Welcome to this photoshopdemo, this is your host Daren Cox from photoshopdemos.com and today, I wanted to show about interface and the photoshop and what all these little tools and map navigation bars and all these crazy 00:18 means. Well, to get started, we have our file menu. This is the most basic and most essential part of the photoshop. You’ll notice that you have a lot of different options and many important things like opening and closing documents getting to your import menu where yu can bring things in from your scanner. You have scripts, where you can basically automate different things in the photoshop and create picture packages and all kinds of fun stuff. You can get in that more in-depth later, just know that this is your main menu. Your going to have a lot of options up in this menu as you can see, everything from opening documents to turning on menus and turning off menus, working with your selections and much, much more.

So the next essential part of the photoshop is your tool bar. This is another part of photo shop that you’ll be commonly using on pretty much to any document and in the new version of photoshops 1:20 , your menus are very condensed and a lot smaller so that you have more space to work. Especially if you have a smaller screen, it's very nice to be having this 1:34. now, if you want to turn off you r menus completely, you can actually come here to windows and then you can just turn off any of these tools just by simply making sure that there on checked and that’ll actually turn them off. Now, if you’ve gone through here and you’ve turn things on and off and you just have a complete cluster of things going on, you can come up here to work space and do default work space and that’ll reset the photoshop into its default zone so that you can then get back to your standard palates.

The next part or the next thing you should really know about this particular area is this is called your toolbar. And this is where all the tools and the photoshop are or at least most of them. Now, you’ll find that when you click and hold over any button, you’ll get a new fly out menu that has multiple options. The little letters that are actually next to those items are shortcut keys. And a shortcut key is simply defined is a button on your keyboard when you push it, it actually turns that function on or turns that tool on. So what you’ll be able to do is if I click on this button here, you’ll see that that is activated by the letter B. so if switched over to say this tool and then I hit the letter B, it would pop right back over to my tool brush.

So a good thing to k now about that is learn your shortcut keys and you’ll feel so much more confident in the photoshop and you’ll be working faster because when your in the middle of a document in this area, you don’t always want to have come back over here just to select your tool. It's kind of like if you are working on a car and you had all your tools inside your tool box rather than having them next to you on the ground for easy access. So knowing those shortcut keys will keep you from having a walk all the way back over these tool bar especially if your lazy like me because I hate having a come back over this tool bar every single time a need a tool. So just learn what those shortcut keys are and what they do.

Another really great function about photoshop is in your file manual, you’ll notice next to all the options or next to the different functions like open or close or browse whatever you want to do, you have shortcuts strokes. And what those will do if you use that key stroke like all to control O or to control O or control N, those will do exactly what it says which is new document. So lets just hop off there for a minute and I’ll go ahead and hit control N and you’ll see that now open up my new document window.

So again, another way to shortcut the process in the photoshop so that you can cut the time in half and not have to go always back all the way to your menus. So, I’m going to go ahead and close it out for a just a moment and what were going to look at over here, I’m just kind of coming off of my tool bar for a second. Coming over at this side is we have a several default menus in the photoshop and you have everything from your layers to your channels and your paths. Those are the three essential areas as well when you’re working on photos or graphic so I’ll be using those quite commonly. You have your colors area here, which you can’t choose several different colors and your swatches. If you just want a quickly grab from a variety of different colors as well. The nice thing about any of these menus is there’s this little area right up in here and it's very hard to see. You can just click on that and you’ll have an instant acces top a whole range of different types of color. Some of these are more directed towards the print like the 5:28 colors or you can just stay with your default set of colors like your windows colors or something like that. And then just basically stay with that basic –I’m going to X that out for just a second because I don’t want to save that and you’ll notice now, I have a new set of colors.

So, you can just scroll through here and choose whatever works for you. Again, if you’re working on print or if your working on web, now you know where you can go to get specific colors for whatever process your working on. So, now coming up and then here you have several other menus which are I think relatively important. You have your navigation which one you have a new document open. I’m going to open up a new document one more time so we have something to look at here. You’ll be able to use this to actually scroll in and out very quickly 6:21. Right here, you can optionally type this in. you can put in 15 or 20 or whatever the zoom level you want so you can quickly zoom in the photoshop and then you have your histogram which will give you color information. I don’t have any color in my document right now so that’s why we don’t see anything. This is—it can be really essential too to give you some great insight about the colors and what is going on with your specific photo. You also have you info tab.

Another essential tool, which will give you different values, your RGB values. You’ll notice when I come over to the document, I now have numbers in that are and those numbers will tell me exactly the colors that I’m on. To position in my document that I’m on, maybe ht the height and the width of a selection that I’m making and things like that. Okay, so now you can see it now, it says 314 by 444. That gives me the exact size and pixels that I’ve actually made a selection off so there’s a lot of useful data that can be grabbed out of this area. And other than that, now that you know where all the tool options and about the different shortcut keys, I also want to make you aware that this toolbar right across the top is where all your tool options are.

So you’ll notice whenever you click on any of these tools, you’ll now see an option up here, okay. And every tool has different options. It's not going to always stay the same, it just depends on the tool that you choose. So, right now I have the gradient tool selected so I have the variety of different gradient tools as well as the blending mode that I want to choose and also the 8:07 of that specific blend that I’m going to make. All going to more depth and other tutorials about what each of this do but just so you know when you want to vary your tools and you want to change the look and the fill, you can simply click on a tool and then come up here to work with specific tool.

Now, some of those tools and some of those menus or menu options will also be inside of these areas as well. So this window part and then your main menu is also an essential part of photoshop. You can actually turn on or turn off a certain option menus in the photoshop that working conjunction with your tools. So whenever you do turn on a tool, make sure that you’ll either using the options here or your turning on the appropriate window here that works in conjunction with that. So in that way, you’re always working in a nice dreamland way and you have the options available that you need while you’re working. Well, that pretty much concludes this tutorial in this photo shop demo. I hope you enjoyed watching. Hopefully, you know a few more things about photoshop that maybe you didn’t know. This is you host Daren Cox from photoshopdemos.com, we’ll see you next time.