INTERFACE
When you try to look at the interface of the Adobe Photoshop CS4, you will be amazed of how intuitive and easy to use the tools offered by the software compared to its predecessors. At the left hand side of the window you will see the toolbox (1). It contains the tools you will use to edit your images. Above that is the tool options bar(2) which contains additional information about the current tool selected. At the right of the screen are one or more panels(3) that contain more commands and settings used to work with images. At the top of the screen is a set of menus(4) with drop-down options containing commands, many of which you will nd duplicated o the right hand panels. You will notice some new interface elements that bring Adobe Photoshop CS4 in to line with the interface of other Adobe applications. One of which is the application bar(5).
On a PC, the application bar is combined with the menu bar. On a Mac, the application bar is separate. It contains some commonly used tools such as the hand tool and the zoom tool, viewing modes and screen modes and some extra tools you will nd useful later on when you start working on your projects. And lastly, the document window(6) is used to
display open documents and some useful information about a file.
TOOLBOX
The Photoshop toolbox is located at the left side of the screen; it contains the tools you will use to edit your images. The default single column toolbox can be changed to a two-column toolbox by clicking on the double arrow at the upper left corner of the
toolbox, click again to bring it back to its original state. The first thing to know about tools is that, there are more than meet the eye. There are so many tools, that they all don’t t in the toolbox, and so what Adobe has done is hid some tools behind others. If you see a tool with a black arrow-head at the lower right corner of the tool icon, click and hold on that tool and you will see a list of related hidden tool icons.
To select one of those tools, you just move your cursor to one of the items in the y-out menu and release. There is another way of selecting tools, and that is by using keyboard shortcuts. You don’t have to memorize each keyboard shortcut for each tool in the
toolbox. In fact if you move your cursor over a tool for a few seconds, you will see a tooltip with the corresponding keyboard shortcut. Using keyboard shortcuts will help you to become more efficient and more productive when working in Adobe Photoshop.
Whenever you select a tool in the toolbox, notice the tool option bar updates to become specific to the tool you have selected.
Sometimes, when you change the options in the tool options bar, they have a tendency to become sticky and retain the settings you have made to them the last time you used a specific tool. This can be annoying at times when you want it to go back to its original
settings for another project. Or if there are different users who use the same computer and you want to revert to the tools default settings. Then you have to remember how to reset the tools option to their defaults. On Windows, Right-Click on the tool icon on the
tool options bar, on a Mac Ctrl+Click on the tool icon on the tool options bar.
A menu will pop up with two listed options. Clicking on the Reset Tool will allow you to reset the options for the currently active tool, while clicking on Reset All Tools will reset the tool options for all tools in your toolbox. I recommend resetting all your tools between projects or if another user has just finished using the same machine. You don’t need to memorize all the tools at this point as you will learn how to use each of them as we go along.
VIEWING & SCROLLING
Zoom Tool 
• Double click on Zoom Tool – 100% view
• Bring Zoom Tool to image and click – magnifies image view 100%
• Bring Zoom Tool to image, press ALT and click reduces image view 100%
• Bring Zoom Tool to image, click mouse dragging it to define area
magnifies image area defined.
Navigator – Permits viewing and scrolling
• Menu Window / Show Navigator
• Slider – Increase or decrease image view area.
• Rectangle – Positioning the mouse inside the Navigator moving the rectangle with the Hand scrolls the viewing area.
Scroll Bars – Allows to scroll viewing area by:
• clicking on the arrows,
• moving the buttons,
• clicking on the area before or after the button.
Hand Tool – Scrolls the viewing area.
• Double click Hand Tool – Fit Image on Screen
• Bring Hand Tool to image and drag it around – scrolls the viewing area
• Pressing SPACE BAR while selecting an area moves the area being selected
SELECTION TOOLS
Selection in Adobe Photoshop means isolating part of an image that needs special attention. The area selected may need to be darker or lighter, have its colors altered, or you may want to move the area selected or copy and paste it in a different place. The tools used to select an area are:
Marquee Tools:
Rectangular Marquee Tool
Allow you to define a rectangular area by clicking at one side of the area you want to isolate and then dragging to the other side. This will create a box-shaped selection that is denoted by dotted lines around the edge.
Elliptical Marquee Tool
Allow you to define a elliptical area by clicking at one side of the area you want to isolate and then dragging to the other side. This will create a oval-shaped selection that is denoted by dotted lines around the edge.
Single Row Marquee Tool and Single Column Marquee Tool
Allow you to select an area of 1-pixel-high row or column by clicking on the image.
For Rectangular, Elliptical Marque Tools:
Pressing ALT while selecting makes selection have the place you first clicked as a center point for the selection.
Pressing SHIFT while selecting constrain the proportion of the rectangle or ellipse to a square or perfect circle.
Pressing SPACE BAR while selecting an area moves the area being selected.
Lasso Tools:
Freehand Lasso Tool
Allow you to define an irregular area by freehand tracing it with the mouse.
Bring the end point to the beginning point to close the area. If not, Photoshop will close the area by itself.
Polygonal Lasso Tool
Allow you to define an irregular area by clicking and moving the cursor, clicking and moving again, and so on. Bring the end point to the beginning point to close the area. If not, Photoshop will close the area by itself.
Magnetic Lasso Tool
Allow you to define an irregular area that have similar color pixels. Click in the image to set the first fastening point. Fastening points anchor the selection border in place. Move the cursor along the edge you want to trace. (You can also drag with the mouse button depressed.) The most recent segment of the selection border remains active. As you move the cursor, the active segment snaps to the strongest edge in the image. Periodically, the magnetic lasso tool adds fastening points to the selection border to anchor previous segments. If the border doesn’t snap to the desired edge, click once to add a fastening point manually. Continue to trace the edge and add fastening points as needed. Double click to close the selection.
Crop Tool
Allow you to define an area of the image to be cropped by clicking at one side of the area you want to isolate and then dragging to the other side. A box-shaped selection with handles will appear around the image. Moving the handles allow you to resize and rotate the boundaries of the image to be cropped.
Click on the Crop Tool to confirm, cancel or don’t crop the image. You can also press ENTER after the area is defined to confirm the crop, os press ESC to cancel the crop.
Magic Wand Tool
Allow you to select an area that have similar color pixels. Just click on the pixel and Photoshop will select an area that have similar color pixels to the one color pixel you initially selected. Tolerance in the Options Palette will allow you to define how many shades of the color pixel selected are being selected. The more the tolerance, the more colors Photoshop will select.
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