Understanding Photoshop

The Toolbox:

The Toolbox is located on the left-hand side of Photoshop when the program is opened. Its primary function is to allow the user to select several tools to work with, including the painting tools, cropping tools, drawing tools, and several others (Adobe 45).

Panels:

The Panels element of Photoshop is located on the right-hand side of Photoshop when it is opened and is used for many different purposes, some of which include Colors, Adjustments, Styles, Swatches, and Layers (Adobe 157).

The Status Bar:

The Status Bar is located at the bottom of the screen in Photoshop, directly below the Document Window. The function of the status bar is to provide the user with the document size and the amount of zoom currently used in the Document Window (Adobe 103).

The Tool Options Bar:

This is located at the top of Photoshop just beneath the Menu Bar. Its function serves to allow adjustments to size, font, shape, design, and other aspects of the tool selected (Adobe 50). It's the first step in designing a dream with the Photoshop software.

The Layers Panel:

The Layers panel is one of the most useful panels in Photoshop. It is easy to locate directly below the Colors and Adjustments panels on the right-hand side of the program when Photoshop is initially opened under default settings (Adobe 157). The default settings can be changed, but the Layers panel is so useful that there is no reason to change its location. There is a myriad of uses for the Layers panel, which is what makes it so advantageous to understand and appreciate the value of the panel.

The uses of the Layers panel include adding, deleting, moving, and renaming layers. It’s also possible to select layers and lock them or unlock them, view them or not. These are the standard features of layers, but it quickly becomes more complicated. The Opacity and Fill options in the Layers panel allow for an individual transparency setting on a given layer, while the Blending Modes option allows for blending colors (Adobe 193). For all of these settings, gradients can be changed and layers can be merged or duplicated. In addition, the Fill and Adjustment layers are designed to allow gradient changes that can be applied to specific parts of a Photoshop file in order to change the look and feel of certain aspects of it. This is recommended to do as a part of visual production. The specifics range from changing the overall color gradient to adjusting light settings on one piece of a photo or even to apply a certain level of blur or clarity to a file. With virtually limitless uses, the layers panel is one of the most used and most imperative features of Photoshop.

A Few Ways I Intend to Use the Layers Panel:

There are several ways I will use the Layers panel in Photoshop because of the importance of using the panel effectively and accurately. First of all, I would describe the ability to create, delete, group, and move around layers as an effective way of digital housekeeping. The visible or invisible and lock and unlock features are going to be very useful in order to make certain that I know what each individual layer is doing and I can view visible layers to make certain that the file looks the way I want it to. The Opacity feature is useful for making some layers more opaque and others more transparent. These are several ways I intend on using the Layers panel and it has proved useful to me to understand the way the panel works.

Works Cited

Adobe Photoshop Help and Tutorials. N.p.: Adobe, Feb. 2013. PDF.

Gyncild, Brie. Adobe Photoshop CS6 classroom in a book. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit, 2012.