Introduction to Adobe Photoshop

Introduction (37)
Welcome to an Introduction to Adobe Photoshop with retoucher, Patrik Naik. This course is aimed at photographers who want to learn Photoshop. Follow Patrik by learning the basics, then progress to more advanced features for your workflow.

Modifying the Layout (7:45)
Begin to explore the layout of Adobe Photoshop. Gain complete confidence in navigating the application, regardless of what version you are using. Understand the basics of opening a new document, identifying features like the palettes, tools, and setting up a custom layout for your retouching workflow. Focus on decluttering the interface, to begin with the absolute essentials as you build a foundation for understanding Photoshop.

General Preferences (14:46)
Examine Adobe Photoshop's preferences as it pertains to photographers. Optimize your workflow by understanding how to manage image interpolation, bicubic smoothing, default startup actions, default appearance and tools. Explore file handling, save recovery information settings, and learn best practices for maximizing Photoshop's performance for your computer system.

New Documents (21:01)
Learn to create new documents in Photoshop, adjusting canvas sizes, pixels parameters, color space, bit depth and manipulating background contents. Explore zooming within a document. When working with multiple documents leverage Photoshop's tabbed application framing, stacking and tiled arrangements. Maximize the interface whether you are working on a laptop or desktop system.

Brushes (21:21)
Transition your focus to one of Photoshop's most flexible and dynamic tool sets - brushes. Learn the power and flexibility of brushes as retoucher, Patrik Naik, works with a RAW image from photographer, Dixie Dixon. Examine brush size, softness, edges, flow and opacity. Practice creating brush strokes, undoing them, and develop shortcuts for speed in your retouching process.

Wacom Settings (9:51)
With a solid foundation for Photoshop brushes, learn about the ideal hardware accessories for a retouching workflow. Learn about Wacom pens, tablets and additional brush settings to optimize your process. Examine shape dynamics, pen pressure, and leveraging the power of software drivers to unify your settings across multiple applications. Learn to setup your tablet for the best results when using a pen/tablet workflow for retouching.

Layers and Masks (31:02)
Move deeper into Adobe Photoshop's tools - focusing on the organizational structure of layers and the power of masks. Understand the dynamic power of using layers for a non-destructive workflow and unleash the custom process of editing images in Photoshop. Begin putting the pieces together by adding brush strokes, layers, and manipulating layer settings to understand how Photoshop image editing works. Adjust opacity, change colors and manipulate multiple layers to understand their relationship. Learn to add shapes, transform, and rotate layer contents. Change scale and perspective to develop an understanding of basic compositing methods.

Keyboard Shortcuts (8:59)
Adobe Photoshop is an extremely robust application. With years of development and a variety of uses across multiple industries the tools are extensive. Knowing how to identify them and navigate to them quickly will optimize and expedite your workflow as a retoucher. Follow retoucher, Patrik Naik, to learn the best keyboard shortcuts to create a great foundation for fast, efficient work.

Camera RAW (32:11)
All professional imagery is built off a digital file-based workflow that uses camera RAW at the core of image capture. Leverage the color, bit depth, and resolution of camera RAW using Adobe Photoshop's Camera RAW processing. Learn how to push the limits of RAW data to prepare your image for maximum exposure, color, and resolution detail, from ingest, editing to final delivery of your images.

Adjustment Layers (32:38)
Having defined and examined Photoshop layers, learn about the non-destructive impact of adjustment layers. Examine examples of how to use adjustment layers in a targeted ways to create specific effects for your images. Explore color fill layers, manipulating blend modes, with masks and brushes to create specific tones to isolated areas of your images. Create gradients, solid color fill, color fill, and curve adjustments to expand your retouching capabilities.

Healing and Cloning (18:10)
Develop a deeper skill set moving from layer based adjustments to pixel level modifications. In this section, follow retoucher, Patrik Naik as he explains with practical examples the magic of the healing and clone brushes. Eliminate image distractions with different practical examples following a non-destructive, layer based approach. Compare the healing brush with the clone stamp tool across hair and skin.

Editing the Toolbar (4:44)
In this section, learn how to customize your toolbar to best serve your retouching workflow. Use the customizable interface to your advantage and create a tool kit with relevant, intelligent layout to minimize wasted time, while maximizing the speed of your workflow.

Blending Modes (16:39)
A layer based workflow is the foundation of Photoshop image retouching. In this section, learn about the power of blend modes through practical examples and explanations. Break down the categories of blend modes and their subsequent effects on images and layers.

Filters (12:39)
Leverage the power of filters for both effect and non-destructive editing in your images. Look at the Camera RAW Filter, a variety of blurs to create bokeh, motion blur and camera shake effects. Use noise filters to control unwanted image degradation, like banding and dust. Apply smart objects for non-destructive editing.

Liquify and Sharpening (14:27)
With a solid foundation for filters, advance to more complex filtering methods with Photoshop's liquify and sharpening. Learn to modify shape, volume, and dimension with liquefy to enhance a subject's form. Visualize the sharpening process, honing settings against visual feedback for control over targeted areas of an image.

Cropping (8:16)
Follow retoucher, Patrik Naik, for the best and simplest ways to crop and size your images for different purposes. Develop a workflow to create specific dimensions, undo any crop move, and save image format that retains all of your original image data. Lean to create presets to expedite your delivery process.

Saving for Web (14:46)
Transition from cropping and image sizing to focus on best practices in saving your images for the web. Pay special attention to file size, format, dimensions, and proper compression to balance the best quality with the best size for images that load quickly and accurately represent your work.

Other Palettes (17:15)
Expand your knowledge and application of Photoshop's many palettes. Learn about palettes like the color, adjustments, clone source, histogram, and swatches with practical examples of subsequent their tool sets. Dig deeper and go further with the inner workings of Photoshop's toolsets, what they are, how they work, and how you could use them within your workflow.

Pen Tool (23:20)
Wipe away the complexity surrounding another of Photoshop's most powerful and flexible tools - the pen tool. With minimal keystrokes learn to make any complex shape that you want. Understand how the pen tool will aid in creating complex masks and composites with clean lines, in a non-destructive workflow. Practice cutting paths through basic examples and then learn practical implementation to use in any process for your images.

Other Tools (19:25)
Cover some of the lesser know but useful tools and features within Photoshop's toolbar. Watch as retoucher, Patrik Naik, uses a variety of practical examples, for practical uses of the rectangle marking tool, elliptical marquee, lasso, polygon lasso, magnetic lasso, eye dropper, quick select, gradient, and many other tool sets. Round out your knowledge for application across any project workflow, leveraging the depth and variety of Photoshop's custom and industry standard tools.

Color (7:39)
Harness color, the elemental component of every image to create a really refined, advanced mask selection with ease. Hone selections, adjusting tolerance and fuzziness range, separating foreground and background elements. Connect your knowledge of Photoshop's brushes to fill in any areas of your mask for clean compositing. Learn to evaluate highlights, mid-tones, and shadows and edges for best results.

Content Aware Crop Tool (2:14)
In this example, see the power of Adobe Photoshop's Content Aware engine. Seamlessly create a background extension, changing composition and aspect ratio, with a simple drag and drop operation.

Face Aware Liquify Tool (4:12)
Utilize a fully featured retouching tool within Photoshop's Liquify feature. Quickly adjust facial anatomy with ease for subtle and dramatic effect. Apply anatomy adjustments across multiple exposures. Leverage the facial awareness engine to create enhanced subjects, adding dimension, volume, and symmetry.

Legacy Healing Brush (6:25)
Compare the updated healing brush (the live healing brush) with the legacy tool. Look at performance and quality differences across a variety of skin blemish examples.

Select and Mask (11:07)
Learn to create quick subject from background extractions using Photoshop's select and mask tool. Refine edges for clean extraction, with the ability to add and remove selected areas for clean masking. Work quickly with a global extraction, refining with additional selections to quickly select and mask a subject, creating clean separation for a background replacement.

Closing Thoughts (38)
Congratulations on completing the Introduction to Adobe Photoshop course with retoucher, Patrik Naik. We encourage you to review these concepts, apply them to your own projects, and share them with our community. Practice, implement, and ask a lot of questions. Our goal is that you become empowered through this knowledge to go and create amazing visual imagery.