On-Line Study Group

PhotoShop 6.x

Read about the Zoom tool (pg. 37) and the Magnification Box (pg. 38-39)
Creating a Reference Window (pg. 40)
Scrolling with Keystrokes (pg. 41)
Navigation Palette (pg. 41)
Preferences (through the end of Chapter 2)

Zoom Tool

• Click the magnifying glass on the toolbox.
• Press Z.
• Use the ctrl-spacebar to toggle to the zoom tool. Release to toggle back to your previous tool.

•  Click on the image to zoom into that spot.
•  Drag a marquee to zoom the window to the area you define.
•  Press Alt to change from zoom in to zoom out.

Zooming Around

Ctrl-zero

Most people want to type Ctrl-O (that's the letter, "oh") instead of Ctrl-0 (that's the numeral, zero). Ctrl-oh will display the Open dialog box. Ctrl-zero will resize your image window.

Ctrl-plus and Ctrl-minus

4. Type Ctrl-- (ctrl-minus). This will zoom farther away from the image.
5. Continue to type ctrl-minus until you can go no farther.
6. Look at the image's title bar. What is the magnification?

Type ctrl-zero to put the image back into a perfectly sized window.
 

Toggling to the Zoom Tool

Using the Alt key with Zoom

Creating a Reference Window

What is a Reference Window?

A reference window is a second window with a view of the image you are working on. You can set the window to show 100% zoom (or any other zoom) while working on a close zoom in the other window.

1. Open an image.
2. Zoom to 100%, if you aren’t there already.
3. Click View > New View
4. Position the New View (reference window).
5. Switch to the original window.
6. Press Ctrl-+ three times, to zoom to 400%.
7. Press B, for paintbrush. D for default color, zero for 100% opacity.
8. Press Shift + [ (left bracket) to select the first brush on the brush palette. (This is a new shortcut. Remember it.)
9. Paint on the image, and watch the reference window (which is 100%) to see what your work looks like.
10. Press ] (the right bracket) to choose the next largest brush. Paint again.
11. Repeat the previous step.
12. Press ] four times and paint on the image. Then press [ (left bracket) three times, and paint again. The brackets let you switch to the next and previous brushes, while the reference window allows you to see the result of your work.

Shortcut Keys for Displaying and Hiding Palettes:

Exercise:

1. Display the toolbox and all the palettes.
2. Press Tab a few times to see what happens.
3. Press Shift-Tab a few times.

Navigator Palette

1. Use the Navigator Palette to zoom in on your image. How far in can you go?
2. Use it to zoom out again to 400%.
3. Move the image by pressing the spacebar and dragging the image around.
4. Move it by dragging the red box in the Navigator Palette. Which is easiest for you? When might you best use each?
5. Click the small mountains on the Navigator Palette to zoom out as far as you can. I went out to .35%. How far can you go?
6. Now move the slider bar in the palette. What happens?

Preferences

1. What are “factory defaults”?
2. According to the text, what are two places for changing default values?
3. What is the name of the preferences file? Where is it located? Find it in your computer. (To find the preferences file, hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and touch the F key. The Find Files dialog box appears. In the “Named” box, type *.psp, and press Enter. After the search is performed, note where the Preferences file is stored.)
4. Why might you want to delete the preferences file?
5. What must you do first, before you delete the preferences file?
6. How can you keep PhotoShop from writing to the Preferences file? Why would you do this?

Setting Preferences

Preference Dialog Box 1: General

1. How do you access the Preferences dialog boxes? (Give two ways.)
2. What should your settings be for Color Picker? Why?
3. What is Interpolation? What should your setting be for Interpolation, and why?
4. Anti-alias Postscript means vector objects imported into PhotoShop will be anti-aliased to soften the edges. Explain this statement.
5. What happens if you turn off the Export Clipboard option?
6. Which button would you click if your palettes got stuck in an inaccessible position?

Version 6 General Preferences

These are my settings for the General preferences box.

Redo Key: Set the Redo to Y, and you can use Ctrl-Z to go back-back-back in your history. Undo, Undo, Undo.
History States: I have the History States set to 50. This means my History palette will display 50 steps before they start getting lost off the top. You can use up 50 steps really fast, if you are painting or making a mask, so remember to take Snapshots if you think you're going to need to go back farther than that.
Use Shift Key for Tool Switch: Turn this setting OFF if you want to use the tool's alphabet shortcut to toggle. For example, to toggle between the rectangular Marquee and the Eliptical Marquee, you would type shift-M, shift-M, etc. If you uncheck this option, you can toggle by typing M, M, M.

Preference Dialog Box 2: Saving Files

1. When might you not want an image preview saved with your image?
2. What does Deke (the author of your textbook) call the “Include Composited Image With Layered Files” option? Why was this option included? (Version 5)

Version 6, Saving Files preferences

I've set this to Never Save because I already get previews with Windows, and saving the preview makes the file size greater.
 

Preference Dialog Box 3: Display & Cursors

1. Use Diffusion Dither. Turn this one ON. If you can’t state why you should do this,  be sure to bring it up for discussion.
2. I hate Video LUT. So does Deke. We both say, “Turn it off.”
3. Brush Size: This, in my opinion, is the preference to be set before you do anything else in PhotoShop, ever. You want to choose Painting Cursors: Brush Size. (Others: leave set at standard.) What does this do to the appearance of your cursor when the Paintbrush, Airbrush, Pencil or History brush is selected? What does it do to the appearance of your cursor when the Bucket, Wand, Lasso, etc. are selected? Why?

My Display and Cursor settings.

Preference Dialog Box 4: Transparency & Gamut

Remember when Walt Disney showed us how he drew cartoons on clear sheets of plastic? A layer, in PhotoShop, is like one of those sheets of plastic. When you create a new image with a white background, that just means the plastic is painted over with white. If you create a new image and specify Transparent background, you will see a checkerboard pattern when the new canvas opens.

My Transparency and Gamut settings.

Do it now:

1. Ctrl-Double-click on the PhotoShop desktop, or type Ctrl-N, or click File > New.
2. Create a canvas 5” x 5”, 72 pixels/inch, RGB, Contents: Transparent.
3. Imagine that you are looking at a clear sheet of plastic.
4. Press B, D, 0 (zero). Paint a picture of a peapod on the background sheet of clear plastic. (Yeah, a peapod. Well, why not?)

The checkerboard is PhotoShop’s way of telling you that you are looking into a bottomless hole – straight through a transparent layer with nothing below it. We’ll talk about layers and transparency in a later lesson. For now, all you need to know is, you can change the appearance of the checkerboard (the space beneath the layers).

I happen to prefer a rosy grid, and pink contrasts with the green. If I'd been painting roses, pink might not have been a good choice.

In addition to the color, the grid has a checkerboard pattern to distinguish it from the pixels in the image. But what if you were painting a picture of your mother’s breakfast table, which was decked with a pink and white checkered tablecloth? You’d have trouble telling the picture from the transparency. So you’d need to change the appearance of the squares in the checkerboard. Here’s how:

1. Open the Transparency & Gamut Preference box.
2. Click the drop-down arrow beside the Grid Size box.
3. Select the size checks you want.
4. Click the drop down arrow beside Grid Colors.
5. Choose DARK
6. Click the first Color box, and set it to green. Set the second Color box to red.
7. If you hate the effect, you can reset the option without closing the dialog box: Hold down the Alt key and click the Reset button. (When you hold down the Alt key in a PhotoShop dialog box, the Cancel button changes to Reset. This lets you continue to set options without closing the dialog. Try this in other PhotoShop dialog boxes.)
8. Choose a grid size, lightness and color scheme you think you can live with, and click OK.

Gamut warning:

Preference Dialog Box 5: Units & Rulers

Preference Dialog Box 6: Guides & Grid

If your rulers are not visible, press Ctrl-R. Then click in the top ruler and drag down, into your image. A guideline will be pulled down from the Ruler, kind of like pulling down a window shade. You can also pull vertical guidelines from the side Ruler. The lines won’t print. You can move them with the Move tool. Drag them off the canvas to get rid of it. Press Ctrl-; (ctrl-plus-semicolon) to make them disappear. This does not delete them.

Note: Placing guidelines and turning on the Snap to option helps align objects. OTOH, if you are drawing and find you can’t place a line or an object where you want, you probably have the Snap To feature turned on, and you need to turn it off, or move the guideline.

The guidelines are bright blue, by default. If you were painting on a blue sky, you wouldn’t be able to see the lines, so you can change their color to suit your needs. Open Preference Box 6: Guides & Grid, and change the color of the guidelines, either by clicking the drop-down arrow and selecting a color, or by clicking the color swatch, just as you did for the checkerboard.

The Grid will appear if you  click View > Show View. You can’t delete the grid; you can only hide it. You can also change the frequency of the grid lines in the Preference Dialog box 6.

Preference Dialog Box 7: Plug-ins and Scratch Disk

Scratch files are a temporary record of the image you are working on. The program “remembers” the image, first, by storing the definition in its RAM. When the image size exceeds the RAM, the program writes the definition on a hard disk. In this dialog box, you tell the program where to write this record.

It’s a good idea to assign a different hard disk as the scratch disk – not the start up disk (which is the C:\ drive.) If you have space enough, you can partition a large drive and assign the partition as the scratch disk. You should try to keep that disk clear of other files. You shouldn’t assign a removable disk (a zip disk, for example) as a scratch disk.

You can assign up to four different disks, in any order, as scratch disks. If the program doesn't have enough free disk space to write the virtual memory on, it will either refuse to perform the task you have set it, or it will freeze.

Read the section in your text book, and be prepared to ask your questions or discuss these features.

When will changes to this dialog box take effect?

Preference Dialog Box 8: Physical Memory Usage

Don’t give PhotoShop more than 80%. If the program seems to run slow, and the efficiency indicator on the status bar tells you the scratch disk is often being used, buy more memory.

Note your questions, and bring them to the discussion group.

Annotating an Image

1. Open a new image.
2. Draw a picture of a dog. (No, the artwork does NOT count. Don’t take more than 5 minutes on your “sketch.”)
3. Click File > File Info
4. Note the Next button. Scroll through all the panels, and come back to the Caption section. Click the drop-down arrow beside the Section window to see the list of panels.
5. Create a caption for your image.
6. Print the image.

Questions about Zooming:

1. How can you size the canvas to display your entire image?
2. What is the greatest magnification you can get by zooming closer on an image?
 
 

Answers:
1. Type ctrl-zero.
2. 1600%