The working environment

In this course, I use the version of Photoshop CS5 Extended. If you use the standard version, that does not really matter.
The extended version includes all features from Photoshop CS5 plus some specialized features such as support for 3D and video workflows, animation and image depth analysis.

When we open Photoshop, we get to see or feel something about the picture.  This is the default workspace of Photoshop CS5. A workspace is divided into several elements.  At the top of the workspace, we find the elements “Application Bar” and “shift knob workspace”.  This comprises a toggle button for setting the “Workspace”, a number of menus and other controls.

Below the Application bar, we find the “Menu bar”. In the menu bar we find all possible commands in Photoshop.  If we click on one of these commands, it opens a drop-down menu with more commands. Besides some of these commands, a shortcut is listed, clicking on these buttons on our keyboards will run this command. When we point the mouse pointer over a command with a black arrow next to it, it opens a submenu (see the second picture).

Below the menu bar we have the “Options Bar”. Depending on the tool selected in the “Toolbox”, this shows us the different possible options for the selected tool.

And on the right side of the workspace, we have several “panels”.  By clicking on the left or right pointing double arrows at the top of the panels, you can collapse or expand.

 

The toolbox

Here we find some of the tools available in Photoshop.

	Move		Pen
	Marquee		Horizontal text
	Lasso		Path Selection
	Wand		Rectangle
	Cut out		3D Rotate
	Pipette		3D rotation
	Spot Healing Brush		Hand
	Paintbrush		Zoom
	Clone Stamp		1.Standard foreground and background colors 2. Foreground and Background color change
	History Brush		Setup Foreground and Background Color
	Eraser		Edit in quick mask mode
	Course
	Fade
	Stop

If we click on a button with a downward-pointing triangle (1), it opens a drop-down menu with more available tools.  You can use the toolbox in one or two columns by double clicking in the top corner of the toolbox (2).

If not all, most of the tools in Photoshop are discussed in this course.

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