I am not so smrt.

[ceebee_eebee]

I finally scored photoshop and I was all excited about it. Then I realized I haven't the SLIGHTEST idea how to use it and so I am kind of just staring at the program in horror.

This sucks.

Anyone want to come over and show me how to use this shit? I'll make you pie! ;-)

Comments

[iko.livejournal.com]

Yeah, photoshop can be really scary since it can do so many things. It helps to identify what you want to do, specifically, with it, and learn what tools in Photoshop will help you do that.

[elyssadc.livejournal.com]

SOOOO intimidating! I really just want to learn how to clean up screencaps and make pretty icons. But I tend to get discouraged when there are too many options, so you can see my dilemma.

[iko.livejournal.com]

Cleaning up screencaps can mean a lot of things, so you'll need to be just a little more explicit about what you mean by this. For instance, you can "clean up" a screencap by airbrushing it.

Icons are pretty easy. There are many different methods to do this. From a large quality image, I will frequently use the select tool (that's the one that looks like a dashed box, the "rectangular marquee tool" if you hover over your mouse over the tool) to select an area. To make sure that the area is square, I recommend holding down the shift key at the same time while you select the area. You will notice that this will keep the selected area square.

Once you've selected the area you want, then go up to the menu to "Image" and then "Crop". This will cut out all the unwanted part of your image and leave you just the image you want as the icon.

Then, you need to resize it. Go back up to the same menu and use "Image Size". Then you can resize it down to 100x100 and it will be the right size for your icon.

That's the basics of how to get an image to be the size that you want it for an icon. (And it's just one way to do it.) Now, there are just tons of other tools that you can use. You can use the type tool to put text (it's the Horizontal Type Tool that looks like a "T"). Or you can begin to learn to play with layers which will allow you to make a lot more interesting tricks.

You can look up tons of tutorials online that show you how to do specific tasks, but will also introduce you to the different tools to do different tasks. Familiarity with them will allow you to work with them better over time and really, the folks that are good with Photoshop are the ones that have just played and looked at what all the different bits do on their own.

[elyssadc.livejournal.com]

You are brilliant and I am definitely gonna look up some tutorials. I gotta keep my focus narrow or I am just going to get overwhelmed. It's mostly the layers thing that I'm curious about. I love the color effects and whatnot that people work with. Sharpening images and whatever.