The Basics of Photoshop A Tutorial

First we need some images to play with. I’ve already found a couple of images that we can use – a monster and a photograph of a college campus. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can find your own images, too. These images are saved on Blackboard

Choose the Adobe suite and then Adobe Photoshop CS5. Go to “File” > “Open” and then select the photograph of the campus quad.

Have a look around Photoshop. On the left are different tools you can use, on the top right are color controls, in the middle right is something new for CS4 andCS5 – different adjustments and masks, and on the bottom right are layers, channels, and paths. Layers are really what make Photoshop powerful.

This layer is locked, to unlock it, double-click on the layer, rename it to something other than “background” and then click “OK.” What we’ve done is make this background into an editable layer. Let’s set that aside for now and open another image. Go to “File” > “Open” again and this time select the monster.

Grab the Magic Wand tool from the left-hand menu and click on the monster. Our goal is to create a highlighted line around the entire monster in order to be able to lift it from its current background. You can play with the settings in the top menu and if you select too much, you can select the option within the tool that takes away this area. Hold down shift and click on areas that need to be covered It’s worth mentioning that you can also select this image with the magnetic lasso tool, the “Select” > “Color Range” tool from the menu, and the “Magic Eraser” tool.

Once the area outside the monster has been highlighted, you can use the eraser to delete the surrounding area.

You can probably see your two images in tabs just below the top menu. In order to make those tabs into windows, go to “Window” > “Arrange” > “Float all in Windows.” [ to reverse this, select, “Float all in Tabs” ] Drag and drop your monster into the quad.

Let’s make this monster a little smaller/larger. Click “Edit” > “Free Transform” and then shape your monster as you wish. When you’re done, select OK.

Ok, so this monster looks OK, what’s really bothering me is the dead grass on the left. Let’s clean it up a bit. Making sure to click on the quad layer first, grab the lasso tool and select some grass that nice and green. When you’ve made a nice circle around some good-looking grass, go to “Layer” > “New Layer via Copy.” Notice there is a new layer in your “Layers” area. You can then use your arrow tool to grab that patch of grass and cover up the dead grass. You can do this several times if necessary.

Here’s another ways to accomplish similar goals: Clone stamp: click on the clone stamp tool and then “Alt” click on the area you want to reproduce. Release Alt and stamp away!

You can merge your layers, too. Hold down “Shift” and select the layers you want grouped together and then right-click on the layers and select “Merge Layers.”

We’re not done yet, because this monster looks rather benign, I must say. Let’s zoom in, use the magic wand tool to select the eye of the monster and change the color. When you have the eye highlighted with the magic wand, click on the paintbrush tool and then click on the black box toward the bottom of the left hand tool menu. You can select a unique color or a color that exists in one of the images you’re using.

Two more major things: let’s crop this image of the quad, just because some of the trees on the perimeter bother me a bit. Click on the crop tool, use it to draw a box around what you want to keep in the image, and then click inside of the box.

Blur the entire piece by going to “Filter” > “Blur.” Now the next step is up to you. Find an image for the monster to hold, select it out of its current setting, place it in the monster’s hand, resize it and rotate it as necessary.