Adobe Photoshop CS4 Tutorial

This is a Adobe Photoshop CS4 tutorial. This tutorial is a complete guide to learn how Adobe Photoshop CS4 works and how you can edit photos using this software and how to operate all of its feature and options. This tutorial contains guidance about all of its functions, elements and feature. The aim of this tutorial is to ensure that you become familiar with  Adobe Photoshop CS4 and you can do any thing that you want, after reading and understanding this tutorial. This is a lengthy tutorial so give full concentration to this tutorial.  Before get start Adobe Photoshop CS4 tutorial, i want to share something about Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop is a most popular photo editing software than others. Most highly paid professional of photo editing use Adobe Photoshop to do their job. Because it provides all necessary tools that are mainly used in their work. It is a best software to make any assignment related to photo editing.

Lets Start:

Click the Photoshop CS4 icon in the Dock/Desktop to open.
Setting Up New Document.

First step is setting up new document. This step will require planning. For example, if you want to make a card, you have to select the Width Height according to the size you want.
To create a new document, click the ‘File’  and select ‘New’.
Page Size and Orientation
Here you have to put new values for width and height. Page size represents the final size you want. Common sizes of letter, legal, tabloid and etc are also provided by default and can also be selected through drop down menu.
Resolution
High resolution increases the size of the file/image. The higher the resolution, the more pixels of image which leads to the better quality of the image.
Color Mode
Choose a color mode as you need which best fits your project.
Background Contents
Choose a background. After this click OK.

Interface layout:

Menu Bar
At the top of the screen, There is a Menu bar. Menu bar contain all main functions of Adobe Photoshop, such as File, Edit, Image, Layer, Select, Filter, View, Window, and Help.
Tool Bar
All tools are located in the Tool bar.
The Image
Open the image, it will appear in its own window.
Palettes
As you can see that palettes are located at the right side of the Photoshop and contain functions that help to modify the photos.
A brief explaination of the palettes in Adobe Photoshop CS4.
COLOR, SWATCHES, STYLE:
The Color palette displays the current background colors and RGB values of colors. In the Swatches palette, you can add a customized color to the library. The Styles palette allows to view, select, and apply layer styles.
ADJUSTMENTS:
Adjustment layers helps to apply an effect to the group of layers. You can also edit that effect.

Toolbox:

In this tutorial, only basic tools will be discussed. Because you don’t need to use all of these tools.
Marquee:  Help to select an object by drawing a rectangle around it. Click o this toll to drag the this over the area of the image you want to select.
Move:  is Used to select and move the objects.
Lasso:  Help to selects a object by drawing a border around it.
Polygonal Lasso:  Used to drag to draw a straight-edge border around an object.
Magnetic Lasso:   Used to draw the border of an object that snaps to the edges of the defined area.
Magic Wand:   The Magic Wand tool help to Select all those objects that have the similar fill color, stroke weight, stroke color and opacity.
Crop Tool:  Used to Select and cut parts of an image.
Slice Tool:  Used to cut images into slices as its name.

Alteration Tools:

Healing Brush:  Used to correct the small blemishes in the scanned images.
Brush Tool:  Used to draws lines of different thicknesses and colors in an image.
Clone Stamp:  The Clone Stamp takes a sample of an image and then applies over another image.
Art History Brush:   Used to paints over an image with the use of orignal data from specified history.
Erase Tool:  Used to remove unwanted things/objects.
Gradient Tool:  Used to apply a gradient fill to the defined part of the object.
Blur Tool:  Used to blur the edges of an image or object.

Drawing Tools:

Pen Tool:  Used to draws anything anywhere.
Type Tool:   Used to type the texts.
Direct Selection Tool:  Used to select an image or object.

Assisting Tools:

Assisting tools include: Eyedropper Tool, Hand Tool, Magnifying and a Rotate View Tool. These are very common and easy to use, so i think there is no need to explain them.

Basic Image Editing:

Now i think you are familiar with the most common commands. So now you can start doing some basic image editing. Basic image editing includes: how to crop, resize, correct, and sharp or blur an image.
Cropping
It is the most basic editing technique. There are several ways to crop an image in Adobe Photoshop CS4 ad these are listed below.
An image can be cropped by:

1. The Crop Tool
2. The Marquee Tool

CROPPING WITH THE CROP TOOL

Steps:

1. Open the image.
2.  Select the Crop Tool
3. Click the image and click and drag the mouse over the image to make a cropping border. You can also rotate the cropping border.
4. Resize the border.
5. press ENTER button to save changes.

CROPPING WITH THE MARQUEE TOOL
Steps:

1. Open the image.
2. Select the Marquee Tool
3. Click the image and click and drag the mouse over the image to draw a marquee around the image.
4. In the “main menu”, go to ‘Image’ and select the ‘Crop’ to crop the image.
5. Image will be cropped immediately after step 4.

Resizing:

Re-sizing in Photoshop help to re-size the image while preserving the quality of the image.
RESIZING TO A SPECIFIC SIZE
Steps:

1. In the “main menu”, go to ‘File’ and select the ‘New’.
2. Click on the drop down menu (Default Photoshop Sizes). It contains several default sizes such as 2×3, 4×6 and 5×7.
3. Choose the size and the click OK.

RESIZING  PHOTOS

Steps:

1. Open the image.
2. In the “main menu”, go to ‘View’ and select the ‘Rulers’.
3. In the “main menu”, go to ‘Image’ and select the ‘Image Size’.
4. Uncheck the Re-sample Image box.

Correcting:

This feature allows to correct ‘red eye’ or ‘hot spots’ problems.
RED EYE REMOVAL
Steps:

1. Open a photo.
2. Select the ‘Zoom Tool’ from the ‘Toolbox’ (located at the left side).
3. Click and drag around the eye to draw a rectangle. (Note: Make sure the default foreground and background colors are black and white respectively).
4. Click on the ‘Healing Brush Tool’ button and select the ‘Red Eye Tool’.
5. click on the red color of eye to paint. Red color will disappeared.

HOT SPOT REMOVAL
Steps:

1. Open a photo.
2.  Select the ‘Clone Stamp Tool’ from the ‘Toolbox’ (located at the left side).
3. From the options, change the ‘Blend Mode’ from Normal to Darken.
4. Set the Opacity to 50%.
5. Choose a ‘soft-edged brush’ and set the diameter to 40 or 50.
6. Hold down the ‘SHIFT’ key and click in the clean area to select a sample of color.
7. Paint over the ‘hot spots’.

ADDING FLASH
Steps:

1. Open the image.
2. In the “main menu”, go to ‘Layers’ and select the ‘Duplicate’.
3. Name the layer for example “Layer 1″.
4. Change the ‘Blending Mode’ to ‘Screen’.
5. Keep ‘Layer 1′ and the whole image will lighten.

SHARPENING & SOFTENING:

SHARPENING
This technique can sharpen an image that are only slightly blurry.

Steps:

1. Open the image.
2. In the “main menu”, go to ‘Filter’ then ‘Sharpen’ and finally select the ‘Unsharp Mask’.
3. Put these values: 125 in Amount, 1 in Radius, and 3 in Threshold.
4.  Click OK.

SOFTENING
This technique can soften an image.

Steps:

1. Open the image.
2. In the “main menu”, go to ‘Layers’ and select the ‘Duplicate Layer’.
3. In the “main menu”, go to ‘Filter’ then ‘Blur’ and finally select the ‘Gaussian Blur’. Called Background Copy.
4.  Enter 4.0 for Radius.
5.  Select Background Copy layer and change its opacity to 50 percent.
6.  Select the Eraser Tool from the Toolbox which is located at the left side.
7. Select soft-edged brush an