Chapter 3. Acquiring Digital Images

3. Acquiring Digital Images

While Photoshop is a great tool for a lot of tasks, most of them center around the sizing, manipulation, and processing of digital images. While their contents may vary, all digital images are essentially the same: They are composed of pixels that contain color and luminance information. Photoshop's powerful features will allow you to adjust those pixels to better match your needs.

Pixels in detail: When we zoom into the image at 1600% magnification, the pixels are very easy to see. You can open the photo Car in Mirror.tif from the Chapter 3 folder and use the Zoom tool (Z) to magnify the image.

PHOTO BY JIM BALL

While the destination may be the same, the path your digital images take to get inside of Photoshop will vary. Some may start out as digital images acquired with a still camera, while others may get loaded via a scanner. You may also find yourself turning to online resources to find specialized images. Let's take a look at the many ways to acquire your digital images.