Photoshop Basics - Photoshop Interface

For my first tutorial, I'm going to discuss about Photoshop's Interface. Photoshop, through the years, has evolved from a professional-only tool to a photo-editor even for a 12 year-old. Your first look at Photoshop may make want to stop looking from it or else you'll vomit but give it time and you'll see its true powers.

I'll be showing a screenshot of a Photoshop window and discuss what each number holds. By the way, I am using Adobe Photoshop CS5 for this tutorial.

Click image for larger view

1. Menu Bar

The Menu Bar displays 11 menus which when clicked will display a drop-down menu related to that button.

File - Let's you create new files, open files/images for editing, use Adobe Bridge™, save files, import/export, automate, and print your images.

Edit - Undo, Redo, Copy, Paste, Transform (resizing), and Preferences.

Image - In here you can change the color mode of your image/project, make the necessary adjustments, Auto adjust tone, contrast, and color; change image/canvas size, crop, and duplicate layers/images.

Layer - You can create new layer or other types of layers. All editing related to layers can also be found here like merging layers.

Select - This menu has everything to do with your current selection. You can also save your current selection and load them for later use. You can even manipulate your selection by increasing it by any amount of pixels that you like or even feather (smoother edges) your selection.

Filter - This menu probably is the most important and most convenient tool you need in Photoshop. Basically, this menu will give you options/presets of photo edits that you can do like making your pictures in cartoons. Using a combination of these filters can give you endless results.

Analysis - let's you analyze your image.

3D- is all about the settings for making your images look more 3-dimensional.

View- to make rulers, guides, and slices available. You an also zoom in or zoom out in the view menu.

Window - let's you look at the different sub-menus for each category like brushes, actions, and history.

Help - let's you update your version or know more about the product and of course - HELP.

2. Tool Bar

The tool bar let's you use shortcuts for the most commonly used tools in Photoshop. I'll leave a tutorial for an in-depth guide for this one.

3. Options Bar

The Options bar shows you the available choices you have for each tool. It typically lets you customize your tools. For example the brush size, types, and smoothness.


4. Workspace

The Workspace Menu lets you choose, customize, or save the interface of Photoshop. You can select which windows appear especially the ones you commonly use and lets you save those as a preset.

5 and 6. Windows

The image above contains the windows for the History and Layers, two of the very important and commonly used windows in Photoshop. I'll also leave a tutorial for the kinds of windows and their functions.

Now that you had a taste of what Photoshop has to offer, start exploring. You can never learn Photoshop in a day even if you spend the whole 24 hours studying it. It takes time, patience, and practice. If you managed to read the whole article up to this part then I think you've got what it takes to not really master Photoshop but to learn and apply it.


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