Please join our off-site community. The link is in the description as well. And as I mentioned, this course does have exercise files and you'll find them in the video description. Welcome back everyone. I am using the ice land postcard dot PSD file. So please have that open so you can follow along. So in this lesson, we're going to be learning how we can customize the workspace, how we can learn about the workspace and Photoshop, essentially understand the anatomy and some of the terminology around Photoshop. Now, everything I'm going to show you is the same for both the PC and the Mac. So no need to worry there if you're on a different operating system than me..
Okay. So currently I'm looking at the workspace called the essential workspace. Now let's go ahead and take a look, how we can identify what that is and how we can also change that. So if you'll notice over here in the far, far upper left, I have this little dropdown menu, this little drop down menu tells me that I'm in the essentials workspace. So if you're not currently, you can go ahead and change that. And then go ahead and click on reset essentials. And then I'm back to that. So let's go ahead and just start cracking away and making some changes to this to make it look a little bit more user-friendly for us..
All right. So first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to click on this little guy way up here to make my tools panel two columns. And you're going to see that's going to be a lot easier to read. You're going to see that Photoshop also sections things out in a little more intuitive way. When you have it in two columns, simply the first change I'm going to make. The next change I'm going to make, has to do with which panels do I want. Right? I, my colors panel, I have my swatches, right? I got all these things here, right? You, I got channels. I got paths. All these things here, some of these I don't want. So very simply all we do is right..
Click on the panel. We do not want choose close, right? Click patterns, close, not working with channels right now, not working with paths. Right? Click. Now you will notice that when you right, click, you get other options as well. Like you can minimize. Oh, that's kind of nice. Right? So layers now gets minimized so I can right click and I can go ahead and expand. That's kind of nice. Also note that I can move these panels around just the same. So if I want layers just kind of floating here, I can absolutely do that. A very simple click and drag, and there we go..
I have all of the panels available to me. So for example, if I wanted to bring out my character panel, I click on that and then notice that the character panel appears along with the paragraph panel is a little bonus. And then you'll notice that a new column now appears for all of your other additional panels, if you'd like to bring them in. So I'm just going to go ahead and collapse that you'll notice I can very easily access it, expand it and collapse it. Very nice. And of course I can drag that out, just like I did with my layers panel. Another nice little pro tip is if you double click on the layer name, excuse me,.
On the panel name, you can see very good. If you double click on that comes right up, expand collapse, expand collapse. You'll also notice that there's a little X there, if you want as well. Now, if I want to move this back to where it was, you'll see, I have a few different options here. Keep an eye on the blue halo. As soon as I sorta touch ground here, you'll notice that when I moved to here, I got a little blue halo, a little blue halo, a little blue halo. Where would that? Blue halo is, is where this panel is going to live. I'm going to drag mine way down to the bottom. And you're going to see a tiny little blue halo when the bottom and low.
And behold, that is where my panel lives right there at the bottom. So I love exactly what I've done here. Okay. I love this. I'm going to keep this all set up and I want to save this as my own. So what I'm going to do is click on the little drop down where I started from, and I'm going to choose new workspace, right? Click on that. And you're going to see here. I can name it. Okay. I'm going to say Dave's faves. Wonderful. And then just click on these boxes to make sure it's basically freezing everything..
This is the workspace I want. I'm overriding the essentials. So I click on save. And now when I click on the dropdown again, you will see there's Dave's faves. Wonderful. And then anytime I mess anything up, right, I go a little bit crazy. Let's say I delete some things. I can always come back to that. That's what's so great about this. I like to call this kind of like the Mary Poppins effect. We just sort of like cleans up your mess, right? Let me just go out and make this even more messy. So you kind of get the effect. Okay. Wow. What a disaster mad men at work. I click on the dropdown and then all I'm gonna do now is say reset..
Dave's faves, and then I'm back. Okay. And now that I'm done customizing my workspace, I recommend getting yours to look like mine, creating your own workspace and naming it accordingly. In this next lesson, we're going to learn about some of the basics of understanding what some of our panels do, but also we can get our hands dirty with resizing. Some of our photos moving them around, rotating, essentially kind of creating something like this and how this is more or less done. So first thing we want to identify is on the left-hand side, we have hard tools..
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All right. And we're going to be working with this initial tool called the move tool. So let's go ahead and activate that if it's not activated already.
And I want to make sure that you have both the show transform tools box and the auto select box selected for some of you may look a little different. It might look like icons, just make sure that they're selected. Why are we doing this? If I click on that, I want to actually see the sh the show transform tools. I want to be able to auto select the layer right earlier. We talked about the layers panel..Here is my layers panel. You can see when I click on it, my layers then act accordingly very important because it will kind of keep you in the dark otherwise. Okay. And by default, these are not activated. So let's make sure that those are in fact selected. So I'm also going to drag out my layers panel, like I showed you in the earlier lesson. So that way I can have easier access to it. If necessary. Now, in my layers panel, this will be our first introduction to the layers panel. You will see that I have some names for my layers panel and Lewis..
I also have the ordering of things. It's going to become very important as we move throughout this class. So let's work on our first lesson of resizing and also rotating some of our items that we have here on our canvas. So when I click on this, you'll notice how I get a little bounding box. And you'll also notice that I have my tools up on top here as well. All my different individual controls. If that's not there, if you click on window, you'll see that I have this options option that comes and goes, all right, as I click on.
That, I'm going to bring that back. Fantastic. Okay. So if yours is not there, you can always go to window. Just like I said, that's where all of your panels live. Fantastic. So now I see that there. And when I click and drag on this car, I'll be able to resize that accordingly. But notice when I kind of do this or I kind of do that, not so great. So what I'm going to do is either click on this little circle slash to reset it. Also notice that there's a little tool tip that pops up. It says, oh, I can also hit escape and parenthesis. That's what I'm going to do. And that sets us right back. So what a good rule of thumb for you to do is, is if you hold down.
The shift key, as you click and drag, it keeps it in proportion. It constrains your proportions. As you click and drag on the corners, you can sometimes do the sides if you want to, but that will stretch it out or make it a little Dave Casuto: bit too narrow. So just keep that in mind. Okay. Also notice that as the name implies with the move tool, I can move this wherever I want, because it's its own individual layer. That's essentially how Photoshop works. So I can move this around independent of this. And I can just basically shuffle these around accordingly..
No problem. Okay. But now let's say I wanted to rotate these in a different way. If you'll notice here on the outside, I'm can move my mouse away from the double-sided arrow and I'm going to come over here. I'm going to get this kind of little button hook, see that just go in and click and drag, and then it'll move accordingly. And Dave Casuto: then when I'm done transforming very important here, you have to tell Photoshop that you're done transforming. This is known as transformation. So right now, if I try to do something, everything gets grayed out..
Like a lot of things get great out. As a result, I have to tell Photoshop that I'm done doing what I'm doing earlier. We discussed how we can work with the little circle slash to tell it. No thanks. I don't commit connected to that. Is this little check mark to say yes, I do commit. So I have two options here. I can click on the check box or I can hit enter on my keyboard. So I'm gonna go ahead and click on the check box for now, and then I've committed to that and that's done official. So I click on this. I'm going to go ahead now. Rotate that one. No problem..
This time I'm gonna hit the enter key and that is committed. It's that easy. Now that we've seen how we can manipulate something that already exists. Let's learn how we can create this from scratch. So how has that done? Like a lot of other programs, we start with the file menu and we just choose new. And you'll also notice we have control..
And if you're on a Mac, it's going to be command N somebody go ahead and click on that. And I'm going to essentially teach you how we can create the same thing that we see here on this screen. So this is what it looks like when you are creating a brand new document in Photoshop. So essentially they give you a number of different options on top, right? Some preset templates, if you want to, if you're working on photos, right? They give you a whole bunch of different templates, prints, different templates, Arden illustration, and you can see that not only they're giving you different dimensions, but they're also giving you places to start with..
Right. Kind of nice if you're doing like a web layout, et cetera, what I'm going to do is
I'm just going to go in and create my own. And I'm going to show you how you can even create your own saved layout as well. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead over here on the right-hand side and decide what I'm going to put in, which is going to be an 11 inches by eight and a half inches document. And it's going to be landscapes. You'll notice here. I can change the orientation. And then my resolution, this is going to be very important..Resolution is basically how vivid is this going to be? How rich is this going to be? Are you going to be printing it? Are you gonna be putting it on the web? Typically, if you're going to be printing. You want to be at least 300 PPI. If you're going to be putting on the web, you can settle at 72 PPI. Okay. Typically you don't want it to be too high. If you're going to be putting on the web essentially for load times, you'll also notice down below I have my color mode option. I have RGB and I have my CMY. K. Those are going to be the two ones we're going to be focusing on..
This stands for red, green, and blue color. And that's typically going to be for the web because that's how your screen read your images. CMY K is typically going to be for print, which stands for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. So it really all depends because your printer like literally the printing machine itself can only read these colors. So it's very important that we understand what are we generating the document for? And over here, we have our eight bit and our 16 bit. And if we go over here to RGB, it'll say 18 bit 16, bit 32 bit just really.
Depends on how many colors you're expecting each of your documents to have like 16,000 colors, 28,000 colors. And if you're going to go up to 32 bit, that's going to be an HDR document. So let's just go ahead and make our 16 bit, and what is going to be the background of your document as you create it, you can actually make it black, white. You can set all these things up ahead of time. If you'd like, I'm just going to keep mine at transparent. Okay. And we're just going to keep this for right now. And then I'm going to also click on this little guy right here. What is this one about?.
This is going to allow me to save this as a pre. So, therefore I don't have to do this anymore. Okay. I don't have to set all these things up. So now when I click on that, I'm going to be able to save this as a preset. I'll just go ahead and say 11 by eight and a half landscape. All right. And then I'll just say 72 PPI, fantastic. Click on save preset. And now look under saved. I will see there. That is, and anytime I want to use it, I'll be able to come back to here and.
Won't have to reset all these things. Okay. So I'm gonna go ahead and click create. And now I have a blank document, all ready to go. Great. Now let's start building out our document. Now that we have this all set up, you will see, I have an empty layers panel. Great. We also notice that all my panels have remained the same. It's great. It's exactly how I want it. So our first lesson, when we're bringing in things from the outside is going to be placing, placing, not pasting, not importing Photoshop, and a lot of other.
Adobe programs refers to this as placing. So placing essentially means we're bringing in some items from the outside. And in this case, the item we're bringing in is going to be one of those images, right. Of the Ram and of the iceberg, et cetera. So I click on file. You'll see here, I have two options either to place embedded or to place linked when you're placing links essentially implies that there's might be some changes happening to that file. And you want to kind of have that linked up essentially. So if I'm working with a coworker and they're making.
Some changes, it automatically gets updated here on my file. We're just going to do place embedded. So it's just going to be static right here, inside of this document. So I click on that and I'm going to go to my files. Okay. And I'm going to go over to here to all my little friends here. I'm going to bring in the big iceberg. I simply just click on that and that's going to come. And again, you'll notice I have my little bounty box, which was great. I also have my little circle slash and I also have my little check mark there. Okay. And I'm just going to go ahead and resize that..
However, I Dave Casuto: want to holding down my shift key and rotating accordingly, and then I'm going to hit enter when I'm done. So I'm going to very quickly do the other two place embedded, bring in my Ram, hold on my shift. Key constraining the proportions hit enter. Don't forget that hitting enter part very important. You can learn that fast enough anyway, and then let's go to our medium iceberg and just bring that down, holding down my shift key..
Great. And then this time I'll just hit the check mark in case that's your fancy. Great. Now, now that I have these, let's see what we can do about some initial layer management. Okay. You'll see that it takes in the name of the actual document that I started with. Okay. That's great. So maybe I don't necessarily want that exact same thing. So I can just simply double click on that. And then I will just say instead, this is going to be iceberg one..
Okay. And this is going to be iceberg to very easily, just simply double-click alright. And there we go. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and pause the video and I'm going to have you catch up and do all the things that we did in terms of placing resizing, rotating, et cetera. Okay. We'll come back to you and good luck. Welcome back everyone. So in this document, you will notice that around all of our images, we.
Have these little checkerboards here. These checkerboards indicate what tells me that my image is transparent. So if I were to bring in this image and save this transparency, and I would bring it into, let's say a PowerPoint document, it would just kind of float with whatever that PowerPoint documents background is. So would not come in with its own background. It would just kind of float there, kind of nice. So we're going to learn a little bit of how we can either change the background to make it our own, but then when we save our document, how we can retain this transparency. Now, what we need to do first is discuss a little bit about the layers panel..
Okay. So right now I have my layers panel over here on the right hand side. You'll see, this whole thing is my layers panel. And we have a number of different icons down below. We also have this little guy over here, right in earlier. We discussed that little guy right there. Okay. And of course here is the name of the panel. Okay. Now each of these things has a purpose and you'll also notice that other panels also have kind of some similar things like a little fly out menu and things like that. Once we bring it out, you'll see more options here..
And as we go throughout this course, we will be discovering much, much more detailed than what we're going to discover right now earlier we looked at how we can rename each of our layers. Fantastic. That's great. Okay. We'll also see that in this panel, we'll be able to see a bunch of other things. That's going to allow us to have controls of our panels. What we're going to look at right now is how we can adjust this background. You'll notice that currently again, it is transparent. So what can I do to add on a colored background and notice this little guy right here, this little black and white cookie. When you click on that, you're going to see a lot of options..
And again, this is going to be for some more advanced features. When we get into our adjustment layers, we're going to see all those what we're concerned with right now. It was just adding on a solid color. Okay. When you move your mouse over, you will see it is called an adjustment layer. So the adjustment we're making is going to be a solid color. I click on that and then I can just go ahead and choose whatever color I like. We're going to get a lot into colors later on. Just do this nice, pretty Aqua blue color I click. Okay. And then, oops, everything gets covered. Why is it getting covered?.
Because this is the top layer. So very simply I want to bring it down to the bottom. So all I need to do is just click and drag that down and then just notice, follow the blue lines there. I let go. And wallah, there you go. Now this is behind everything else. Great. And I can go ahead and just double click on this to rename this. I'll just say blue BG and I hit enter. That's great. Wonderful. Okay. So I love this. I love this exactly as it is..
So I'm going to save this. If you see my tab here, this now has an untitled Photoshop file here. Oh, I don't want that. So I want to be able to save this when I save it. It's a good idea to save it. Not only as like your output, what if it's going to be a JPEG or a PNG or a TIF or a PDF. We also want to always save it as your working file. Meaning my Photoshop file. So very important. That's going to be the first thing I'm going to do. So I'm going to go ahead and click on file. I'm going to choose, save as..
And you'll notice here, my save as type is going to be PTSD. Okay. That's great. All right. So I'm just going to say Rams on parade. Okay, great. And that's going to be my PSD file. I'm gonna go in and click save. Now, why did I do that? I want to have a working file because this is going to retain all this layers. Okay. Very important, because I want to be able to make changes to this. So as an example, I can come back. Now..
I could say, listen, you know what, I want this to be on top. And because I'm working in my Photoshop file, I can now move this above my Ram and now notice what it does. So we're getting a nice little bonus layers lesson here on top of all that. Okay. You'll be able to practice all this and your practice time. All right. So that's a Photoshop file. Let's know, practice saving it as another file type. So I click on file save as, and you will see here in this dropdown, I have lots.
And lots of options to work with, right? We're going to focus on two main ones. One is going to be my JPEG and the other one is going to be my PNG. Now, when do we use one versus the other, let's start with the PNG option. PNG typically is going to be for when you are working with transparencies. Like earlier, we talked about before we had our blue background, I want to retain that transparency, but yet still have high resolution. I would do PNG, but I don't really care about that because I don't have a transparency that I'm working with. I can just work with a JPEG, right. Which is fine, which is great. And that's essentially what I'm going to do now..
And then notice the save as JPEG. I click on save. And what JPEG gives you the benefit of is being able to compress your file. Cause maybe you concerned about file size. Okay. Whereas P and G gives you a little bit of, um, sort of gradation JPEG gives you quite a bit to be able to really compress it on different levels here. Okay. So if I want to bring this down a little bit more, bring it up a little more. Absolutely. I can do that and I click. Okay. And now it's going to be a little smaller file size than it would be if it was 12..
Okay. So go ahead and practice that. We'll pause the video for a little bit and we'll come back. And lastly, within our layers panel, I want to talk a little bit of how we can delete layers and then also some additional things that we're going to be discovering later on. So deleting pretty simple. So let me go ahead and just open up my group here. And I click on this and then notice here I can delete with the trashcan. Okay. You'll also notice that right-clicking goes a long way, lots and lots of options. Here here is delete layer. I can duplicate layer, lots of things here. We're going to get into RAs, rising layers later on..
And some of the things we've already done in terms of grouping and everything are already here. Okay. So if I want to delete this, I'm just going to go simply click on my little trashcan and that goes away. Great. Fantastic. But I'm going to undo that by simply clicking on edit and then notice here is undo. And then here is also control Z or command C on the Mac. So that comes right back also a very good tool to know about. Okay. So deleting is pretty simple and also again, right. Clicking for lots of additional options. And then don't forget to undo when you make a mistake. All right. We'll see. In the next lesson now, keeping in line with this same image and document,.
Let's imagine a scenario where we'd like to manipulate the canvas a little bit, meaning maybe I want a little more space on the outside around it, or maybe I want to crop it. So what can I do here? Let me just, first of all, bring up the. Okay. We're currently working without a rule of the ruler is very important to have open, just so we can have some context of where we are, how big our document is, where things are. So we can have some sort of specificity and sort of exactitude. So how do we do that? Let's go to the view menu and we're going to go to rulers.
And then bam pops right up. You'll also notice the keyboard shortcut is just control R and there you go. And now here are my rulers. Now, if you right click on the ruler, you'll be able to see all the different units of measure. So currently this is set to pixels. If I choose inches, you'll see there it is 11 inches wide awesome. And eight and a half inches tall. Wonderful. So it's a good idea to have that. I think for the most part, I like to practice with my ruler, for sure. So let's just take a look, what we can do now to manipulate our canvas. This whole thing is known as our canvas..
So if I go over here to the image menu, let's see, here we are. I'm going to go over here to my canvas size and you'll see very good. There it is. But then somebody comes in and says, listen, we're actually going to do something a little bit bigger. Now we actually want to make this 14. By eight and a half I click. Okay. And then, all right, great. There it is. Now I have a little more space to play with. I can move that around, move that around. Maybe we're going to move this up a little bit. Maybe going to just, just, you can kind of manipulate it nice and easy..
Okay. So that's kind of a cool thing to know about for sure. You also know that inside of this is also your image size. Now this is talking about the entire document here just as is now. You'll notice that there's a number of different options that we can do here. And I would say that the main thing that you'll be doing is focusing on potentially changing the resolution for some of your images. Earlier, we talked about how, when you're creating a new document, the 72.
PPI is going to be good for the web, but sometimes you may say, listen, I actually want to make this get kind of upgraded so I can print it. So you may decide that you're going to upgrade that to 300. Okay. Now there could be some problems with that because it could get stretched out. So you want to choose this option to make sure to re sample and the best choice for you is to choose preserve detail 2.0, okay. So there are a bunch of other options here. This is the newest one you can see here, here's preserve detail, but this is the latest and greatest technology in terms of basically like upscaling, um, for.
Higher resolution, if you want to do it. Okay. So you want you to notice also when I choose 72, I want you to notice the size of my document. Okay. That's great. All right. And when I changed this to 300, notice the size now. Okay. It goes all the way up to 30 megabytes. Okay. So just keep that in mind what you're doing as you're doing this, but also take care to look at the resolution as you're doing it as well. Okay. To make sure that the quality isn't getting degraded..