Photoshop Tools and Features User Log – Annie E Magner

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 ✓ How, why and when used. Screen shot

features
Menus: ✓
Open; This lets Users open Photoshop documents
or images they want to use on Photoshop. I
used this feature to open images that I
wanted to use to create graphics. To find the
open option, go to File and Open. It gives
Users the option to find their files whether it
be a Photoshop document or an image.
save; This lets Users save documents on
Photoshop. Pressing Save As lets Users chose
what they want to name the file, what file
type it will be and where the store the file.
I pressed save in order to save the
documents. I would sometimes save
documents along the way just in case
Photoshop shut down. There are different
file types that Users can save the Photoshop
document as. The default option is PSD but
Photoshop documents can also be saved as
image files such as JPEG and PNG.

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 edit; This option can be found at the top right of
the page and it has features such as
“Transform”, “Colour Settings” and
“Toolbar”.

view; This offers features that lets Users choose

what they want to view on Photoshop.
I went to View to create guides. It also has
options such as “Rulers”, “Clear Guides”,
“Zoom In” and “Zoom Out”.

help This can be found at the top of the

document. It can take you to the Adobe
website to get help and it can give some
information about the system.

Image settings: ✓
size; If you go to Image and Image Size, it tells
you what the size of the image is and you can
change the size of the image.

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 Resolution; When changing the image size, you can
change the resolution number. The
resolution is the amount of how detailed an
image is. The higher the resolution, the
higher the quality.
width; You can change the width of an image on
image size.
height; You can change the height of an image on
image size.
colour mode; Go to Image, Mode and it should come up
with some options. You can choose what
colour mode you want the Photoshop
document to be on whether it be a colour
mode such as RGB (Red, green and blue)
or CMYK (Cyan, magenta, yellow, and
key).

transparency; On the layers window, you can make some

layers more transparent than others. I made
one of the shapes transparent so that I could
see the shape underneath.

file name When you create a new Photoshop

document, you can decide what you want to
call your file. When you come to save the
document, you can change its name then.

Drawing tools: ✓
tool options; The toolbar can be found at the left hand-
side of the page. It can be moved around and
you can get more toolbar options if you click
on the three dots symbol. The foreground
and the background colour can also be found
here.
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 brush; This acts like a paint Brush and Users can
decide on things such as the Brush size,
hardness and more.
When I was creating the fire effects on my
logo, I used the brush tool to create a fire
shape. At the top of the page, Users can
choose what type of brush they want, what
size they want it to be and what its hardness
is.

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 pencil; This tool is basically a virtual pencil. Unlike
the brush tool, the pencil tool draws pixel by
pixel whilst the brush tool tends to draw
over more pixels.

duplicate; Layers can be duplicated on the layers

Window.

clone; This tool takes one part of a Photoshop

document and “Clones” it onto another.
This can be found on the Toolbar and in
order to copy a part of the page, press the
Alt Key.
I used this tool when I placed the fire effects
on the fire text. I cloned parts of the text so
the part of the gradient next to the text
matched the part of the gradient on the fire
effect.

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 fill; This tool fills in shapes with a colour and it
can even be used to create gradients as well.
It can be found on the Toolbar and to
choose what type of fill you want to use, just
right click over it for a few seconds and the
options should come up.
I used this tool to fill in some of the shapes
on the graphics..

text; I used this tool to create the text on the web

banner, the navigation bar, some of the
buttons and on the logo. This tool can be
found in the toolbar and when clicked, all you
have to do is start typing.

line; This tool can be found in the toolbar and it

allows you to create lines. There are options
at the top which let you decide how thick
you want it and what colour you want it to
be.

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 stroke; This can be found on the Layers window by
clicking on Blending Options and clicking
on Stroke. If you made a shape with a
gradient in Photoshop, then the stroke
option can let you remove some of the
colours in it. With text, you can give it an
outline with the stroke option.

shape; I created shapes for my web banner,

navigation menus, background and GIF. To
create shapes, I went to the toolbar and
clicked on the option for Rectangle Tool. To
change the shape, you hold onto the option
for a couple of seconds and the options came
up.

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 zoom; This can be found on the toolbar and when
clicked it allows Users to zoom into the
image. Users can also click Ctrl and + or -
on the keyboard to zoom in or out.

guides and rulers; I used these when I wanted to create guides.

To do this, go to View and these options
can be found underneath. You can add new
guides where it will give you the option of
whether you want them horizontal or
vertical and whereabouts you want it to be
(It is advised that Users turn the rulers
on). Users can delete guides if they don’t
want them anymore and they can even move
the guides around.

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 Grid; To access the grid, go to View, Show and
then Grid should be one of the options
available. When you click on it, you should
see a grid over the image.

Paletts, e.g. colour, I used gradients for my background. To do

gradients, layers, this, I created a shape and I went to
object, brushes, Properties which is on the right-hand side of
history, actions, the page. I chose what pattern I wanted for
size, resolution; the shape and I chose the gradient option.

Layers, e.g. I copied some layers such as the Icicles in my

copying, saving, logo and web banner. To do this, I went to
arranging; flattening; Layers and I dragged my chosen layer down
colour selection, to the Create a new layer. Layers are
placed in an order and if the User wants to
place one layer to be higher on the canvas
than another then they can simply move the
layer around.

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 Colour selection, On the toolbar, there is an option for the
e.g. foreground, foreground and the background colour. You
background, colour can select two colours for each. The
swatch, eyedropper foreground colour will be the colour that you
use when using the brush tool. Colour
swatches can be found at the top right hand
side of the document and they include
multiple colours that you can choose or your
background or foreground colour.

The eyedropper tool can be found in the

toolbar. If you hover over an image with this
tool, then it can detect whatever colour it
hovers over. In order to save the colour, you
will need to use the eyedropper to point
what colour on the image you want to save.
Editing tools: ✓
Selection, e.g. The Rectangular Marquee Tool can be found
marquee, lasso, on the toolbar and it allows you to select
magic wand, part of an image. If you want to cut out a
magnetic lasso, section of the image, then just press “V” or
deselect; go onto the Move Tool and you can move it.
The Lasso Tool can be found on the toolbar
and it lets you draw around part of an image.
Once you let go of the Mouse, just press the
Move Tool or V and you can move it.

The Magic Wand Tool can be found on the

toolbar and it lets you get rid of parts of an
image. It only works for simple images like
getting rid of white backgrounds from
Circles. I cropped an image so that I could
get rid of the white background. I did this by
going to the toolbar and I clicked on the
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 Crop Tool option. The Magnetic Lasso Tool
works like the Lasso Tool except that it tries
to get specific points of an image.

When you have selected something and you

want to deselect it, you can go to Select at
the top of the page and one of the options is
called Deselect and it will deselect the
selection.

Transform, e.g. To find the Transform option, go to Edit

scale, rotate, skew, which can be found at the top of the Page
flip; cut; copy; paste; and when you go down you should see
crop; trim; erase; Transform. When you hover over
undo; fill Transform, there are multiple options such as
scale, rotate and warp. The scale option lets
you move the image about and the rotate
lets you rotate the image in any direction you
want. The warp option lets you move parts
of the image about which causes a warp
effect.

To crop an image, go to the toolbar and the

Crop Tool can be found. When you click on
it, you can use the crop lines to see how
much of the image you want. Once you’re
done, just press the Tick which is in the right
hand corner of the document or press the
Enter Key on the Keyboard.

Advanced tools: ✓

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 Effects, e.g. layer On the layers window, you can give the layer
effects, filters, image effects. Some of the options include
channels; image “Lighten”, “Darken”, “Soft Light” and
adjustments, “Linear Light”. On the layers, there is an
option for layer styles and Users can give the
layer effects such as Bevel Emboss, Drop
Shadow and Inner Glow.
Image When creating the texture for the Icicles, I
adjustments, e.g. went to Image, Adjustments and
brightness and Hue/Saturation to change the colour tone
contrast, hue and from grey to blue.
saturation, colour
balance, gradients,
transparency, invert;
masks;
Paths, e.g. vector I created paths to go around shapes that I
paths, converting wanted to go around. You will need a Path
text to paths; image Window open to create paths and to do that,
slicing. go to the top of the document and hover
over Windows and then click on Paths. The
Paths Window will appear on the lower right
hand side of the document and there you can
do things like delete or create new paths.

To start a path, go to the toolbar and find

the Pen Tool. When you click on it, you can
start clicking where you want the path to
start. To finish a path, you will need to end
the path where the first point started.

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