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Photoshop 5 Basics

What's new in the latest version of Photoshop? Read on.!

*If you are having trouble with a tutorial, check this page. It may be due to a difference in wording between version 4 and 5 of Photoshop. The most common problems encountered:

1. In Photoshop 5, or 5.5 after typing text, the filters are grayed out: The solution: right click the "T" on text layer in the layers pallet to render the text. Then the filters will work. Text is editable until rendered, but must be rendered for filters and other effects to be applied. [See # 1 under text layers below ]

2. In version 4 to deselect an item, go to select>none. In version 5 the wording is changed to select>deselect. If you see "select>none" in the tutorials written for version 4, try using select>deselect if you are working in 5.

If you are new to Photoshop and you have Photoshop 4, You will still be able to do the tutorials here because I will keep directions for 4 as well as version 5, but from now on, They will be written for version 5... with the directions for 4 included.. It will be helpful for you to understand what has been changed in version 5..that way, you can translate the tutorials on other sites and in books that are written for version 4. So, here are a few of the major differences in 4 and 5. If you see something I missed, feel free to email me

Text Layers.
In version 4, You type your text in the dialog box that comes up when you click on the text tool, the text goes on a new layer and is typed in the foreground color.

In version 5 and 5.5 you click on the text tool, and type your text in the dialog box, but that is where the similarity ends. [ See the tutorial on the type tool for version 5.5 ] Within the dialog box, you can set the color of the text, and the size..and you can type different sizes of text in the same window...When you have typed the text, you click OK, and the text goes on a new layer, but it is still editable until it is rendered. You will see a T in the layer where the text was typed until it is rendered.. You can add the layer effects, (which I'll explain next) or change the text color, or letters, or size, or whatever you want and when you are done, you right click on the T and click 'render text'. Then it becomes just a layer of rendered text. One more thing I should mention; In version 4 the text tool fly out has 2 choices: regular or "selection mask" text which is the dotted line T. In version 5, you will see 4 choices. The old ones, and a new solid T and dotted line T with a vertical arrow on them. These will make your text type vertically instead of horizontally. For more info on the text changes in version 5.5 see the tutorial on the new type tool.

Layer effects
When I got Photoshop 4, It was great, but almost all the tutorials I found called for the "eye candy inner bevel plug in" for text , or drop shadows, or glows, etc...This was irritating to me, because not having had version 3, I hadn't learned to do bevels without plugins, and it was a while before I did learn. No one was writing tutorials with that in them for version 4, they just said "get the plug in". Well, in version 5 or 5.5 extra plugins are not as immediate an necessity as they were in 4. When you type your text, or put a circle selection or whatever on a layer, then you right click on the layer and the layer effects dialog box comes up. Right away, you see your layer previewed with a drop shadow, which you can tweak to your liking, or uncheck the apply box and go on to the inner shadow tab. Each effect has a tab and settings that can be modified, and you can go from one to the other by means of a drop down list, or by a 'next' and prev. button on the dialog box. The other effects are outer and inner glow, And bevel and emboss , which includes outer and inner bevels, and 2 kinds of embossing. I still love my plugins, but it isn't a complete handicap to be without them in version 5. You can do all kinds of things like copy and paste the effects from one layer to the others..or the effects on layers separate from the image..This is demonstrated best in the tutorial "Fun with Shadows". It shows how to make a perspective shadow out of the layer effect shadow, and a few other different shadow effects too.

The History Pallet
This has been called 'multiple undo' but it is far more than that. It records every step you take in creating your image...And you can go back to an effect in the history palette. Say you have a drop shadow on something you have drawn, and you want the drop shadow on the rest of the stuff you draw to be just like it..Click on the effect layer in the history pallet that says drop shadow, then click the icon at the bottom for a new snapshot. Then click your history paint brush, which is right under the paint brush tool, and whatever you paint will have the same effect as the layer you took the snapshot of. In other words, you are painting with your snapshot :) There is a great example of this in a tutorial by Joe Williams at Pixart..Take a look at the Photoshop 5 Expose...It goes in to alot more depth on this , and the tutorials are great for all versions of Photoshop and other graphics programs as well. Of course, you can also use the history pallet to undo as many things as you want.

There are also some changes in the way Photoshop 5 , & 5.5 handle layers and channels. They were both named by default with the number of their order in Photoshop 4 (layer 1, layer 2) but now if you type a word on a layer, like lights..it will be lights transparency instead of layer 2 transparency. And the channels are no longer saved as channel 4, 5, 6, etc. The first saved channel other than the RGB channels is alpha channel 1 and so on. So hopefully if you see these terms in tutorials on the web or in books, you will know their equivalent in version 4.

Automate
Under automate , there are 2 important things I should mention. The "fit Image" ...Under file/automate/fit image, ..If you have an image you want to fit into a smaller file, you can click automate fit image, and it fits it into the smaller file..The next thing under file/automate I want to mention is conditional mode change. Say you have a folder of all different kinds of files and you want to change all the PSD files to indexed. That is were this command comes in. It will leave all other files alone and only bother the PSD files, or whatever type you specify. These commands are also compatible with actions.

Actions
The actions pallet in version 4 was cool. The one in version 5 is cooler. It still does all of the same actions as it did in version 4, but now you can group actions into sets, Photoshop 5 comes with alot of these built right in. some examples are; large rectangular button, large round button, large square button, Wood frame...etc,

Gradient tool
The gradient tool in version 4 has 2 settings, radial and linear. In version 5, we get a flyout of gradient tools, from which we can select linear, radial, mirror, and one that looks like a cone, and that isn't all. When you click the options pallet tab for the gradient tool, it now allows you to reverse the gradient. Before it was foreground to background or foreground to transparent. There was no transparent to foreground, but in versions 5 and 5.5, you can check reverse and make it so..

Clone tool
The clone tool also has some extra features. It now has a flyout on the toolbar with a choice of the regular clone tool, for which the options can be set for aligned or non aligned cloning. ..Or a pattern clone tool. There is also an excellent article on this at Pixart in the Photoshop 5 expose, so I wont bother repeating it, just go there and read it.

Smudge tool
This was one of my favorite tools, which I used alot. The one with the pointing finger, that you can smear one color into another, or smoothly blend the line between. Or just "finger-paint" with it.. It is now in a flyout menu with the "blur" tool. I was frantic when I thought I had lost it..:)

Layer via copy and Layer via cut.
These are 2 new additions to the layer menu. They are fairly self explanatory, but say you open a photo and you want it to be on layer 1 instead of the background. Select the part you want to put on another layer, and click layer> new>layer via cut, which will remove the selection and paste it on a layer, or layer via copy which does the same but leaves the original.

Create background.
Which brings me to this new feature which is great. It is always best to work on a layer. They are more freely editable and just flexible in general. So if your image is on a layer, or you change the background to a layer,. You can use the create background command.

Transform tool
In version 4, This used to be under the layer menu if my memory serves me..(It may not..my memory is very short term these days) Now it is under the edit menu, but you can still free transform or transform a layer ..Only now the transform tool is more powerful..There is central axis in the tool. As with edit /transform/rotate. Take a look at the bounding box..There is a new circle in the middle. If you pull this circle outside the bounding box, and use it as an axis to rotate the layer, then it will move around the circle or axis, instead of rotating in place. This is demonstrated in my tutorial on Typing around a circle.

3D transform
This new feature is located under filter>render>3D transform in version 5. ..If you have a sphere or a box and you want to show it at different perspectives you use this command. When the dialog box comes up, outline your object (there is a sphere, box and cylinder shape tool) and then use the trackball to rotate it..

There are alot more things that I could put here,, but I was just trying to keep this list kind of basic..If you see something that I have missed that you want to know about, don't hesitate to ask...I'll be adding more stuff to this page as I become more familiar with the program. And more tutorials as well.

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