1-GettInG tO KnOW the WOrK area

starting to work in adobe Photoshop

The Adobe Photoshop work area includes menus, toolbars, and panels that give
you quick access to a variety of tools and options for editing and adding elements
to your image. You can also add commands and filters to the menus by installing
third-party software known as plug-ins.
Photoshop works with bitmapped, digitized images (that is, continuous-tone images
that have been converted into a series of small squares, or picture elements, called
pixels). You can also work with vector graphics, which are drawings made of smooth
lines that retain their crispness when scaled. You can create original artwork in
Photoshop, or you can import images from many sources, such as:
• Photographs from a digital camera
• Commercial CDs of digital images
• Scans of photographs, transparencies, negatives, graphics, or other documents
• Captured video images
• Artwork created in drawing programs

starting Photoshop and opening a file
To begin, you’ll start Adobe Photoshop and reset the default preferences.
1 On the desktop, double-click the Adobe Photoshop icon to start Adobe
Photoshop, and then immediately hold down Ctrl+Alt+Shift (Windows)
or Command+Option+Shift (Mac OS) to reset the default settings.
If you don’t see the Photoshop icon on your desktop, choose Start >
All Programs > Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows) or look in either the
Applications folder or the Dock (Mac OS).
2 When prompted, click Yes to confirm that you want to delete the Adobe
Photoshop Settings file.

The Photoshop work area appears as shown in the following illustration.

The default workspace in Photoshop consists of the menu bar and options bar

at the top of the screen, the Tools panel on the left, and several open panels

in the panel dock on the right. When you have documents open, one or more

image windows also appear, and you can display them at the same time using the

tabbed interface. The Photoshop user interface is very similar to the one in Adobe

Illustrator®, Adobe InDesign®, and Adobe Flash®—so learning how to use the tools

and panels in one application means that you’ll know how to use them in the

others.

There is one main difference between the Photoshop work area on Windows and

that on Mac OS: On Mac OS, you can work with an application frame, which contains

the Photoshop application’s windows and panels within a frame that is distinct

from other applications you may have open; only the menu bar is outside the application

frame. The application frame is enabled by default; to disable the application

frame, choose Window > Application Frame.

    On Mac OS, the application frame keeps the image, panels, and menu bar together.