Photoshop quick start tour

- [Instructor] If you've never visited Photoshop before or have only dipped in here or there, this will be your orientation to the interface with just enough information so you can work along with the exercises in this chapter. Let's start off the top level menu system which here on the Mac is pinned to the top of the screen. On Windows you'll find that at the top of the screen also but in what is known as the Application Bar for the program.

Beneath that we have the Options Bar, although some people call this the Control Strip as well, because that's how it's in Illustrator and in Design. You can of course choose it whatever you like, and I'll try to remember to refer to it both ways throughout. What is important for you to know though is that this area is contextual, and will change depending on what is selected. In Photoshop that's always associated with the current tool.

And on that note, this is where you'll find the tools. Now don't worry if your Toolbox looks slightly different to this one. Some folks like to have the Toolbox in two columns instead of the long strip I have here, but the same tools are there. And wherever possible I'll be telling you the key to press on your keyboard to access the tool that we're using, or you'll see it on an overlay, or both. On the opposite side of the screen is where you will find the panels.

Now sometimes they may be collapsed down to icons as is the case with the Creative Cloud libraries icon. But they're easy to access if you just click on the icon, they will expand out like so. Now it's worth us taking a little bit more of a detailed look at the panel as they've got some characteristics that you might need to know about. So first of all we've got the Panel's tab. And you can do a few thing with that.

If you double click it, it will collapse, and if it's collapse, double clicking it should make it expand. And that's very helpful sometimes when you still want the panel around but it's taking up too much of your available screen real estate. Across from that at the top right, this is where you access a Panel's fly out menu. And it gives you access to other commands associated with the panel itself and often with the things that you're working on.

At the foot of the panel you'll find icons associated with the most essential commands that the panel deals with usually. If you can't find a panel, it'll be hanging out with its buddies in the top level menu system in the Window menu. And to wrap up this movie, that's where we're going to go right now. So what we're going to do here for the best experience for all of us, or at least so we have more or less the same experience, I'd like you to click on the Window menu, come down the the Workspace option.

And if it says Essentials Default already, then just choose Reset Essentials from the menu. And that will reset it back to the shipping default. Then it will look similar to one we've got. We'll just change that momentarily. If it doesn't say Essentials, then go back to the Window menu, back into there, choose Essentials, and then reset it. So the things that we're going to do here just to make sure we all look the same is we're going to drag the Libraries tab out like so, okay, just release it over the document area for the moment.

And then drag it back and you'll notice this blue line appearing, and that places that you can dock it to. We're going to dock it just here underneath the History icon, which is what that small icon with the arrow is. Once you've done that, we're all set and ready to go. The only thing you need to know about next is saving a PSD, and from there we can get started.