In this course we are going to walk you through an entire detailed training plan designed to make you a Photoshop Master! We will be going into deep detail about all the different features, tools, concepts, techniques, digital vocabulary and much, much more giving you deep knowledge of how to use this powerful application.

Installing Photoshop

Have you installed Adobe Photoshop yet? If you, you can get it by following this link here. Click here to download Adobe Photoshop. I downloaded the creative cloud so that I have access to all other amazing applications that Adobe has to offer.

With Photoshop downloaded, we now need to launch photoshop. I usually just do a search for Photoshop in my Windows search bar and click on the icon when it pops up. You may pin creative cloud or photoshop to your taskbar or pin it to start for quicker access. Just locate the icon, right click, and select pin to start, and/or pin to taskbar. If you want to unpin Photoshop just right-click the Photoshop icon and select unpin to start and/or taskbar.

Raster Images vs Vector Images

Raster images are made up of pixels and are the types of images most commonly used in Photoshop for photographers. Raster images are going to be digital photographs or scanned images. Vector images are computer generated images, made up of points, lines, & curves that are based off of geometry formulas. These images are used a lot by marketers, brand designers, and other professionals who tend to work with digitally illustrated artwork. Logos created in Adobe Illustrator are examples of vector images. What are pixels? Pixels are tiny square blocks that make up a digital image. The density of the pixels in an image is called the resolution. Depending on what part of the world you are in, resolution is measured by pixels per inch (ppi) or Pixels Per Centimeter (ppcm). Marketers who product large, printed ads require high density resolution. Photoshop has the ability to potentially double the resolution of images. If you absolutely must use an existing image with poor resolution, just keep a mental note that this is an option. We will get to that later in this course.

File Formats Used in Photoshop

You have many different file formats available to choose from. The file format you choose to export your file as depends on your needs of the person receiving the file.

RAW FILES

Adobe defines are RAW FILE as

“A RAW file is the uncompressed and unprocessed image data captured by a digital camera or scanner’s sensors. Shooting in RAW captures a high level of image detail, with large file sizes and lossless quality. The direct image data means you start with a high-quality image that can be edited, converted, and compressed in a non-destructive manner.”

What is a RAW file and how do you open it? | Adobe

Editing RAW images has plagued photographers and editors since the beginning of digital photography. This is because every camera manufacturer has their own proprietary file format for their raw files. In fact, there are over 500 RAW file types out there in the digital photography world. And those files are not always workable in photo editing software. Luckily Photoshop has a plugin called Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) that can convert those raw files into images. To learn more about Adobe Camera Raw please follow this link Adobe Camera Raw. ACR doesn’t allow you to add metadata or save your ACR edits into the camera manufacturer’s format. But DNG file formats do.

DNG Files

A DNG file is a is a type of RAW file used in digital photography that is becoming an increasingly more universal file format being adopted by many camera makers and tech companies. DNG files were created by Adobe in 2004 to encourage camera makers to standardize their file types allowing photographers and editors to have more control over their work. DNG files retain the quality of the original RAW image, but with a smaller file size. Unlike JPEG which compresses images, there is no compression that takes place. And unlike the camera maker’s RAW file, DNG files are compatible with most photo editing software. You just need to learn how to convert a RAW file to a DNG file, which you can do here. (click on link)