Photoshop Tools and Features User Log

The purpose of this log is for you to record what tools and features you used in the creation of your digital graphics. You should try to use as many as possible and you
must record how, why and when you used them. You do not need to record repeated actions but each single new action should be recorded. An example of this would
be setting up a new Photoshop file/image which would cover the ranges; “Image Settings” (all) and part of “Menus” (some of). You only need to do this once. Remember
that where the “e.g.” appears in a range, as many of the items should be covered as possible but not all of them; your tutor will guide you here. Where possible you
should also provide a screen dump to illustrate the action (see sample image below).
Tools and features  How, why and when used. Screen dump
Menus: 
Open; To open anything up in photoshop, you
have to go to the menu bar and go to file
and press open, then it will open up your
personal file where you can press on
something what you have saved in there
to started editing it in photoshop.

save; There are two different ways you can save

your work on photoshop one of them is
you can hold down “Ctrl” and then press
“S”. the other way what takes a little
longer, it is where you go into file and
press “save as” and then it takes you to
your personal file where you can save your
work where ever you want it to be saved,
and when your personal file opens you
can change the name to whatever you
want it to be called, for example if you
create a Facebook screen icon to go onto
a product then I could have called it
“screen icon: Facebook.”
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 import; To import something into photoshop you
go into file which is on the menu bar, then
you hover over import which is near the
bottom of the drop-down menu, and as it
has an arrow then there are more options,
these include: “variable data sets…”, “video
frames to layers”, “notes”, and “WIA
support”. Depending on what you want to
import you need to see which one best fits
the graphic you want to import.

export; To export something on photoshop you

go into file which is on the menu bar and
then you go down to where export is and
then again like the import it has an arrow
on it so it means there are more options to
choose between in export these include:
“quick export as PNG”, “Export as…”,
“export preferences…”, “save for web
(legacy)…”, Artboards to files…”, artboards
to PDF…”, “layers comps to files…”, “layer
comps to PDF…”, “layers to files…”, “colour
lookup tables…”, “data sets as files…”, paths
to illustrator…”, “render video…”,
“zoomify…”. And then you can choose
from these depending on what you want
to export it as.

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 edit; Where you can find to get all the options
for editing, is in the menu bar at the top
and it is called edit and there are a lot of
different options to choose from to edit
something you are creating in photoshop.
In edit you can undo something what you
have done which is not right and what
you don’t what there you can press
“undo”, and then if you go too far
backwards you can press the, “step
forwards” and with the undo you can only
go back so far and if you want to go
further back then you can press on a
different one called “step backwards” and
with this one you can go as far back as you
would like to. Also in this one you can
copy, cut, and paste.

view;
help
Image settings: 
size; You can adjust the sizes of an image you
have got, so it will fit on a page better, you
can change the width and the height of
an image. When you type in the size you
would like the image to be then you press
“OK” and the image will be displayed with
the size you have put in. you can also
change the measurement which you
prefer to work in you can change this to:
inches, column, picas, pixels, etc.
Resolution;
width; This will change how wide the image is, as
if you have an image which is really thin
and you would like it to be wider then you
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 can change this or if you have an image
which is too thin and you would like it
wider then you can change this to make it
to the correct size you would like.
height; You can also change the height of an
image you have as if the image you have
collected are too small then you can
change the height to make the image
bigger.
colour mode; colour mode lets you change form CMYK
colour, bitmap, greyscale, and lab colour.
This is available for someone of they want
to use a different colour mode for a file for
example greyscale, which if you change to
greyscale this will make the image only
black and white, and then when another
colour is used on the image it will
automatically be changed to black and
white.
background; You can change the background to
whatever you would like it to be, white,
black and transparent or any other colour.
transparency; When creating or opening up a new
image in photoshop it gives you the
opportunity to change the background, as
in most cases it will automatically be a
white background so if you want to keep it
as white then you can. But you can
change it to something else by selecting
the background content, and you can
change the background to transparent.
The good thing about having an image
background as transparent then it means
that when placing text and images onto
the background and then go to add it
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 onto a website then everything will show
up, but it will not have a white
background you will be able to see the
websites background.
aspect ratio,
file name Creating a new image file, you can give
the image you have a name, this will allow
you to save the image and when you do
you don’t need to rename the image file
again.
Drawing tools: 
tool options;
brush; The size of the brush tool when using it
change be change and the opacity of the
brush tool can be change as well as this
can go from 100% to 0% also the flow of
the line can be adjusted as well. You can
use the brush tool when want to create
vector lines using the pen tool. This will
create a path according to the settings of
the brush.
pencil; Pixel lines can be drawn by using the
pencil tool. When using the pencil tool it
allows you to colour in on pixel block at a
time. Although this is time consuming it is
amazing for pixel art.
duplicate;
clone; When attempting to make an image look
even or for repairing images the clone tool
is very useful. You can do this by holding
down the ALT button, and you will need
to select a similar pattern you want to
clone. The when you have the pattern you
want to clone then you go to the area on

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 the image you want to clone and where
you want to repair or look symmetrical you
start clicking that area and the pattern will
appear.
fill; When using the fill tool, it is called the
paint bucket tool, it is really good if you
want to put colour onto an image quickly
as it lets you fill an entire image, you can
do this instead of painting each section of
the image.
text; If you want to add text on an image you
can use the text tool, with this tool you can
change the colour of the text and the font
to what best suites the image.
line; If you want to create a straight line on the
image, then you can use the line too as it
will give you a straight line straight away,
and the line will be smooth with not a
heavy pixelated effect.
stroke;
shape; The shape tool allows you to create any
shape what it has on photoshop, you can
choose from:
Line, rounded rectangle, ellipses, your own
custom shape tool or rectangle.
This allows you to create shapes without
using the pen-tool to plot anchor points
for a shape.
zoom; To get the zoom tool you have to press on
the magnifying glass on the tool bar on
the side. This will allow the user to zoom in
to the image if they want to touch up the
image or edit minor errors.
guides and rulers;

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 Grid;
Snap;
Paletts, e.g. colour, On photoshop there is the colour palette
gradients, layers, which allows you to choose lots of
object, brushes, different shades of colours, or you can use
history, actions, a swatch of a pre-set colour that’s available
size, resolution; to use.

There is also a layer tab where you can get

multilabel layers, for example if I was
creating a logo which was complicated
and had a lot of different aspects to fit
them I would divide each of the layers to
be for different things like the design or
the text. This makes designing the logo
easier because everything is a lot more
organised. Then when I want to put my
logo onto the site I would have to merge
all the layers together, so everything will
stay in the same place as if I try to move it I
would be moving whatever my mouse is
on when I click to move it.

You can select different types of brushes

with the brush option and the different
ones will give different effects. The brush
size can be change, and you can change
the opacity and can change the flow of
the colour.
Layers, e.g. On the display on the right-hand side
copying, saving, there is a tab which says layers. On this tab
arranging; is where you can arrange the layers to
flattening; colour what goes on top. You can also merge the
selection, layers together so that they blend

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 together. You can move the layers to
another image file.
Colour selection, There is a tool on photoshop called the
e.g. foreground, eyedropper tool it uses a sample of a
background, colour from another image, so when you
colour swatch, have clicked on the eyedropper and they
eyedropper colour you would like, then you can use
this colour for a background or whatever
you want it for.
Colour swatches are good if you have
used the eyedropper tool to sample a
colour form the image. If you choose that
colour you can create a new colour
swatch from the colour you have just
chosen by clicking the lower right-hand
corner, this allow you to re-use this colour
without sampling again.
Editing tools: 
Selection, e.g.
marquee, lasso,
magic wand,
magnetic lasso,
deselect;
Transform, e.g. To get the transform tool you go to the top
scale, rotate, skew, menu bar then go to edit, then to
flip; cut; copy; transform. The transform tool you can
paste; crop; trim; scale, warp, skew, rotate, etc. There is also
erase; undo; fill something called free transform which
allows you to do two things at once these
are scale and rotate. If you have multilabel
layers within photoshop and you don’t
want to transform all of them, then you
can select just one of the layers and then
select what type of transform you would

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 like to use and then it would only
transform that one layer.
Advanced tools: 
Effects, e.g. layer
effects, filters,
channels; image
adjustments,
Image
adjustments, e.g.
brightness and
contrast, hue and
saturation, colour
balance, gradients,
transparency,
invert; masks;
Paths, e.g. vector
paths, converting
text to paths;
image slicing.