Photoshop Familiarisation.

This tutorial is not a guide on how to colour in photoshop, but rather a guide to what it can be used for. Obviously, it is a very basic overview, but it covers most(all, probably) of what I talk about in the other Photoshop tutorials.

Most importantly, and I hope for obvious reasons, is the tool bar. Everything important, or at least everything I talk about in other tutorials is labeled. The symbols should be fairly obvious, I think, it's not much different from Paint=) You will see that on some of the buttons, there is a little triangular arrow at the bottom right corner. Holding your mouse down on them will bring up a sub menu, changing the function of the tool. For instance, you see that the "pencil" tool is currently open to its submenu, which gives you the option of making it a "paintbrush" tool.

Every tool has its own settings. The default settings work fine, but they can limit its use. The settings bar is often located near the top of the window, but in older versions of Photoshop, it is located in one of the tabs to the side. (you should see a little "settings" tab) Thre tool that works best with different settings is the airbrush, which in my opinion is one of the most versatile tools in the program.

The picture on the far left indicates which tool the settings are for. In this case, there is a small picture of an airbrush. The "Mode" selection box determines the effects of the airbrush on the picture. The most important settings you should know are "Multiply" and "Screen". Multiply darkens the base colour with whatever colour you are colouring with. Screen does the opposite. In a sense, these settings are similar to the dodge/burn tools, but give you more control and do not make the highlights and shadows on your pic as harsh as dodge/burn does. Then, there's "Pressure". This determines how "heavy" your airbrush...airbrushes. I personally prefer setting it at a low pressure so that I can make subtle highlights and shadows. I personally find that any pressure over 15% is too harsh.

Now...on to layers. My personal opinion on them is - layers rock my world. In the picture above, you can see that I have a different colour or object on each layer (for instance, the "fire" and the rocks are on separate layers). You create a new by going to "Layer" in the main menu, then "New" and then, "Create New Layer". A window will come up; I usually find that the default settings work fine. Alternatively, the keyboard shortcut is Shift+Ctrl+N. The first "Lock"(from the left) in the layer window is "Lock transparent pixels". When checked, it means that anything "transparent" cannot be coloured on. This is very helpful after you've laid down some flat colour and would like to shade it without worrying about other colours getting all over the place. The other three next to it are "Lock image pixels", "Lock position" and "Lock all". I personally, have never found much use for them. The "Opacity" slider is one of my favourite things. With it, you can make a layer(and everything on it) translucent. As you can imagine, it's great for things like glass and faerie wings and the such.

I think that most everything else ought to be self explanatory. It has been a short tutorial, and I will expand on it as needed, please email or neomail me with any suggestions or questions!