Photoshop Tools and Features User Log

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 features  How, why and when used. Screen dump
Menus: 
Open; To open a file in photoshop there are 2
ways of doing it, you can do it by pressing
Ctrl + O or go to file and then click open,
this is used to open existing files so that
you can use photoshop to edit them.
save; To save a file in photoshop there are 3
ways to do it, you can do it quickly using
Ctrl + S and this will save it if you have
saved it beforehand, you can do it by
going to file save as, this will let you title it
and place it where you want, you could go
to file and save but you must have saved it
to a file location beforehand for this to
work.
import; The import feature is used to import
videos, you can do this by going to file
then finding import then there is the
option to import videos or WIA, WIA is
where you can import images from other
devices onto that photoshop file.
export; To export in photoshop you need to go to
file then export, this lets you export the
project you have been working on to any
file type you want, you can easily select the
file type you want and then select the file

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 location, once you do this you can export
it to that file destination.
edit; In edit there are a lot of functions you can
use. The functions I used were the step
back, undo, transform, copy and paste.

I used the step back and undo function to

go back on something I may have edited
or changed that I didn’t want to keep, to
do this you can go to edit then click undo
or step back, or you could use Ctrl + Z to
undo and Crtl + Alt + Z for step back. The
difference between the two are that undo
you can only do once whereas step back
you can do multiple times, for this reason I
mainly used step back.

I used transform to change the size of

something I had created or copied, you
can also use transform to change the
rotation or flip the image. Using the free
transform tool to resize a sprite is mainly
what I did but to rotate or flip I used the
transform tool as it had set uses like rotate
90o. this made it easier to change the exact
rotation as if I did it in free transform it
would have been hard to get the exact
angle I wanted. To get to these tools you
would need to go to edit then transform
or free transform. You could also do Ctrl +
T to get to free transform easily.

The copy tool was used mainly for moving

something from the internet to my
photoshop file or moving it from a
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 different page to my main one. To get to
these you can simply go to edit then copy
or paste. You could use Ctrl + C to copy
and then Ctrl + V to paste it.
view; In the view tool, I used zoom in and out
and the guides and also the fit on screen.

I used the zoom in and out tool to help me

create something that would need to be
very precise, this is like drawing on a very
small pixel that would need to be in the
perfect place, I did this by zooming all the
way in as close as I could get. I did this by
holding Ctrl and then pressing +, this was
very easy as it does it in 100% parts so it
would go 100% 200% 300% 400% etc. up
until 800% then it would go to 1200%
then 1600% then finally 3200%. This
would allow you to get pixel perfection.
The zoom out tool is the same but the
opposite way, it is used by holding Crtl and
then pressing -.

The fit on screen tool was used to make it

so my canvas fit to the exact size of my
screen so I could see all the canvas but be
as zoomed in as possible, this would be
good if I was trying to get a line from each
side of the canvas as I can see both sides.

The guides tool is good for lining things

up, creating guides is very easy as you can
get a guide layout which allows you to
add as many lines as you want, this helps
you line important things up on the
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 project and also would help you would
spacing things out evenly. I did this for my
navigation bar to make it easier to line the
whole thing up.
help The help in Photoshop allows you to get
help on tools that you don’t know how to
use, it allows you to go onto the phot shop
help website and find what you need to
do.

Image settings: 
size; The size on an image is very important as
you will need to get it the correct size you
want, to do this you could change it inside
of its properties and you can easily change
the size from there.
Resolution; The resolution is important within images
as making sure you get an image with a
higher resolution lets you get the best
quality, if you get an image with 200x200
resolution it will be harder to make bigger
than one with 600x600, this is because
there are more pixels on the 600x600 one
letting you manipulate it more.
Width and height; Width and height is important as making
sure you don’t make your image look
stretched you will want to change these
two together to make sure you
colour mode; The colour mode tools I used are
greyscale, RGB colour and CMYK colour.

I used greyscale for my web banner,

greyscale is very simple it takes all the
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 colour on an image and then changes it
into the nearest shade on greyscale, this is
from black to white. Greyscale uses 8-bit
with 255 different shades. I used this to
add an effect of the whole image to have a
red tint to it, I did this by then adding a red
rectangle over it and making it opaque.

RGB colour is a mode where It uses red,

green and blue to make all the other
colours you need whereas CMYK uses
cyan, magenta, yellow and black to make
the different colours, when on the internet
this Is where RGB is normally used
compared to CMYK which is normally used
for designing things in illustrator and
photoshop.

In colour mode, you can also set the bit

rate of the channel. Its normally set at 8-bit
but can be changed to 16-bit or 32-bit.
This adds a lot more complexity to the
colours.
background; I used the background tool mainly to make
the background transparent. You do this
when you are creating a new project,
when selecting your canvas dimensions,
you can set the background to what you
want, there are 5 different things you can
change it to, white, black, background
colour, transparent and custom. White and
black are just the standard shades you can
set it as. Background colour is where you
can send it to any different colour you
want. Transparent lets you make the
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 background see through so when you
publish it you can’t see anything on the
back. Custom just lets you pick whatever
colour you want.
transparency; Transparency is used in 2 different ways,
the first way is in the background, this is
just setting the background to transparent
in the background settings, you can also
use transparency in a different way using
the opacity tool, this is a slider that you can
put up and down to make it a different
level of transparent, you can use this on
any layer you want.
aspect ratio, You can bring up aspect ratio by going to
view and then aspect ratio, I didn’t use this
tool at all because none of my graphics
required me to change my aspect ratio.
file name File name is found when you are saving
the file, this is used so you know what is
inside the file when you will be opening it.
if it was named project 1 when opening it
you may open the wrong file and may
have wanted a different one so naming
the file is important for knowing what is
inside it.
Drawing tools: 
tool options; The tool options I used are the size of the
paint tool and the rubber and the font size
and if it is bold or not.

When using the brush tool, you can

change the size of the area it colours in,
this is done in pixels, the smallest you can
make it is 1 pixel and the largest is 6000
pixels, when I used the tool I normally used
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 it at a small amount like 1-40, this is
because I wanted to make sure I kept it
neat and precise. The main time I used
1pixel is when I am really zoomed in a
making a very precise colour change, this
is something like when I am making a
straight line, I also use this with the rubber
to make sure I can rub our as precise as I
want as well.

Changing the font size is important as it

lets you make the size of the font exactly
how you want, this is good for getting the
text to fit somewhere exactly, making the
text bold just makes the text stand out
more if it is smaller.
brush; The brush tool is used for free hand
colouring in, when using the brush tool,
you can change the size of the brush,
when I was using it I mainly used it when it
was small as this helps get the precision I
needed. When I used the brush tool it was
for getting very small patches of colour
that may not have been filled in or that
needed filling in. with the brush tool you
can also change the style of brush so if you
were doing bigger lines you can make it
have a different style than just a circle. You
can also change the hardness, this is for
when you want to get the paint texture,
this is because it makes the first line you
draw lighter and the more you go over it,
it gets darker, this gives the effect it is real
paint.

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 pencil; The pencil tool is used for free hand
drawing, with the pencil you get a simple
dark line and you can change the
thickness of it and the colour, with the
pencil tool it is mainly used for drawing
freehand and drawing straight lines using
shift compared to the brush tool which is
used for colouring in and having texture
with a brush.
duplicate; Using the duplicate tool, you can copy a
layer and keep it the exact same, this
allows you to get a shape or thing you
have drawn the exact same but on a
different artboard or even on the same
artboard, I used the duplicate tool many
times to move images around or make
sure I have my shape the same size as
something else I did.
fill; The fill tool is used to fill in complete
shapes with colour, the fill tool is good if
you have a big space that needs filling
with the same colour, the fill tool only has
one use so I didn’t use it at all as I didn’t
have anything that needed filling in.
text; Text inside of photoshop Is used for
putting words on a graphic you have
created, mainly buttons or simple
information.

The text tool allows you to change the font

very easily, it also has all the adobe fonts
but if you want any others you would
need to download it, this was easy for me
so it isn’t that big of a deal, you can also
change the font very easily and you can
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 put the size in yourself. There is also the
bold and italic setting, there are different
sorts of bold and also italic, this gives a lot
more options for the user to use. When I
was using the text tool I only used it for
putting text on tools like buttons and my
navigation bar, I used a simple font and
simple size, so I didn’t have to use the bold
and italic settings.
line; The line tool is very simple, it is used to get
a very straight line, that is its main use, I
didn’t really use it on my products.
shape; The shape tool is used to create different
shapes, when I was using it I mainly used
the rectangle tool

The rectangle tool is good because it

allows me to create an even rectangle very
fast, I also used the rounded rectangle tool
as this allowed me to get a rectangle with
already round edges. The ellipse tool
allows you to create even circles and ovals
shaped things. The polygon tool allows
you to create shapes like the octagon, your
able to create any sided shapes.
To find these different tools you can simply
go down the tool bar and hold down the
click on the rectangle
zoom; Zoom is easy to use inside of photoshop,
you can easily zoom by pressing Ctrl and +,
and then you can zoom out with Ctrl and -.

I used this to get a close up of what I was

working on, zooming allows you to get
the precision if you are using a rubber or
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 pencil, if I was rubbing something out that
I needed to do pixel by pixel I would use
the zoom tool to allow myself to get the
best accuracy.
guides and rulers; I used guides to make sure I get everything
in the right place and spaced out correctly,
the guide tool is inside of the view drop
down and you can set the guides up to
how you want. The guides tool is good for
lining things up, creating guides is very
easy as you can get a guide layout which
allows you to add as many lines as you
want, this helps you line important things
up on the project and would help you
would spacing things out evenly. I did this
for my navigation bar to make it easier to
line the whole thing up.
Paletts, e.g. colour, Colour and gradients:
gradients, layers, I used colour a lot within photoshop and it
object, brushes, is very important to use, you can easily
history, actions, change your colour with the colour pallet
size, resolution; along the right side, when changing the
colour you can pick from many different
colours, if you need to save that colour you
can get the colour hash for the colour you
are using. I used colour in all my different
products as it is very important to make
sure it looks good and different than other
boring black and white images.

Gradient is used to show a change in the

colour, this could be like a blue goes from
dark to light but it shown to look like it is
fading instead of just changing into that
colour suddenly, gradients are good and
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 can be used subtly to make a graphic more
detailed than if you just had a set colour, in
my products I used it for the navigation
bar, this was to make a blue turn into a
dark blue which gave the navigation bar
more detail than it would have without it.
There are different pre-sets and you can
make a custom one, you can change the
degree the colour change is on and the
amount and position it changes.

History and brushes:

the history palett allows you to view
everything you have added and taken
away, this is good as it allows you to go
back and see something that you may not
have wanted to delete and put it back in, it
also allows you to delete and take
snapshots of what you are doing, this is
important as if you want to show evidence
of what you are doing as you go along
you can use the snapshot feature and the
delete tool deletes anything from the page
and the history tab.

The brushes palett allows you to change

the brush size and the actual brush you
are using, I didn’t use this tool very much
inside of my project.
Layers, e.g. Copying, flattening and colour selection:
copying, saving, Copying the layers is important as it allows
arranging; you to create the exact same layer twice
flattening; colour which would allow you to make
selection, something quicker if it uses the layer you
are copying within it. You can also copy
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 multiple layers at once, I used this to create
multiple layers for my buttons.
The flattening tool allows you to flatten
down all your layers and turn them into
one layer, this tool is good for when you
have finished a product making it very
simple and only one slide, you could also
use it if you were building your product in
sections, you could create a section then
flatten it, then create another and keep
flattening it, this keeps your file less
cramped.

Colour selection is important as it allows

you to select a colour to use for that layer,
the colour selection part allows you to
select the colour for the layer you are
editing on instead of the tool you are
using.
Colour selection, Eyedropper and colour switch:
e.g. foreground, The eyedropper tool allows you to grab
background, any colour within a photoshop, all you
colour switch, have to do is select the eyedropper tool
eyedropper and then click on the colour you want to
take to use. Once you have selected it you
will be able to use it for whatever you
want to do as it will be on the 2-colour
selection part on the bottom left, the
colour switch allows you to easily swap
between the two colours you have
selected, there is a little arrow that flips the
colours in the boxes.

Background and foreground:

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 I used the background tool mainly to make
the background transparent. You do this
when you are creating a new project,
when selecting your canvas dimensions,
you can set the background to what you
want, there are 5 different things you can
change it to, white, black, background
colour, transparent and custom. White and
black are just the standard shades you can
set it as. Background colour is where you
can send it to any different colour you
want. Transparent lets you make the
background see through so when you
publish it you can’t see anything on the
back. Custom just lets you pick whatever
colour you want. When I used it I mainly
used white and transparent as it looked
the best and I didn’t need a coloured
background.
Editing tools: 
Selection, e.g. Magnetic lasso and lasso:
marquee, lasso, the magnetic lasso tool is a tool that allows
magic wand, you to select an image or shape that you
magnetic lasso, want to move or copy, it allows you to do
deselect; this very quickly as it follows the line you
start it on, sometimes this tool doesn’t
work very well as it picks up a different line
you are following, this can make it go
wrong and have to restart. I didn’t use this
tool much as I used the lasso tool, this tool
Is the one where you must do it by hand
movement and it is all your own hand. To
do this it is easiest by zooming in as far as
you can, this is because you can do the

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 movements a lot more slowly and precise. I
used this tool a lot more.

Magic wand:
The magic wand is very good as it lets you
select a colour to delete or copy very fast,
you can click the background of
something that you don’t want and then
press delete and this will delete it, the
problem with this is if the image is very
pixelated it won’t delete the background
properly compared to a very high quality
picture.
Transform, e.g. Copying the layers is important as it allows
scale, rotate, skew, you to create the exact same layer twice
flip; cut; copy; which would allow you to make
paste; crop; trim; something quicker if it uses the layer you
erase; undo; fill are copying within it. You can also copy
multiple layers at once, I used this to create
multiple layers for my buttons.

The erase tool is important as it allows you

to erase parts of a graphic that you want
to get rid of. I used it a lot on my product
especially with my cart screen icon as this
was one of my best icons.

The fill tool is also important as it lets you

quickly fill a place with colour compared to
trying to brush it in with a tool, it is also
good as if it is high quality it allows you to
get a very sharp edge but if it’s a low-
quality image it may not fill properly.

Advanced tools: 
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 Effects, e.g. layer In my project, I only used one layer effect,
effects, filters, this was the drop shadow, the drop
channels; image shadow looks good for the back off
adjustments, buttons because it can add a black border
to something or it could add a lower
shadow that is less distinct than a normal
one. I used it to make my buttons stand
out more on my navigation bar.

Filters are used to change the look of

something as they can make something
look a lot different from the original, you
can add a sun blur effect which will add a
bright light that will blur parts of the layer
you put it on, you could also add a lens
flare.

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