Computer Beginner Guide

Another means of selecting colors in Photoshop is to use the Color palette, shown in Figure below. The Color palette is convenient, it’s always there, and it doesn’t hog your screen like the Color Picker dialog box. Frankly, this is the tool I use most often to select colors in Photoshop. To display the palette, choose Window>Show Color or press the F6 key. If you want, you can dock the palette in the Options bar palette well. For details on that intriguing offer. Either way, you use the elements and options inside the palette as follows: Foreground color/background color: Click the foreground or background color icon in the Color palette to specify the color you want to edit. If you click the foreground or background color icon when it’s already highlighted—as indicated by a double-line frame—Photoshop displays the Color Picker dialog box. Sliders: Drag the triangles in the slider controls to edit the highlighted color. By default, the sliders represent ...

If you click the Custom button inside the Color Picker dialog box, Photoshop displays the Custom Colors dialog box shown in Figure below. In this dialog box, you can select from a variety of predefined colors by choosing the color family from the Book pop-up menu, moving the slider triangles up and down the color slider to specify a general range of colors, and ultimately, selecting a color from the color list on the left. If you own the swatchbook for a color family, you can locate a specific color by entering its number on the keyboard. The color families represented in the Book pop-up menu fall into seven brands: ANPA (now NAA, as I explain shortly), DIC, Focoltone, HKS, Pantone, Toyo, and Trumatch, all of which get a big kick out of capitalizing their names in dialog boxes. I honestly think one of these companies would stand out better if its name weren’t capitalized. Anyway, at the risk of offending a few of these companies, you’re likely to find certain brands ...

The four sets of option boxes inside the Color Picker dialog box represent color models or, if you prefer, color modes (one less letter, no less meaning, perfect for you folks who are trying to cut down in life). Color models are different ways to define colors both on screen and on the printed page. Outside the Color Picker dialog box, you can work inside any one of these color models by choosing a command from the Image>Mode submenu. In doing so, you generally change the colors in your image by dumping a few hundred, or even thousand, colors with no equivalents in the new color model. The only exception is Lab, which in theory encompasses every unique color your eyes can detect. Rather than discuss the color models in the order in which they occur in the Mode submenu, I cover them in logical order, starting with the most common and widely accepted color model, RGB. Also, note that I don’t discuss the duotone or multichannel modes now. Image>Mode>Duotone repr...

Occasionally, the state of computer graphics technology reminds me of television in the early 1950s. Only the upper echelon of Photoshop artists can afford to work exclusively in the wonderful world of color. The rest of us have to be prepared to print many or even most of our images in black and white. Some of you might be thinking, “Wait a second, what about the equalizing force of the Internet? It brings color to all of us!” Well, I concur wholeheartedly. Nearly everyone owns a color monitor, so we can all share color images freely. If this appeals to you. Regardless of who you are print person or Web head color is a prime concern. Even gray values, after all, are colors. Many folks have problems accepting this premise I guess we’re all so used to separating the worlds of grays and other colors in our minds that never the two shall meet. But gray values are only variations on what Noah Webster used to call “The sensation resulting from stimulation of the retina of the ...

After you bring up an image whether you created it from scratch or opened an existing image stored in one of the five billion formats its size and resolution are established. Neither size nor resolution is set in stone, however. Photoshop provides two methods for changing the number of pixels in an image: resampling and cropping. Resizing Versus Resampling Typically, when folks talk about resizing an image, they mean enlarging or reducing it without changing the number of pixels in the image. By contrast, resampling an image means scaling it so the image contains a larger or smaller number of pixels. With resizing, an inverse relationship exists between size and resolution size increases when resolution decreases, and vice versa. But resampling affects either size or resolution independently. Resizing an Image To resize an image, use one of the techniques I've discussed. To recap briefly, the best method is to choose Image>Image Size, turn off the Resample Image...

On top of pixels, alpha channels, color profiles, and all the other image data you can cram into your image files, you can add a variety of reference information where you shot the picture, who owns the image copyright, and so on. In Version 6, this extra data can take the form of cataloging information that you enter in the File Info dialog box or text and audio annotations that you can view and play right from the image window. Recording File Information If you work for a stock agency or distribute your work by some other means, you may be interested in Photoshop’s File>File Info command. Using this command, you can record captions, credits, bylines, photo location and date, copyright, and other information as prescribed by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) and the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) . We’re talking official worldwide guidelines here. After you choose the File Info command, you see the six-paneled File Info dialog box. Yo...