Photoshop CC is a complex and sophisticated program, but once you understand what it can do and how it works, the pieces will fall into place. In this guide to Photoshop for beginners we’ll take you through the stages of setting up the ideal photo editing workflow.
Photoshop for Beginners: 01 Organise photos with Adobe Bridge
The Photoshop subscription package includes Adobe Bridge, a separate application you can use to organise and evaluate your pictures.
You can use the Folders panel to look at any of the folders containing images that you have on your computer, and pictures are displayed as thumbnails in the main window.
Adobe Bridge can be used to check the shooting information saved by your camera in its image files, and you can add keywords, copyright information and other ‘metadata’ to your photos to make them easier to sort.
Adobe Bridge can also be used to open Adobe Camera Raw, a Photoshop add-on that opens raw files from digital cameras – see step 02 for more on Adobe Camera Raw.
Photoshop for Beginners: 02 Get started with Camera Raw
Photoshop opens raw files using the Adobe Camera Raw add-on, and this offers an ever-increasing range of adjustments for enhancing your photos.
In many cases you won’t need to open images in Photoshop at all.
You can adjust exposure, white balance, contrast and other global settings, as well as apply ‘local’ adjustments with the Graduated Filter tool, Adjustment Brush and Radial Filter.
Changes you make in Adobe Camera Raw are non-destructive – you can go back and change them at any time.
Photoshop for Beginners: 03 Smart Objects and filters
Sometimes, adjustments you make in Adobe Camera Raw are simply preparation for more serious work in Photoshop, such as adding effects with filters. Photoshop CC has a clever feature called ‘Smart Objects’.
You can turn any image into a Smart Object and then add filter effects ‘non-destructively’ – you can double-click the filter in the future if you need to re-edit it.
This photo has three filters applied: one to straighten the building, another to create the black-and-white effect, and a third to create the aged, ‘stained’ look.
Photoshop for Beginners: 04 Layers and masks
At the heart of Photoshop are its layers. These are like transparent overlays you can stack one on top of each other to combine images and apply adjustments.
This picture has three layers, also shown as thumbnails in the floating Layers panel.
The bottom layer is a portrait, the layer above it is an adjustment layer used to increase the contrast of the picture below, and the top layer is a picture of a forest that has been added using a blend mode so that it merges with the picture below rather than covering it up.
Layers can also have masks to control which areas of the layer are visible – these appear alongside the layers in the Layers panel.
Photoshop for Beginners: 05 Photoshop plugins
Photoshop has its own tools, but it also acts as a ‘host’ for tools and effects from other companies that can dramatically extend your creative tools.
These are called plugins because although they’re separate programs, they appear on Photoshop’s list of filters.
When you launch a filter plugin, your photo appears in the filter’s window, where you make your adjustments.
When you’ve finished, the plugin window closes and your edited picture is returned to Photoshop.
Photoshop for Beginners: 06 Cloning unwanted image elements
Photoshop is famous for its ability to repair and manipulate pictures.
Mostly, this is done with the Clone Stamp tool, which takes a nearby are of the picture to blot out unwanted objects.
Photoshop for Beginners: 07 Make Photoshop your digital hub
Photoshop doesn’t just work in isolation. It can be used as an ‘external editor’ by other applications.
Many photographers use Lightroom, another member of the Photoshop family, to organise large photo collections in a faster and more flexible way.
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