Instructional Technology Resources

Note: Photoshop is available through CLICC’s Software Shortcut service, so even if you do not own the program, you can use a CLICC copy from your computer if you have a UCLA Logon.

Ctrl+A / Cmd+A

Select entire canvas

Ctrl+D / Cmd+D

Deselect

Ctrl+Shift+I / Cmd+Shift+I

Invert selection

Ctrl+T / Cmd+T

Free Transform (enables you to Scale, Rotate, Skew, Distort, etc. by dragging the handles, in combination with the Ctrl/Cmd, Alt/Opt, and Shift keys)

Ctrl+C / Cmd+C

Copy

Ctrl+X / Cmd+X

Cut

Ctrl+V / Cmd+V

Paste

Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z

Undo (toggles the last level of History)

Ctrl+Alt+Z / Cmd+Opt+Z

Step back in History

Ctrl+Shift+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z

Step forward in History

Ctrl++ / Cmd++

Zoom in

Ctrl+- / Cmd+-

Zoom out

Space bar

Hand Tool (see Tools below)

Ctrl+Alt+I / Cmd+Opt+I

Opens the Image Size dialog

Ctrl+Alt+I / Cmd+Opt+C

Opens the Canvas Size dialog

Selection Tools.

Select the area you want to work with. Anything outside the selected area will not be affected by your editing.

Tip: To deselect your current selection, type Ctrl+D / Cmd+D.

Marquee Tools (M) select a regularly shaped area.

Rectangular Marquee selects a rectangular area.

Tip: Hold down the Shift key to select a perfect square.

Elliptical Marquee selects a round area.

Tip: Hold down the Shift key to select a perfect circle.

Move Tool (V) moves the selected area, or the entire layer (see Layers below) if nothing is selected.

Lasso Tools (L) select an irregularly shaped area.

Lasso. Draw freehand the area you want to select. (This is fairly clumsy with a mouse, but easier to control if you use a stylus.)

Polygonal Lasso. Click point by point to surround your selection area.

Magic Wand (W). Use this tool to select an area of a single color or similar colors. It will automatically choose the selection area based on the color where you click.

Tip: Adjust the “Tolerance” level lower if it selects too much, or higher if it selects too little. A value of 0 matches a single color exactly, but even colors that appear pure to the eye often contain small variations of hue, so this may not select the entire area you want. Some trial and error may be necessary to get it right.

Tip: Uncheck “Contiguous” to select the color everywhere it appears in your picture.

Crop Tool (C). Select the portion of the image you wish to keep. You can adjust the edges and corners after you have drawn the initial crop box. (Tip: Zoom in close [Ctrl++ / Cmd++] if you want to be exact.) Click on the Crop button again, or simply hit “Enter”, to eliminate all portions of the image outside of the selection.

Tip: You can rotate the crop box by clicking and dragging the double arrow that appears outside the corners of the box.

Selection options.
The first four symbols control selection combination:  Make a new selection.  Add to an existing selection (= Shift key while selecting).  Subtract from an existing selection (= Alt / Opt key while selecting).  Keep only the area where the second selection overlaps the first.

Feather controls the fuzziness at the edges of the selection.

Anti-alias automatically smooths jagged edges around the selection.

Retouching and Painting Tools.

Painting & Drawing Tools (B)

Brush Tool applies color with smooth edges.

Pencil Tool applies color with hard edges.

Clone Stamp Tool (S). This is very useful for duplicating part of an image, for example to copy an object onto another part of the image, or to cover up a blemish. First Alt- or Opt-click to sample the source area that you want to duplicate, then begin painting on the target area where you want to apply it.

Tip: If “Aligned” is checked on the options bar, the relative position of your source point to your target point is set with your first click and remains constant thereafter. If “Aligned” is unchecked, the source area is applied anew every time you set down the brush; use this option if you want to paint multiple copies of the item at your source point.

Eraser Tool (E) essentially paints a “hole” in the active layer (see Layers below), so that whatever is underneath will show through. If there is nothing underneath, the erased portion will be transparent.

Blur Tools (R)

Blur Tool softens sharp edges in the image.

Sharpen Tool hardens soft edges in the image.

Smudge Tool runs adjacent colors into each other, much as if you were smudging wet paint with your finger.

Brush options.   
Click on the small down arrow next to the brush to change the size, adjust edge softness, and choose a brush style.

Opacity controls the transparency/opacity of the brush.

Fill Tools (G)

Gradient Tool gradually transitions between two colors which are determined by your foreground and background color choices. Click and drag to establish the angle of the gradient (Tip: the Shift key constrains the angle to 45° increments) and the points where the color transition begins and ends.

Paint Bucket Tool fills large areas of similar color with the foreground color. The Tolerance, Anti-alias, and Contiguous options work just like the Magic Wand tool above.

Drawing and Type Tools.

Text Tool (T) allows you to add text to images or create images of text for banners and icons. Set your font attributes in the options bar, select the point where you what your text to begin, and start typing. The text is automatically placed on a new layer (see Layers below), and you can emboss, bevel, add drop shadows and apply many other cool effects to the text layer.

Shape Tools (U). You can create various solid shapes, including rectangles, ellipses, polygons, lines, and custom shapes. Select  “Fill pixels” on the option bar. The shape will be filled with your foreground color.

Tip: Hold down the Shift key while dragging the mouse to make a perfect square or circle.

Tip: This tool is not the simplest for making outline shapes. Instead, use the marquee tool to define your shape, then choose Edit > Stroke… and set the options for the line’s appearance.

Viewing Tools.

Hand Tool (H). As an alternative to the scroll bars, you can use the Hand tool to view another area of your image. Click and drag to “pull” the image one way or another.

Tip: Press the space bar to select the Hand tool temporarily; as soon as you let up the space bar you will return to the tool you had selected before. This is indispensable if you are in the middle of a complex operation, such as selecting with the Polygonal Lasso tool, and need to shift your view to continue without losing your spot.

Zoom Tool (Z). The cursor will change to a magnifying glass with a plus symbol ; click to zoom in.  To zoom out, hold down the Alt/Opt key and click; the cursor will change to a magnifying glass with a minus symbol .

Tip: Use Ctrl++ / Cmd++ to zoom in and Ctrl+- / Cmd+- and zoom out without changing the tool you are using.

Fill… fills your selection with a solid color. (This is the foreground color [i.e., the upper square] shown in the toolbox. To change it, click on the color box.) Adjust the opacity/transparency if you want to add a wash rather than completely covering what is underneath.

Stroke… Think “outline”. You can choose the thickness and color of the outline, and whether it is positioned inside, outside, or straddling the edges of the selection.

Free Transform (Ctrl+T / Cmd+T) enables you to Scale, Rotate, Skew, Distort, etc. by dragging the handles, in combination with the Ctrl/Cmd, Alt/Opt, and Shift keys.

Transform ► enables you to perform individual transformations by dragging the handles.

Save As… (Ctrl+Shift+S / Cmd+Shift+S).  The image format you choose when saving your file will partly depend on the type of image and its use.

• For web delivery of photographs, including photographs of artwork, you will save as a JPEG file (file extension .jpg or .jpeg).  If you are not concerned about file size/memory issues, choose high or maximum quality. But if size is an issue (as it always is for web pages), use Save for Web… (see below) to choose the best compromise between quality and file size.
• For images with a limited color palette, such as line art drawings, cartoons, or simple icons, save as a GIF file (file extension .gif).

Save for Web… (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S / Cmd+Opt+Shift+S). This is a very useful tool to find the optimal quality for saving an image. You are presented with previews of your image at different levels of quality, displayed side by side for easy comparison, with information on file type, size, and download speed on a slow modem for each. Choose the lowest file size that still looks good and click Save.

Adjustments ►
You can often make your image look better by adding some minor adjustments.

Levels control the lightness/darkness of your image. Photoshop’s automatic adjustments are usually pretty good, so try applying Auto Levels or Auto Contrast first. If you don’t like the results, you can make your own manual adjustments.

Auto Levels (Ctrl+Alt+L / Cmd+Opt+L) and Auto Contrast (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+L / Cmd+Opt+Shift+L) let Photoshop try to figure out the optimal adjustments.

Levels… (Ctrl+L / Cmd+L). You can adjust the sliders or enter specific values in the boxes.

Tip: Make sure “Preview” is checked so you can see how your image will look before you accept your changes.

Brightness/Contrast… You can adjust the sliders or enter specific values in the boxes.

Image Size (Ctrl+Alt+I / Cmd+Opt+I).  The Image Size dialogue box allows you to specify the exact size and resolution image.

Resolution: First set the resolution of the image:
72 pixels/inch (ppi or dpi) is the standard screen resolution used for the web.
Printing requires much higher resolution. 300 dpi is usually sufficient for JPEG images, but for high-resolution images and other formats, use 600 dpi or more.

Width and Height:  After setting the resolution, set the size of the image in inches or pixels.

Tip: Make sure “Constrain Proportions” is checked to avoid stretching the image one way or another.

Canvas Size. Use this option if you want a larger picture area, for example, if you would like to combine images in to a collage or banner, or use some other layered effect that will require a larger picture. This will increase your background area (adding white around the edges), but the original image itself will remain the same size. (If you want to change the size of the image itself, use Image Size above.)
If you decrease the canvas size you will end up cropping the edges of your image, so use caution when doing this (and remember, you can always undo with Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z).

Rotate Canvas. You can flip or rotate the canvas. Choose “Arbitrary” to rotate the image by tiny increments (including fractions of degrees).

Auto Color (Ctrl+Shift+B / Cmd+Shift+B).  For photographs, it is often helpful to apply the automatic color adjustment to improve image color. (Manual color adjustment is complex.)

Layers Palette.

Most of the options you will use are found on the layers palette.

Tips:

• Layers at the top of the list display in front of the layers below them. To move a layer, simply click and drag it to the desired position.
• When you paste anything from the clipboard, Photoshop automatically creates a new layer on top of the current one.
• Deleting or erasing a portion of the image cuts a hole in that layer, revealing the layer underneath. (See Blending Layers below.)

The eye indicates which layers are visible. Click on the eye to hide the layer, click on the blank box to make it visible again. Hidden layers are still there in the file, they just are not displayed at the moment.

The trash can button deletes layers. Clicking on the trash can deletes the highlighted layer. Alternatively, you can drag a layer to the trash can to delete it.

Clicking on the new layer button will add a new, blank layer immediately above the one that is currently highlighted.
You can duplicate an existing layer by dragging it only the new layer button. An exact copy will be created immediately above that layer.

Layer Transparency. You can adjust the opacity/transparency level of a layer. 100% is fully opaque, 0% is fully transparent.

Renaming Layers. Photoshop will generate a default name (Layer 1, Layer 2, etc.) when a layer is created. If you want to change this to something more meaningful or descriptive, double-click on the layer name and type in your new name.

Saving Images. Only layers that are currently showing will be exported when you save to an image format such as JPEG (that is, what you see is what you get). This does not affect your “master” Photoshop file, which will still retain all the layers, visible and invisible.

Tip: It is often a good practice to keep a permanent copy of your master file in Photoshop’s native (PSD) format. This way you can always go back and change something, then re-export the updated image file.

Tip: By selectively hiding and revealing the various layers, you can create multiple versions of an image from a single master file.

Merging Layers. You may wish to combine some or all of your layers at some point. You have several options.

Tip: You do not need to merge the layers in your file. In fact, you may not want to do so, because once merged the elements are no longer separately editable, in case you ever want to go back and make changes. On the other hand, merging certain layers may be useful for organizing and cleaning up your master file.

Merge Layers (Ctrl+E / Cmd+E). To merge two or more layers, first select the layers you want to merge. Hold down the Ctrl or Cmd key while you select the layers you want to merge; they do not have to be next to each other. Then choose Layer > Merge Layers (Ctrl+E / Cmd+E). (Note that this option is not available – for obvious reasons – if you only have one layer selected.)

Merge Down (Ctrl+Shift+E / Cmd+Shift+E). This command merges the selected layer with the layer immediately below it.

Flatten Image merges all layers in your file.

Red Eye Tool. If you would like to eliminate red-eye from a photo, use the red eye tool, found in the same group as the healing brush tool (symbolized by the band-aid). Simply drag the tool over the eye, and voilà! The red eye is gone.

Blending Layers. If you want to blend from one image to another in a collage, first place all your images on different layers.

To combine elements: Use the Polygon Lasso tool (see above) to select the part that you want to keep (top layer) and choose a feather of about 10 for the blending effect. Once you have selected what you want to keep, invert the selection (Select > Inverse [Ctrl+Shift +I / Cmd+Shift+I]) and delete.

To fade between layers: Select the layer that you want to fade, choose the mask tool button (at the bottom of the layers palette, the circle inside a rectangle). Choose the gradient tool (tools palette), black to white, normal mode, opacity 100%.  Then select the edge of the part to fade and draw the gradient tool line across the part that you want to fade.

Final Tips. Photoshop is a very powerful program, so we recommend that you experiment with various features and browse adobe.com for more information and tips. And always save back-ups of your images at their higher resolutions in the Photoshop file format (PSD) in case you need to modify your work later.