Photoshop for Beginners

Aspyn Lim’s Blog Post #2

Hyejung Lim
13 min readSep 9, 2020
Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash
[Figma]
🌱 Figma - 30 Time-saving Tricks from Figma Experts
[Photoshop]
🌱 Envato Tuts+ - Photoshop for Beginners (CURRENT)

🌱 Photoshop Tutorial by Envato Tuts+ on YouTube.

Table of Contents

1) Layers
2) Color & Adjustment Layers
3) Text
4) Layer Styles
5) Cropping & Resizing
6) Selections & Masking
7) Smart Objects
8) Transform & Wrap
9) Retouching
10) Exporting

[ Shortcuts ]

  • Zoom In/Out : Ctrl + + or -
  • Move around the canvas : Hold Shift
  • Quit editing : Enter
  • Move Tool : V
Turning off “Auto-Select” helps us to move things around easily.

[ 0. Workspace Settings ]

[ 1. Layers ]

1.1 How Photoshop Layers Work

1.2 Combining Multiple Images

  • Move images into a new file by clicking the images and dragging them to the new file.
  • Edit > Transform > Scale

When you finish editing, press Enter.

[ 2. Colors & Adjustment Layers ]

2.1 Tone Adjustment with Levels

Drag the triangles to adjust the levels

2.2 Color Adjustment

2.3 Hue Adjustment

[ 3. Text ]

3.1 How to Work With Type

  • Move images into a new file by clicking the images and dragging them to the new file.
  • Edit > Transform > Scale

3.2 Warped Type and Type on a Path

[ PART 1 ]

Move the text along the line with the Path Selection Tool

[ PART 2 ]

Properties > Paragraph : Centered

[ PART 3 ]

[ 4. Layer Styles ]

To change the name of a layer, double click the layer.

4.1 Layer Styles and Effects

[ PART 1 ]

Angle : 93, Distance : 36px, Size : 5px
Added “Stroke”

[ PART 2 ]

[ PART 3 ]

[ PART 4 ]

[ PART 5 ]

[ 5. Cropping & Resizing ]

5.1 How to Crop

[ PART 1 ]

[ PART 2 ]

“Content Aware” fills up the background not covered by the size of the photo.

5.2 Resizing and Resolution

[ 6. Selections and Masking ]

6.1 Rectangle and Elliptical Marquee Tool

[ PART 1]

Drag the image to the “Untitled-1” file.

[ PART 2 ]

6.2 Clipping Masks

[ PART 1 ]

Layer > Create Clipping Mask
  • We can scale up/down or move around the roses background.

[ PART 2 ]

[ PART 3 ]

6.3 Quick Selection Tool

[ PART 1 ]

[ PART 2 ]

Select > Modify > Contract

[ PART 3 ]

Click the image with the Move tool & drag it to where you want to move the image to.

Scale down & Rotate

[ PART 4 ]

6.4 Layer Masks

[ PART 1–1 ]

[ PART 1-2 ]

[ PART 1-3 ]

[ PART 1-4 ]

Click the image with the Move tool & drag it to where you want to move the image to.

[ PART 2–1 ]

[ PART 2–2 ]

Click the image with the Move tool & drag it to where you want to move the image to.

[ PART 2–3 ]

Click the “link” icon.

We can move around the image.

6.5 Select and Mask

[ PART 1 ]

[ PART 2 ]

Place your mouse cursor on the size of the brush & adjust the size with “[“ or “]

[ PART 3 ]

BEFORE vs AFTER
BEFORE vs AFTER

[ 7. Smart Objects ]

7.1 Understanding Photoshop Smart Objects

[ PART 1 ]

Right click the layer
The quality will not be affected when sizing down and up.

[ PART 2 ]

If you’d like to edit the smart object. you can rasterize the layer.

Right click the layer.

Rasterizing a Photoshop layer converts a vector layer to pixels. Vector layers create graphics using lines and curves so they maintain their clarity when you enlarge them, but this format leaves them unsuitable for artistic effects that use pixels. … To add any of these filters, you must first rasterize the layer.

[ PART 3 ]

[ PART 4 ]

Double click the Smart Object thumbnail.

When editing the image in Illustrator, changes are reflected in Photoshop.

[ 8. Transform & Warp ]

8.1 Transforming and Warping Layers

We can use a logo made in Illustrator in Photoshop by placing it embedded.

[ PART 1 ]

File > Place Embedded…
Right click the layer.

[ PART 2 ]

We can use a logo made in Illustrator in Photoshop by placing it embedded.

[ 9. Retouching ]

9.1 Retouching With the Photoshop Healing Brush

BEFORE vs AFTER
BEFORE vs AFTER
BEFORE vs AFTER

9.2 Content-Aware Scale

[ PART 1 ]

Edit > Content-Aware Scale
Scale vs Content-Aware Scale

[ PART 2 ]

Edit > Content-Aware Scale

[ PART 3 ]

Edit > Content-Aware Scale

> The paper in the middle got stretched.

Let’s try another way.

Select > Save Selection
Edit > Content-Aware Scale

[ 10. Exporting ]

10.1 Exporting Images

[ PART 1 : Photoshop PDF ]

Edit > Save As…

[ PART 2 : JPEG ]

Edit > Save As…

[ PART 3 : Social Media ]

File > Export > Export As…

[ PART 4 : Social Media ]

File > Export > Export As…
Quality : 66%

Thanks for reading! 🎵 If you like this blog post, please clap👏

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