Photoshop Tutorial Basics

 

What did we work with?
In this series of Photoshop tutorials, we were introduced to a variety of new ways to work with what the Adobe Photoshop software has to offer. We learned how to use the marquee tool, spot and patch healing techniques, and content aware and color correcting tools. We also learned the basics of setting up a document and the difference between saving files as JPEGs versus PSDs.

The 6 Photos
Each photo we worked with focused on a specific tool or technique.

1) Father in Blue and Daughter: This photo introduced the patch healing tool. This technique is better used for large defined areas instead of using a brush tool.

2) Black and White Boy: In this edit, we used spot healing. This tool uses surrounding pixels to match what you're trying to correct.

3) Woman in Blue Dress: The marquee tool was helpful in removing unwanted objects in the background.

4) Lady in Jeans: There was an unwanted tag in the coat pocket of this photograph so we used the cone stamp and blur tools to cover that area. In addition be added blending modes to keep wanted texture.

5) Father and Daughter in Red: In an image where there may be large unwanted objects in the background, the quick selection tool can help you "paint" a selection to either delete, fill with color, or make a layer mask.

6) Woman in Black Hat: This edit is the result of several tools and techniques. We used cropping methods to trim image dimensions, a layer mask to single out the woman in the middle, and brush tools to recreate missing sections of clothing.

Strengths and Room for Improvement
Before beginning these tutorials, I knew about a majority of these tools and had a basic understanding of their functions. However, I didn't have hardly any experience using any of them. In my opinion, photos 2, 3, and 5 were the easiest. In contrast,while 1 and 4 were more difficult, photo 6 was the most challenging. The easy edits required tools I was the most familiar with while the girl in the black had had several different components I was unfamiliar with. The tool I could definitely improve on using is layer masks. There are so many things you can do with masks and they allow for so much creativity. My greatest strength throughout this series was spot healing and color correction.