General Information
FAQ, and other basic stuff
Q: Which version of Photoshop is featured on this site?
A: Photoshop 6.0, and 5.5 for Windows 98.
Q: There are so many tools, commands, shortcuts, and procedures,
where should I start?
A: Anywhere. Relax. Play with the buttons, sliders, menus, pop-ups,
dialog boxes, tools, filters, and anything else that shows up on the screen.
You don't have to try to learn anything specific; let the program lead
you where it may.
Q: I have a specific thing I have to do by tomorrow and
I don't know how. What should I do?
A: Call in sick. If you try to force yourself to learn Photoshop
in a small amount of time, you'll end up hating it.
Q: What's on this site that's not in the Adobe Photoshop owner's
manual?
A: All of the information provided here comes from the manual.
However, of necessity, the Adobe manual has been written for all levels
of experience from beginner to expert. My site has been created specifically
for total beginners.
Q: Are you affiliated with Adobe in any way?
A: Good grief, no! I'm a beginner, and an amateur, just like you.
Q: What are the most common mistakes you make?
A: Forgetting to select the layer I want to work on before starting,
and forgetting to check a tool's options settings. I tend to click on
a tool and charge merrily along without noticing that I'm on the wrong
layer, the wrong opacity, and the wrong blend mode. Boo.
Q: Have you had any problems with Photoshop 6.0?
A: No. I have it installed on two computers. One is a two year
old Compaq with 192 MB of RAM, and the other is a very new Dell with 256
MB of RAM. Both work perfectly. The only thing that is a little slow is
the Layer Styles dialog box which has a slight hesitation (about two seconds)
before it opens.
Q: What is feathering?
A: It fuzzes the edges of selections just a tiny bit to make them
appear more natural. In real life, objects have depth, and light falls
off gradually around their outline. If you create razor sharp edges on
your image's objects, they look funny and unrealistic.
Q: What is anti-aliasing?
A: Pixels are square. They're stacked up in a grid with vertical
sides, and horizontal top and bottoms. They fill vertical and horizontal
lines just fine, but curvy, or slanted lines necessarily use the pointy
edges of the square pixels. This creates a jagged edge. Anti-aliasing
smooths the appearance of these pixels by softening the color transition
between the edge color, and the background colors. You do have to remember
to choose it before using a tool.
Q: What does Preserve Transparency do?
A: When this option is chosen in the Layers
palette, it prevents you from adding pixels to transparent areas on
a layer, as you would expect. As you might not expect, it also prevents
you from creating any additional transparent areas on that layer. For
example, dragging the eraser tool across
a colored area of a layer which has transparency locked will fill the
erased area with the background color, not transparency. Preserve Transparency
prevents editing of the layer's transparency in any fashion, plus
or minus.
Q: Where is the GIF89 feature for exporting transparent GIFs from
Photoshop 6.0?
A: It's not installed automatically, anymore. It's on the Photoshop
installation disk at GOODIES\Optional Plug-Ins\Photoshop Only\Export\GIF89aExport.8be.
Copy it into your plugins folder, and you'll be in business.
For a answers to frequently asked questions about poor performance of Photoshop, printing problems, installation difficulties, and a myriad of other topics such as how to remove red eye, and make the copyright symbol in Photoshop, try the FAQs in the Adobe User to User forums. There is a Windows FAQ, and a Macintosh FAQ. You might want to read them both.
If you have technical problems with the program, check the Photoshop Top Issues page at the Adobe site.
Whenever Photoshop starts behaving badly, crashing, freezing, or not performing procedures properly, it is recommended that you try deleting your preferences file. A corrupt preferences file is often the cause of problems in Photoshop. So, where is the darn thing?
To find the 6.0 preferences file, Adobe recommends that you use Find
and search for the file as it installs to different locations on different
systems. On my computer it's at C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Adobe\Photoshop\6.0\Adobe
Photoshop 6 Settings. The 5.5 version is in this folder, C:\Program
Files\Adobe\Photoshop 5.5\Adobe Photoshop 5.5 Settings.
In the folder are a number of files. If you are unsure if you've found
the right one, right click on it, and choose Properties from that menu
that pops up. The correct file will show properties like this (this is
only the top portion of the properties box):
I don't cover ImageReady on this site, but you may also want to try deleting the ImageReady preferences file. The procedure for doing that is different than for Photoshop where you simply go into the folder, and delete the file.
In ImageReady, what you need to do is press and hold Alt + Ctrl + Shift immediately after launching ImageReady. Then click “Yes” in the dialog box that appears to delete the preferences file.
Note that in Photoshop 6.0 the same procedure, pressing Alt + Control + Shift the instant you start to launch Photoshop, and clicking Yes will delete the preferences file.
Shown below are two of the dialog boxes where you can set overall Photoshop preferences. These are found at Edit >Preferences in version 6.0, and File > Preferences in version 5.5. You will have to redo them if you delete your preferences file (see above), but in any case, you should take a look at them and at least pick a cursor style. I prefer Brush size for Painting, and Standard for Other.
Note that if Caps Lock is in effect, your cursor choices will be affected. For example, if you have chosen Brush size in preferences, it will be changed to Precise on the screen.
A useful tip to remember; in many of the Photoshop dialog boxes, pressing the Alt key will change the Cancel button to be called Reset. Clicking this, (while pressing Alt) will reset all the dialog box's settings to their defaults. Handy if you've made a really big mess, but don't want to exit the dialog.
The General Preferences shown below are from version 6.0. Note that the number of saved history states is now set in this box, and not in the History palette.
If you're looking for recommended books about Photoshop, and related topics, find them on my Recommended Books page. You will not find any Amazon affiliate links there.
I have an extensive, categorized list of links to other people's Photoshop tutorials. Many feature special effects, textures, buttons, and unusual graphics that I don't cover here.
When you read the Adobe manual, and look at a lot of the Photoshop sites on the Web, you will get the feeling that there is a “right” way to do things; that images are better with a histogram that looks like such and so, and you should sweat blood to get your colors to be precisely, exactly one particular way.
Unless you are working for a commercial outfit, this is baloney.
You need to learn how to use all the features in Photoshop so that you can make them serve your vision. The real world doesn't have pure colors, or perfect shadow and highlight detail, or spotless surfaces everywhere. There are no “bad” colors, or “wrong” ways to illustrate your ideas. If you can comfortably, and intuitively use Photoshop to express what you want to show or illustrate, then it's doing its job.
If you're nervous or inhibited about playing with the program, save extra copies of everything you like. Work on the copy, not the original. And remember, you have oodles of undo capability in the History palette.
6.0Tools | 6.0
Palettes
5.5 Tools | 5.5 Palettes
Effects | Filler Images
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