Adobe Photoshop is a software application that is used for editing, enhancing and manipulating digital images or even for creating images from scratch. Over the years Photoshop has developed as one of the most powerful digital imaging tools in the world and is a very versatile program. As such it is used by people from many different professions: photography, print industry, web and interaction designers, medicine, forensic investigation and a lot more! It has become such a vital product that its name is now generally used as a verb.
If you open the program for the first time you may find yourself baffled by so many panels, tabs and menus. Here, eMagzin brings to you a step by step guide which will teach you very basic Photoshop skills to enhance and modify your digital photographs. The tutorial is divided in parts, starting from opening an image in Photoshop and finally ends with saving your final output with all the modifications in between.
-
Opening a Photograph in Photoshop
This is the basic step of opening a photograph with Photoshop.Go to File Menu and click on Open , A dialogue box appears from where you can open and browse your files. Step One is easy 
File>Open>Select the image
Keyboard Shortcut : Ctrl + O
-
Enhancing the Image
Pictures straight from the camera may look very lifeless and dull if you did not shoot them with correct settings. They are many ways with which you can the brightness and contrasts of your images.
Adjustments Tab – Located on the right side of the window by default
The various tools which you can use from the Adjustments tab are :
1.Brightness and Contrast
This is a simple and easy to use adjustment where you change brightness and contrast using easy to use sliders.Click on Brightness and Contrasts in Adjustments tab to open it.
Brightness And Contrast Changes
2.Levels
With your image open in Photoshop ,click on the Levels icon in the adjustments panel. The graph called a histogram is a visual representation of the tonal range of the image. The black triangle on the far left represents pure black, no visible details. This triangle is referred to as the shadow levels slider. The hollow triangle to the far right represents pure white, no visible details. This triangle is called the highlight levels slider. The gray triangle in the middle adjusts the contrast and is called the midtones level slider. Move these sliders according to the final output you want.
Levels Adjustment
3.Vibrance
This is the fifth option in the Adjustments tab. It is used to change the way colors appear in your picture. Here the saturation works the same as normal saturation but has been placed here for you to balance it with vibrance to create much better effects than just saturation on its own used to be able to do. Increase the vibrance and saturation sliders according to the level of colors you want in your image.
Quick Tip : Reduce the saturation to zero to quickly turn your images to black and white.
Changing the Vibrance and Saturation
4.Photo Filters
The Photo Filter is based on the idea of photographers adding colored filters to the camera lens to tint the photo, and we can achieve the exact same effect in Photoshop but with a lot more flexibility, since we can change the filter color to anything we want. At the top of its dialog box are two options, Filter and Color. They both do exactly the same thing, which is allow us to choose a color to tint our image with. The only difference between them is that the “Filter” option allows us to select from a list of preset colors, including some that are based on common warming and cooling lens filters, while the “Color” option simply brings up Photoshop’s Color Picker and allows us to choose exactly which color we want. By hit and trial you can find out what filter or color suits best for your image.
An organe tint has been added to the image by added a photo filter
Frequent Asked Questions
Q. I am not able to locate the Adjustments Tab. From where can I view it?
A. Adjustments Tab maybe not be visible to you because you might have accidental closed it or changed your Photoshop layout. There are some default Layouts in Photoshop, like Essentials, Design, Painting, Photography. You can just click on Reset Layout ( Essentials or Photography etc ) to reset the layout, and you’ll find the Adjustments tab in the right side of the window.
Resting The Layout
You can individually choose which windows/tabs you want to be open in Photoshop by going to the ‘Windows’ menu and choosing ‘Adjustments’ for Adjustments Tab.
Adding Individual Pannels
Q. How can I undo a previous adjustment?
A. The keyboard short cut for removing the previous step in Photoshop is Ctrl + Alt + Z; but this only works for the immediate previous step.
If you want to turn off or undo any previous adjustments simply turn of that particular layer.
You can Turn Off the individual layer by clicking on the eye icon
Layers panel is below the Adjustments Tab, and you can see that each adjustment was done by adding another layer to an image. Click on the little eye icon on the left side of every layer to turn it off or on.
- Reducing Digital Noise
Digital noise can make your pictures look awful. It is very difficult to remove the noise completely from the picture buy you can still remove a significant amount of noise from the ‘Reduce Noise’ filter.
It is located under Noise in the Filters Menu.
Filters>Noise>Reduce Noise
Reduce Noise Dialog Box
A dialog box will appear in which you can change the values of various fields according to the amount of detail of the image you are willing to give away.
- Reducing Image Size
Modern digital cameras produce really high quality which usually have large file sizes and might give you tough time if you are uploading them.There is a very simple step to reduce the effective pixels of the image which inturn reduces the size of the image.
The ‘Image Size’ option is located Image Menu.
Image>Image Size
Keyboard Shortcut : Alt + Ctrl + I
Image Size – You can dial in the desired image size you want
You can dial in the desired image size and make sure that the ‘Constraint Proportions’ option is on.
- Saving the Output
After the changes you have done to your images , the next step is to save your output. Go to Save As in File Menu.
File>Save As
Save As Dialog Box – Choose the file type
Keep the file type as .PSD in case you want to come in Photoshop and work on the image later on or as .JPEG if it is your final output.
Then Photoshop will ask you the quality of the image you want , this is also a very effective way to reduce the size of your images.
Useful Resources
How to Use Layers in Photoshop
