Adobe Photoshop CC For Dummies

Get picture perfect with Photoshop CC

Photoshop is a stunning program that puts the power of a professional photography studio into your hands, but it can also be a jungle to navigate—with a dense proliferation of menus, panels, shortcuts, plug-ins, and add-ons to get thoroughly lost in. Written by a literal Photoshop Hall of Famer, the new edition of Photoshop CC For Dummies is your experienced guide to the technical terrain, slashing away the foliage for a clear picture of how to produce the perfectly framed and beautifully curated images you want.

Beginning with an overview of the basic kit bag you need for your journey toward visual mastery, Peter Bauer—Photoshop instructor and an award-winning fine art photographer in his own right—shows you how to build your skills and enrich your creative palette with enhanced colors and tone, filters and layering, and even how undertake a foray into digital painting. Add in instructions on combining text with images and the how-tos of video and animation editing, and you have all the tools you need to carve out a one-person multimedia empire.

• Master everything from the basics to professional insider tips
• Combine, layer, tone, and paint your images
• Explore the colorfully creative world of Photoshop filters
• Fix common problems

You'll find everything on the latest version of the software that you could dream of—and an improved shot at artistic success!

Peter Bauer is a member of the Photoshop Hall of Fame and an award-winning fine-art photographer. The author of more than a dozen books on Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, computer graphics, and photography, he is also the host of video-training titles at Lynda.com and a contributing writer for Photoshop User magazine.

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Conventions Used in This Book 2

Icons Used in This Book 3

How to Use This Book 3

Part 1: Getting Started with Photoshop CC 5

Chapter 1: An Overview of Photoshop 7

Exploring Adobe Photoshop 7

What Photoshop is designed to do 8

Other things you can do with Photoshop 9

Viewing Photoshop’s Parts and Processes 10

Reviewing basic computer operations 10

Photoshop’s incredible selective Undo 12

Installing Photoshop: Need to know 14

Chapter 2: Knowing Just Enough about Digital Images 17

What Exactly is a Digital Image? 18

The True Nature of Pixels 18

How Many Pixels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin? 21

Resolution revelations 21

Resolving image resolution 22

File Formats: Which Do You Need? 30

Formats for digital photos 31

Formats for web graphics 33

Formats for commercial printing 34

Formats for PowerPoint and Word 36

Chapter 3: Taking the Chef’s Tour of Your Photoshop Kitchen 37

Food for Thought: How Things Work 38

Ordering from the menus 39

Your platter full of panels 40

The tools of your trade 42

Get Cookin’ with Customization 44

Clearing the table: Custom workspaces 44

Spoons can’t chop: Creating tool presets 47

Season to Taste: The Photoshop Settings 48

Standing orders: Setting the Preferences 48

Ensuring consistency: Color Settings 55

When Good Programs Go Bad: Fixing Photoshop 57

Chapter 4: From Pics to Prints: Photoshop for Beginners 59

Bringing Images into Photoshop 59

Downloading from your digital camera 60

Scanning prints 61

Keeping Your Images Organized 66

Creating a folder structure 66

Using Adobe Bridge 67

Renaming image files easily 69

Printing Your Images 71

Cropping to a specific aspect ratio 71

Remembering resolution 73

Controlling color using File ➪ Print 74

Considering color management solutions 75

Printing alternatives 76

Sharing Your Images 77

Emailing and AirDropping your images 78

Creating PDFs and websites 78

Part 2: Easy Enhancements for Digital Images 79

Chapter 5: Making Tonality and Color Look Natural 81

Adjusting Tonality to Make Your Images Pop 82

Histograms Simplified 82

Using Photoshop’s Auto Corrections 84

Levels and Curves and You 85

Level-headed you! 86

Tonal corrections with the eyedroppers 89

Adjusting your curves without dieting 90

Grabbing Even More Control 92

Using Shadows/Highlights 93

Changing exposure after the fact 96

Using Photoshop’s toning tools 96

What is Color in Photoshop? 97

Which color mode should you choose? 98

Does a color model make a difference? 101

Why should you worry about color depth? 102

Making Color Adjustments in Photoshop 104

Choosing color adjustment commands 106

Manual corrections in individual channels 117

The People Factor: Flesh Tone Formulas 118

Chapter 6: The Adobe Camera Raw Plug-In 121

Understanding the Raw Facts 121

What’s the big deal about Raw? 123

Working in Raw 124

The Camera Raw Interface 126

Camera Raw’s Tools and buttons 126

The histogram 132

The preview area 132

Workflow Options and presets 133

Making Adjustments in Camera Raw’s Edit Panel 134

The Basic section 134

The Curve section 137

The Detail section 137

The Color Mixer section 138

The Color Grading section 138

The Optics and Geometry sections 140

The Effects section 141

The Calibration section 141

The Camera Raw Cancel, Done, and Open buttons 142

Chapter 7: Fine-Tuning Your Fixes 143

What is a Selection? 144

Feathering and Anti-aliasing 146

Making Your Selections with Tools 148

Marquee selection tools 148

Lasso selection tools 152

The Object Selection tool 153

The Quick Selection tool 153

The Magic Wand tool 154

Select and Mask 155

Your Selection Commands 156

The primary selection commands 157

The Color Range command 158

The Focus Area command 159

The Select ➪ Subject command 160

The Select ➪ Sky command 161

Selection modification commands 161

Transforming the shape of selections 161

Edit in Quick Mask mode 163

The mask-related selection commands 164

Masks: Not Just for Halloween Anymore 164

Saving and loading selections 165

Editing an alpha channel 165

Adding masks to layers and Smart Objects 167

Masking with vector paths 167

Adjustment Layers: Controlling Changes 168

Adding an adjustment layer 168

Limiting your adjustments 170

Chapter 8: Common Problems and Their Cures 173

Making People Prettier 174

Getting the red out digitally 174

The digital fountain of youth 175

Dieting digitally 176

De-glaring glasses 179

Whitening teeth 179

Reducing Noise in Your Images 179

Decreasing digital noise 180

Eliminating luminance noise 181

Fooling Around with Mother Nature 181

Removing the unwanted from photos 181

Eliminating the lean: Fixing perspective 185

Rotating images precisely 187

Adding a beautiful sky 188

Part 3: Creating “Art” in Photoshop 189

Chapter 9: Combining Images 191

Compositing Images: 1 + 1 = 1 192

Understanding layers 192

Why you should use Smart Objects 194

Using the basic blending modes 195

Opacity, transparency, and layer masks 198

Creating clipping groups 199

Making composited elements look natural 200

Making Complex Selections 201

Vanishing Point 204

Creating Panoramas with Photomerge 208

Chapter 10: Precision Edges with Vector Paths 211

Pixels, Paths, and You 212

Easy Vectors: Using Shapes 213

Your basic shape tools 214

The Custom Shape tool 216

More custom shapes — free! 217

Changing the appearance of the shape layer 219

Simulating a multicolor shape layer 220

Using Your Pen Tool to Create Paths 221

Understanding paths 222

Clicking and dragging your way down the path of knowledge 222

A closer look at the Paths panel 226

Customizing Any Path 229

Adding, deleting, and moving anchor points 230

Combining paths 232

Tweaking type for a custom font 233

Chapter 11: Dressing Up Images with Layer Styles 235

What Are Layer Styles? 235

Using the Styles Panel 237

Creating Custom Layer Styles 239

Exploring the Layer Style menu 239

Exploring the Layer Style dialog box 241

Layer effects basics 242

Opacity, fill, and advanced blending 251

Saving Your Layer Styles 254

Adding styles to the Styles panel 254

Preserving your layer styles 255

Chapter 12: Giving Your Images a Text Message 257

Making a Word Worth a Thousand Pixels 258

A type tool for every season, or reason 260

What are all those options? 262

Taking control of your text with panels 266

The panel menus — even more options 269

Working with Styles 271

Putting a picture in your text 272

Creating Paragraphs with Type Containers 274

Selecting alignment or justification 276

Ready, BREAK! Hyphenating your text 277

Shaping Up Your Language with Warp Text and Type on a Path 278

Applying the predefined warps 278

Customizing the course with paths 279

Chapter 13: Painting in Photoshop 283

Discovering Photoshop’s Painting Tools 284

Painting with the Brush tool 286

Adding color with the Pencil tool 289

Removing color with the Eraser tool 289

Working with Panels and Selecting Colors 290

An overview of options 290

Creating and saving custom brush tips 293

Picking a color 294

Fine Art Painting with Specialty Brush Tips and the Mixer Brush 297

Exploring erodible brush tips 297

Introducing airbrush and watercolor tips 297

Mixing things up with the Mixer Brush 298

Filling, Stroking, Dumping, and Blending Colors 300

Deleting and dumping to add color 300

Using gradients 301

Chapter 14: Filters: The Fun Side of Photoshop 305

Smart Filters: Your Creative Insurance Policy 306

The Filters You Really Need 307

Sharpening to focus the eye 308

Unsharp Mask 308

Smart Sharpen 310

Shake Reduction 311

Blurring images and selections 312

The other Blur filters 315

Correcting for the vagaries of lenses 316

Cleaning up with Reduce Noise 320

Getting Creative and Artistic 321

Photo to painting with the Oil Paint filter 321

Working with the Filter Gallery 322

Push, Pull, and Twist with Liquify 325

What Are Neural Filters? 327

The original Neural Filters 328

Neural Filters in public beta testing 329

Proposed Neural Filters 330

Do I Need Those Other Filters? 330

Adding drama with Lighting Effects 331

Maximum and Minimum 331

Bending and bubbling 332

Creating clouds 332

Part 4: Power Photoshop 333

Chapter 15: Streamlining Your Work in Photoshop 335

Ready, Set, Action! 336

Recording your own Actions 337

Working with the Batch command 342

Find It Fast with Discover 344

Creating Contact Sheets and Presentations 344

Creating a PDF presentation 345

Collecting thumbnails in a contact sheet 347

Scanning Multiple Photos in One Pass 349

Sticking to the Script 350

Chapter 16: Working with Video and Animation 353

Importing and Enhancing Video Clips 353

Getting video into Photoshop 354

Adjusting the length of video and audio clips 356

Adding adjustment layers and painting on video layers 357

Transitioning, titling, and adding special effects 358

Transforming video layers 361

Rendering and exporting video 361

Creating Animations in Photoshop 362

Building frame-based animations 362

Creating frame content 363

Tweening to create intermediary frames 365

Specifying frame rate 366

Optimizing and saving your animation 366

Part 5: The Part of Tens 367

Chapter 17: Ten Specialized Features of Photoshop CC 369

Using Smart Object Stack Modes 370

The Mean Stack Mode 372

Working with 3D Artwork 372

Creating 3D objects 373

Adding 3D objects 373

Rendering and saving 3D scenes 374

Measuring, Counting, and Analyzing Pixels 374

Measuring length, area, and more 374

Calculating with Vanishing Point 376

Counting crows or maybe avian flu 376

Viewing Your DICOM Medical Records 377

Ignoring MATLAB 378

Chapter 18: Ten Ways to Integrate Your iPad 379

Using Sidecar to Add an iPad to Your Screen 379

Sidecar System Requirements 380

Arranging Your iPad’s Screen 380

Mirroring the Screens 381

Maximizing the Screen Space 381

Making Use of Photoshop on the iPad 382

Using the Cloud with Photoshop on the iPad and Desktop 383

Using Other Adobe iPad Apps 384

Does the iPad Replace My Wacom Tablet? 384

Setting Wacom Tablet Preferences for Touch Keys and Touch Ring 385

Chapter 19: Ten Things to Know about HDR 387

Understanding HDR 387

Capturing for Merge to HDR Pro 389

Preparing Raw “Exposures” in Camera Raw 390

Working with Merge to HDR Pro 391

Saving 32-Bit HDR Images 394

HDR Toning 394

Painting and the Color Picker in 32-Bit 395

Filters and Adjustments in 32-Bit 396

Selections and Editing in 32-Bit 397

Printing HDR Images 397

Appendix: Photoshop CC’S Blending Modes 399

Index 403

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