Chapter 4: Navigation: Know Where to Go

Overview

A computer-generated image is not really that complex. In fact, it exists most commonly as a series of positive and negative charges on a piece of magnetic media. Quite unlike a drawing, painting, or photograph for which you need only your eyes and a half-decent light source to see, viewing a digital image requires some very fancy electronic equipment, starting with a computer and a monitor. To seriously edit or manipulate the image, you need a big pixel-pusher program such as Adobe Photoshop.

Photoshop is big, all right ”so big that it s quite possible to get confused or lost trying to determine where all the stuff is and what it means. Use this chapter as your road map, because it explains Photoshop s numerous navigation features that enable you to find your way around the program. In this chapter, you ll travel through the workspace, tour the menus and palettes, and zoom through Photoshop s viewing options. By the end of your journey, you ll be a seasoned Photoshop traveler .

In this chapter, you ll learn about:

• Launching the program

• Using Photoshop s GUI

• Viewing Documents

• Accessing menus

• Working with palettes, rulers, guides, and grids

• Displaying an image