Introduction to Photoshop CS2


When you first launch Photoshop, you're greeted with the Photoshop CS2 welcome screen (see Figure 5.1). Here you can access documentation on new features and find some tutorials from Adobe. Unlike the welcome screens that you'll find in the other CS2 applications, which are also functional and enable you to open files or templates, Photoshop's is purely informational.

Figure 5.1. The Photoshop CS2 welcome screen.


Did you Know?

If you're anything like me, you won't want to be bothered by the welcome screen every time you launch Photoshop. You can uncheck the Show This Dialog at Startup box to keep Photoshop from showing the screen automatically at launch time. You can always access the welcome screen from the Help menu.


When you first look at Photoshop (see Figure 5.2), you'll see the standard menu bar across the top of the screen. Directly under the menu bar is the Tool Options bar, which is context sensitive. That means the options listed in this area change depending on what tool you have selected. To the far right of the Tool Options bar is the button used to access Adobe Bridge and the palette well, where you can "store" palettes.

Figure 5.2. The Photoshop CS2 user interface.


Did you Know?

The palette well is an area where you can drag and drop frequently used palettes. When you want to access a palette, you click on its tab. Click on the tab again, and the palette returns to the palette well. On smaller monitors, the palette well serves little purpose because the well is so small. However, on wider displays, the well is bigger, and storing and retrieving palettes becomes easier.


Along the left side of the screen is the toolbox (see Figure 5.3), which contains all of Photoshop's tools, as well as several other functions. The color proxies indicate the foreground and background colors (you can also choose colors by clicking on them), and the two icons surrounding the proxies enable you to set the colors to the default black foreground and white background, and to swap the foreground and background colors. Directly below the proxy icons are the Quick Mask mode buttonswe'll talk more about these useful mask buttons later in the chapterand under those are the different view modes, Standard, Full Screen with Menu Bar, and Full Screen. You can toggle through the view modes by repeatedly pressing the F key on your keyboard (the letter F, not a Function key). The last button at the bottom of the toolbox enables you to open the file you're working on directly in ImageReady.

Figure 5.3. The Photoshop CS2 toolbox.


Did you Know?

Some useful keyboard shortcuts to remember and get used to are the X key, to swap the foreground and background colors, and the D key, to set the colors to their default settings.


Along the right side of your screen are some of Photoshop's palettes. We discuss what each of them does and how to use them as we go through this chapter.

Did you Know?

We talked about custom workspaces in Chapter 4, "The Key That Makes It All Work: Integration," and discussed how you can save your screen setup, including palette locations, which palettes are open or closed, and so forth.


Finally, the document window (see Figure 5.4) is where you work on your file. The gray area is the part of the window that falls outside the image area. Photoshop lists the filename, the view percentage, and the color mode right in the title bar of each file. Along the bottom left of the window, you'll find a zoom indicator as well as the status bar.

Figure 5.4. The Photoshop CS2 document window.




Sams Teach Yourself Adobe Creative Suite 2 All in One
Sams Teach Yourself Creative Suite 2 All in One
ISBN: 067232752X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 225
Authors: Mordy Golding

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