Photoshop 101: Know Your Panels
Understanding your workspace is one of the most difficult feats to overcome when first starting out in Photoshop. This article is in no way meant to be a substitution for experimentation and exploration. The only way you’ll ever truly understand Photoshop is to navigate through it on your own.
In this article, we’ll be covering the following aspects of the Photoshop workspace:
Panel Options
Every panel (with very few exceptions) have their own set of options. These options can be accessed by clicking on the contextual menu icon in the upper right-hand corner of the panel (shown at left).
The Options Panel
Not to be confused with panel options, the Options panel is what spans across the top of the workspace. When you select a tool from the toolbar this panel will display many of the options associated with that tool. My only advice here is to study how it changes whenever you select a different tool, you may discover a hidden option you had never seen before.
The Color Panel
There is very little to say about the color panel: use it to select a color. Personally, I don’t use it very often, but you can use it if you want. Grab the sliders to adjust the color until it is to your liking. Alternatively, you can double-click the color swatch you are editing and edit it through the color picker dialog.
Hidden behind this panel is the Swatches panel (my personal favorite) and the Styles panel (useful for applying your saved Layer Styles).
The Type Panel
Unlike the color panel, there is quite a lot to look at in the type panel. Try not to get overwhelmed. At the top you can select your font family and style. Beneath that you can select the font size, line height, and letter spacing (I’ll spare you from the technical terms for now).
In the next section you can adjust the horizontal and vertical scaling of the font, if you want to completely destroy the letterforms, that is.Beneath that you can adjust the baseline of the font, as well as it’s color.
Finally, along the bottom of the panel, are some simple text transformation options. In order they are: Faux Bold, Faux Italics, All Caps, Small Caps, Superscript Subscript, underline and strike-through. Behind the Character panel is the Paragraph panel where you can modify the alignment and indentation of your text (Note: to create a paragraph, click and drag a text area using the Text tool).
The History Panel
Even better than Undo and Redo is the History Panel. In the event that you have made undesirable changes to the document, the history panel allows you to go back in time to before they ever happened.The buttons along the bottom of the window allow you to Make a New Document from Current State, Create a Snapshot of the current state, and Delete the Current State (similar to Undo).
What’s the benefit of a Snapshot, you ask? With a snapshot you can immediately jump back to a point where you were happy with the image, prior to all of the radical changes. This is also very useful if you are in the habit of running out of history states and can’t go back far enough to undo a mistake. Note: You can increase the number of available history states by opening Performance preferences within Photoshop (Mac: Photoshop > Preferences > Performance; PC: Edit > Preferences > Performance).
The Layers Panel
The Layers panel is easily the most powerful area in all of Photoshop. Revel in its glory. Go ahead, no need to feel embarrassed, I’ll wait. Ready? Okay! We have a lot to go over here, so please bear with me.
Layers Rock!
When used correctly, layering an image can produce some impressive results. Layers allow for separate elements to be moved and altered independently from one another; they can be stacked and positioned in any way you see fit. Think of them as transparencies, always showing through to the uncovered areas beneath them.
Creating/Deleting Layers
You can create new layers or delete selected layers by clicking their respective icons in the bottom right-hand corner of the panel. Dragging a layer on top of the New Layer icon will create a duplicate of the layer, dragging it over the trash icon will delete it.
Hiding Layers
Layers can be shown/hidden by clicking the visibility icon (that eyeball) to the left of the layer.
Renaming Layers
Layers can be renamed by double-clicking on their title or by right-clicking on the layer and selecting Layer Properties (you can also color-coordinate your layers, if you’re OCD). I strongly urge you to keep track of your layers by giving them names. You can thank me later.
Grouping Layers
For larger compositions, you can organize layers into groups by clicking the folder icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. Alternatively, you can also select the layers and press Command+G (PC: Ctrl+G).
Layer Styles
Double-clicking on a layer, or clicking the [fx] button at the bottom of the layers panel, will bring up the Layer Styles dialog. There are a lot of styling options you can apply to a layer (like Drop Shadow, for example) and they can be combined to produce some very interesting effects. Experiment and have fun!
Layer Masking
Applying a mask to a layer is a way to hide/show specific areas of a layer, without erasing them permanently. By default, when you add a layer mask it will be completely white and you will see no change in the image. With the layer mask selected, anywhere on the layer that you paint black will conceal it from view, exposing the layers underneath. Painting with a shade of gray will create transparency (Hint: try using a gradient).
A simple rule of thumb when masking: Black Conceals, White Reveals
Click here to learn more about layer masking.
Layer Blending
In addition to masking, there are other ways to collage elements together. At the very top of the layers panel is a drop-down menu that reads “Normal”. This is where you specify what is called the Blend Mode of the selected layer. This dictates how the layer interacts with everything beneath it.
To the right of the Blend Mode is the Opacity slider. This determines how opaque or transparent a layer is. Directly beneath the Opacity slider is the Fill opacity. These two sliders seemingly do the same thing at first, but there is a very subtle difference: the Fill slider only affects the layer contents, whereas the Opacity slider affects the contents AND any styles applied to the layer (this will make more sense later).
Closing Thoughts…
That is all I have for this article. Hopefully you found this useful!
If you have any tutorial requests or general suggestions about the site, please send them in!
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