| Photoshop Tutorials » Tools » Palette |
The Info palette displays color values of the pixels beneath the pointer and, depending on which tool is currently active, measurements for tools. For example, it can provide instant feedback for color and tonal values, pointer coordinates, width and height of transforms and selections, measurements made with the Measure tool, color sampler readouts, document status information, and tool hints (Figure 3-26)?all useful information that you can gainfully employ when you make adjustments, transforms, and edits.
By default, new history states are added from the top down: oldest history states at the top and newest at the bottom. If you select a history state, all states that follow are dimmed and then deleted when you apply an edit. The new history state is then appended below the currently selected state. This method allows new histories to be added linearly. However, there is a downside to working in a linear history mode:When you delete a state, all states that follow will also be deleted. If you prefer to hedge your bets and keep all the history states, you can force Photoshop to work in a nonlinear history mode. In this mode, when you select a history state and apply edits to the image, the new state will be added to the bottom of the list and the states that follow the targeted state won?t be deleted. To set nonlinear history mode, choose History Options from the palette menu and then select Allow Non-Linear History (Figure 3-22).
You can create a swatch from the foreground or the background color, as defined in the Toolbox (the color can be sampled with the Eyedropper tool or selected in the Color Picker). Having defined a color, you have no fewer than four ways of saving it as a swatch: - Click the swatch icon at the bottom of the Swatches palette; to name the swatch, hold down Alt (Windows), Opt (Mac OS) and type the name in the Color Swatch Name dialog box (Figure 3-38). - Choose New Swatch from the palette menu and type a name in the Color Swatch Name dialog box. - Hover over an empty part of the palette and click when the pointer icon turns to a bucket. - Right-click (Windows), Ctrl-click (Mac OS) in the empty part of the palette and then type a name in the Color Swatch Name dialog box. To save the current collection of swatches, select Save Swatches from the palette menu. Be sure to save the set in the ~\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Presets\Color Swatches folder so that you can load it from the palette menu.
Photoshop's Paragraph palette also gives us three options for indenting our text - "Indent Left Margin", "Indent Right Margin", and "Indent First Line". All three options are located directly below the Alignment and Justification options, and as with the Justification options, they're found only in the Paragraph palette.
In order to show you how big of a role palettes play in Photoshop, simply Press Tab in Photoshop to hide all palettes. Palettes include everything from the toolbox, to the option bar, to the layers and colors windows.
Three distinct color groups are affiliated with Web 2.0 - neutrals, muted tones and bold colors. You can easily bring together your own color designs - choose bold or muted colors and then adjoin as many neutrals as you need.
To bring up the brushes palette you can toggle the window here in the upper right corner of the options bar (when you are on a brush tool).
Using Brush Palette: Press F5 or using menu Windows � Brushes to open Brush palette and select brush preset from list by click its thumbnail. You can stack Brush Palette to other Palette windows to nicely organize your work space by unchecked Expanded View in the Brush Palette Menu (A) to switch to Brush Palette Compacted View.
Adjustment Layer is special layer that will apply color adjustment (ex. Curve, Level or Hue/Saturation) to all layer below it with out actually apply it to image. With Adjustment layer you can temporary turn the color adjustment on or off by click at its Eye icon in layer palette to make them visible or invisible. You can use Layer Mask or Layer Clipping to mask out the effect of each Adjustment Layer. The Photoshop Adjustment Layer also allow you to adjust layer opacity to decrease each adjustment layer effect or change layer Blending Mode as regular Photoshop Layer.
Think about when you're playing around with designs and using brush after brush or filter after filter. Using the history palette along with taking snapshots can efficiently guide you through the many steps you take with designing. So have some fun with going back in time!
Brushes Palette (Part 1 of 5) The key to using Photoshop's new painting engine is the new, high-powered Brushes palette. Let's take a look at the basic workings of the palette. When the Expanded view is selected in the palette menu, you see the Brushes palette in all its glory. (If the palette is grayed out, press B on the keyboard to activate the Brush tool. The palette is available when any brush-using tool is active.) Without the Expanded View, the Brushes palette is similar to the older Brushes palette, where you simply chose a brush. (This, by the way, is also the view you'll see when accessing the palette from the left end of the Options Bar.) The Brushes palette is similar to the Layer Style dialog box - you can check a box on the far left to apply the current values of an option without seeing them, or you can click on the name in the left column to open the particular pane of the brushes palette. The top entry in the left column, Brush Presets, shows you the available brushes. Once you have selected a brush, you can adjust its size using the Master Diameter slider in the Brush Presets pane. You can also move to other panes of the Brushes palette to modify the brush's appearance and behavior. To change the content of the Brush Presets, use the palette menu commands Reset Brushes (restore the default set as specified in Preset Manager), Load Brushes (add to or replace the content of the palette), Save Brushes (create a set that can be loaded at another time), Replace Brushes (delete the current content and add a different set of brushes). The Brush Presets pane is the only one in which these menu commands are active. You can delete and rename individual brushes using the palette menu. While most of the menu commands are straight-forward, a few require additional clarification. EXPANDED VIEW: The default Expanded View mode for the Brushes palette, seen earlier in this section, enables you to customize brushes using all of the brush options. If you have already created all the brushes you'll need and selected their options, you can simplify the palette by deselecting this option from the menu. You select a pre-set brush by clicking on it. Double-clicking enables you to change the brush's name. The content of the palette can be changed using the palette's menu, but in the simplified view, the brushes themselves cannot be edited. CLEAR BRUSH CONTROLS: This command deselects all of the user-definable settings for the selected brush. The brush reverts to ...
The history palette is used in Adobe Photoshop CS3 to undo commands and go back to a previous state of a document. In this video tutorial, you will learn how to use the history palette in Photoshop CS3.
You can use associated keyboard shortcut to quickly select a tool without having to always use the Tools palette to select the tool you wish to use. For example, pressing B on the keyboard will activate the Brush Tool in the Tools palette. Where more than one tool shares the same keyboard shortcut, you can cycle through these other tools by holding down the Shift key as you press the keyboard shortcut. If you prefer to restore the old behavior whereby repeated pressing of the key would cycle the tool selection, go to the Adobe Photoshop CS3 menu, select Preferences > General and deselect the Use Shift Key for Tool Switch option. You can also Alt-click the tool icon in the Tools palette to cycle through the grouped tools.
You can define the foreground or background color not only by using the sliders but also by sampling from the spectrum displayed in the color ramp at the bottom of the palette (Figure 3-8). You can change the model that the spectrum is based on from the palette menu or by pressing the Shift key while clicking anywhere in the spectrum. Although the latter method is quicker, you may need to keep an eye on the Info palette to see which model is being presented as the spectrum displays one color model while the color ramps below the sliders display in another color model. To define the background color, press Alt (Windows), Opt (Mac OS) as you click in the ramp.
While working in Photoshop, you will be hard put not to use the brush tools in an editing session. Most tasks require some form of painting, even if it?s not your usual Leonardo or Hockney type of painting. For example, creating masks, making selections, burning, and dodging all make use of the brush tools. To assist you with your painting, the Brushes palette is used not only to store brush presets but also to define and modify any existing brush presets (Figure 3-1).
The first Photoshop tutorial in the How to Start section introduces brushes; this one goes into the Brushes palette in more detail.
The History Brush works with the History palette, so we'll have a look at that first. Previous actions are stored temporarily and can be viewed in the History palette.
What is the purpose of 'custom' brushes? Do you have a brush that you would use to create a painterly hair effect? No?! Look at this example photo here. Except for the eyebrows, all the hair on that guy's head was 'painted' on using a specially designed set of brushes. The different colors and color depth were painted on in stages. The brush is nothing more than a bunch of 1-2 pixel dots, spread out loosely & randomly over a given amount of space - base hair: tight spacing / mid-tones: medium spacing / color highlights ( grays ): tight spacing. The brushes are no more than 20 in diameter ( loose spacing ).
In the above example, I've surrounded the photo with three different background colours directly sampled from the photo itself. Moving from left to right, you can see how each of the sampled colours is from an area of increasingly smaller coverage within the photo, and yet there's still a strong harmony between the photo and the background image. I don't really need to pick the big obvious colours from the photo to create that match, I can easily concentrate on more interesting colours that might work better for what I intend.