[Music] all right welcome to 30 days of Photoshop today is day 1 and we're giving you a tour of Photoshop hey there and welcome to phlearn my name is Aaron NACE you can find me on phlearn comm where we make learning fun and welcome to this special 30 days of Photoshop Series now if you haven't already done so be sure to sign up for the 30 days of Photoshop you can just follow the link whoop right up there where you can download the sample images you'll also get a calendar where you can follow along descriptions of each of the individual days and everything that you need to go from beginner and Photoshop all the way to master things like compositing retouching and more so today is day 1 we're starting off with the tour of Photoshop and talking about the benefits of using Photoshop as compared to other image editing programs so Photoshop is the most advanced and comprehensive photo editing program out there it'll let you do everything from basic adjustments all the way up to advanced compositing and retouching and that's why I love using this program because there's really no restriction as to what you can do with your images however if you're just looking to make very simple edits maybe changing the white balance of the exposure of your photograph there are programs that are designed to be a little bit more simple like Lightroom Photoshop actually allows you to edit images just like you would in Lightroom but a whole lot more so there's really no limit on your creativity when using an advanced photo editor like Photoshop so we're starting off with our tour let's jump into Photoshop so here we are in Photoshop now the first thing we're gonna do is open our sample image and you can actually download the sample image on phlearn calm just follow the link right down below so we're gonna go to file and down to open and then here we're in our images which you can download and we're going to go to - or Photoshop jpg we've got a fluffy looking awesome picture of a dog and to start off I'm gonna click on f4 fullscreen that's just gonna hide everything else so we basically see just our image so you'll notice we've got quite a bit going on in the program and it looks like there's so much but it's broken up into a couple of different panels and understanding what those panels to makes things a lot simpler so let's start off with a general overview of the different areas in Photoshop we have our tools the options for our tools and we have our palettes and then at the very top we have our file menu so let's get started with our tools which will allow you to do basic editing in Photoshop so we start off with our move tool which will allow you to move layers around we have a couple of selection tools that allow you to select certain areas now once you have an area selected you'll only be able to edit in that area and we've got an entire episode on its selections coming up soon we've got our crop tool for changing the size of your image an eyedropper tool for selecting certain colors we've got tools for removing objects like our Spot Healing Brush tool as well as the clone stamp tool you can paint on your image with the brush tool you can also add gradients with the gradient tool you can dodge and burn here add a blur and even make advanced selections with the pen tool you can create shapes with the shape tool and change it if you like rotate your canvas and zoom in and out right here and then on the bottom you've got your color Pickers where you can simply click and choose what color you'd like to edit with your photograph now throughout the 30 days of Photoshop we're going to go through all the most commonly used tools and applications so don't worry if it seems a little bit overwhelming right now we're gonna go through with them one by one so you have a good idea of what everything does next we're gonna go ahead and take a look at our options bar so you'll notice as I select different tools here on the left hand side we have different options up here that correspond to those tools for instance if I grab a selection tool I can choose what type of selection I'm gonna make whether I want to feather this edge and I can choose the different style that I'd like for that as well if I want to crop my image you can see that I can change the ratio of my crop I can add straightening and I have some other options to delete cropped pixels and I could do a content-aware crop as well and then things like my brush tool I can change the opacity the flow of my brush as well so every different tool that you choose has different options built into it and that's right up here in your options bar next we're moving on to our palettes and these give you more information and control over your photograph now pallets can be arranged in many different ways so your version of Photoshop likely looks a little bit different from how I've got things arranged we've got things here to basically show a great presentation for tutorials but if there's any time that I mention something and you don't see it here you can always go to window and find any of your pallets right here so for instance if I go to my histogram there we go let's go ahead and bring this up this will bring up the color and light information in my photograph in this case we have a spike on the right hand side telling me that most of my photograph is pretty light if we had a spike on the left hand side it would be saying most of my image is pretty dark and that makes sense looking at my image now let's say you don't have histogram there you could always go to window and down to histogram and it would go ahead and open it up for you now these palettes can be arranged and organized however you'd like let's say you're working on a graphic flyer and you were working with a lot of text well you might want to go out here to your character menu which will allow you to choose your different font faces here you can choose your different font weights your sizes and different things like that maybe you want to pull this out so you can see it's kind of docked for me right now I can click here which is gonna expand this out let's say I want this to show up all the time I can go ahead and click on this tab and simply bring it out we're gonna put this right over here and I'm gonna do the same thing with my paragraph there we go so as I'm using my type tools these are always going to be there as I move my image around you can see these are going to stay there the entire time now I can combine these together if I'd like by clicking right here on this little tab and putting it up here with the other tab and you can see they're both in the same menu and if I'd like I can go ahead and collapse this down and expand it back out again and of course I can put it right back where it was the first time so it's hanging out here with everything else and everything is condensed now you can also save workspaces for different types of work let's say I do want to have a workspace just for when I'm making graphics and text well I can go ahead and click these out let's go ahead and expand them there we go so we have our character menu in our paragraph menu which I want to be always visible next I'm gonna go ahead and save these out by going to window down to workspace and going to new workspace and we're just gonna call this graphics and text now you can decide what you'd like to actually be part of this workspace you can save your keyboard shortcuts your menus and your toolbar in this case we're just gonna hit save and this is gonna be my graphics and text now now I'm gonna go ahead and put these back and let's say the next time we want to work on our graphics and text workspace what we have to do is go to window down to workspace and go to graphics and text and take a look at that they're exactly where we save them as or I can go back to what we were before just aaron tutorial and they're back right over here and I can go ahead and nest them together again so you can add or remove different palettes based on the type of work that you're doing and based on what you commonly use in Photoshop so my suggestion after the 30 days a Photoshop would be to figure out which of these tools you actually use frequently and have those visible and then go ahead and hide everything else you can always get back to it again just by going to your window menu so here's some of the common windows that I tend to use here we have our history our property window our histogram and adjustment layers next we have our brushes and our brush settings next we have our characters our paragraph and some actions as well so you can rearrange these again at any time you'd like add or remove them there don't go away permanently you can always put them back next we're moving on to some larger palettes now I have my Navigator palette here very large the only reason for this is so I can put a video of me right up here in the very top corner so you can see me at all times during these tutorials when I'm working in Photoshop generally I have a slightly different layout if I'm not making a tutorial and down here we have our layers channels and paths which are all grouped together for now we're just gonna talk about layers which were one of the cornerstones of working in Photoshop so our day three of Photoshop is all about layers we're gonna show you everything you need to know but between your basic tools and your layers that's where you're going to be doing the majority of your work so for instance let's go ahead and create a new layer just click on this little plus icon here and I'm gonna go ahead and grab my Spot Healing Brush tool and I want to remove this little post on the background so we're just gonna click and drag right over here on this little post there we go and let go and you can see it completely removes it's incredibly easy to do I will do a little bit more cleanup and there we go now because that was on a new layer I can turn this layer off and on at any time and get that back if I want to get it back or I can leave it gone and layers are one of the things that makes Photoshop so powerful because you can actually save out a document with all of your layers and tags so at any time you can come back and turn these layers off and on because at no point are you doing anything destructive to that original image so throughout these 30 days not only are you gonna learn Photoshop but you're gonna learn the best way to use Photoshop and that's non-destructively so by now we've gone over our tools or options and our different palettes now it's time to go over our menus so photoshop's menu system is where we access our more advanced controls and do our file management like opening and saving now just a little note I'm using a Macintosh computer if you guys are using a PC it might look a little bit different but everything is going to be there so we're gonna start off with our Photoshop here's where we can go down to our preferences and things to see things like our interface or export options and change our performance options next we're going to our file menu and here's all of our file management so things like opening closing saving and exporting out in our edit menu we're gonna see things like undo and redo we have some more advanced tools here and we can even go in down down the bottom and change our keyboard shortcuts which is very powerful we're gonna be giving you keyboard shortcuts through these 30 days that's the one way to get fast at Photoshop is learning your keyboard shortcuts for every different tool and feature and you're gonna be surprised at what you learn by the end of these 30 days because we're putting the keyboard shortcuts on the screen every time I mention one next we have our image menu and here's where you can do things like Auto tone and color your image you can change the size of your image and even do more advanced things like Anna the measurements and scales of your image in our layer menu we can add new layers you can change layer styles including things like a bevel and emboss maybe you want to do a pattern overlay we'll show you how to use things like layer masks and smart objects and you can even merge your layers down in the bottom we have a lot of options for type and while we start using type in later tutorials we'll show you how to use many of these things to enhance the type in your images our selection menu is just for selections and again selections allow you to only edit certain areas of your photos we've got an entire episode on selections coming up soon here you can do things like select all deselect you can select a color range you can even just select your subject and you can even save and load selections as well in your filter menu you can do things like blur and sharpen you can even distort your image and make it look like a painting some really cool things or hidden in this menu and we're gonna show you how to use some of the most commonly filters throughout this series Photoshop also includes tools for doing basic 3d modeling and rendering and that's all available in your 3d menu here in your view menu you can do things like zoom in and out you can show all types of different features here in Photoshop and you can add things like guides or rulers if you need to do a little bit of measuring in your photos we've already talked about the window menu but we'll show you how to arrange everything so you have multiple images together you can arrange them here you can save and load different workspaces and of course we have all of our different windows to access different parts of Photoshop and last but very much not least we have our help menu which is very very well done let's say I'm describing something and you're not sure where to find it in Photoshop let's say I'm talking about gradients all you have to do is type in gradients and all of a sudden we have all these different areas where we can add gradients so if we want to just take a look at our gradients window we can see that or look at this there's a layer style called a gradient overlay and we can take a look at that as well so if I ever mention something and you're not sure where it was or if you think oh man Aaron talked about gradients in Episode four but I don't remember where they are simply go to your help menu type it in and it's going to show you exactly where you can find it within Photoshop so that's our tour of Photoshop now I know there's a lot going on but don't worry by the end of these 30 days you're gonna feel very comfortable using Photoshop and even confident with advanced techniques like retouching and compositing thank you so much for watching don't forget to sign up for the calendar daily reminders and your sample images you can follow the link on your screen or right down below join us for these 30 days of Photoshop I can't wait to get started thank you so much i'll phlearn you later bye everyone [Music]