes. The "Bilinear Interpolation" calculates the averages of the pixels and then creates a new pixel based on the average. The resulting image is usually blurry. You will see that there is a "General Options" button. These options are up to the user's preference. That means you should customize your Photoshop to feel like your own.

Next you will notice the "History Log". This allows you to save all the steps you used in the creation of an image. Here you have some choices ... you can either record the start time and date of every editing session with the "Sessions Only" selection. The "Concise" selection records details on every editing session on the file. The other option is the "Detailed", which records the same information as in the 'Concise' selection ... plus information such as the path of the file and an account of every edit made to the file.

These brief examples can point you in the right direction, but the best way to learn about Photoshop is to experiment and try things out for yourself. Play around with all Photoshop's features and discover great new ways to alter your image. To learn in more detail you can read about Photoshop or take an online video tutorial which will show you the step-by-step process for achieving a specific effect. If you keep at it, you'll be making those top quality pictures in no time!

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