Photoshop Day 1: Image types, navigation, layers, adjustments

Photoshop is a powerful graphics editor program. In this 4-session Foundations class, you will use versatile tools to enhance your photos and images, touch up and restore your photos, and gain a basic understanding of the key elements of the program.

Day 1: Image types, navigation, layers, adjustments

Screencast (feel free to share this with students if they miss this day):

Objectives

Practice files: tiny.cc/PsDay1

General Learning Objectives:
  • Understands Photoshop’s uses
  • Performs basic image edits using photoshop
Specific Learning Objectives:
  • Knows difference between raster and vector
  • Knows when to use Photoshop to accomplish goals
  • Knows what layers are in Photoshop
  • Navigates Photoshop
  • Crops pictures effectively
  • Straightens pictures
  • Edits Photos non-destructively

Outline

Hook: Show a before and after photo you created in Photoshop using only the day 1 tools.

Introduction:
  • Names, positions, goals for class, etc.
  • Find out their photoshop experience and comfort level.
  • Tools
  • Panels
  • Control panel
  • Menu Bar
  • Zooming (alt+scroll wheel)
  • Explain what Layers are
  • Explain “non-destructive” editing

Cropping

  • How to use the crop tool
  • Non-destructive cropping (uncheck “delete cropped pixels”)

Straightening

  • How to use the straighten tool

Red-eye

  • How to fix red eyes using the red eye tool

Adjustment layers

  • What adjustment layers are
  • Where to find them (in Adjustments panel, or at the bottom of the layers panel, but NOT to be confused with the same icon at the top of the layers panel!)

Spot healing

  • How to heal blemishes with one click

Dodge and burn

  • Dodge to lighten
  • Burn to darken
  • Specify midtones, highlights, or shadows
  • Dodge and burn are destructive edits–copy layers to make it non-destructive

Saving

  • Save as a Photoshop document (.PSD)
  • Save as JPEG

Conclusion

  • Recap: Today we learned
    • What Photoshop is
    • Why we use Photoshop
    • Navigation in Photoshop
    • How to use layers for non destructive editing
    • How to make basic edits to a photo
  • Next time: we will learn
    • Selections
    • Masks
    • Combining Photos
  • Office/Facebook

Example Hook

  

A completed file that used all or most of the tools/skills to be taught that day.

Example Questions

  • What is a raster image?
  • What is a vector image?
  • Why are layers significant?
  • What is cropping?
  • When would you crop a photo?
  • What do you guess would happen if we put a “brightness/contrast” layer on our photo?
  • Have you ever made adjustments or fixes to your photos before? What adjustments? What program did you use?

Example Activities and Files

Layers: Pizza activity, give students a few minutes to play with the Pier49Pizza.psd file to get a feel for how layers work.

Follow along activities:

  • Use Crop, Straighten, RedEye.jpg to have students crop and straighten a photo and fix any red eyes.
  • Use AdjustmentLayers.jpg to have students use adjustment layers (brightness/contrast, vibrance, color balance) and dodge and burn tools. Especially show how to use dodge and burn on highlights (clouds) and shadows (canyon)
  • Use SpotHealing.JPG to have students heal the blemishes on the girls face with the spot healing brush.

Try it activity: Have students try out some adjustment layers on their own images, or the extra images if they don’t have any.

  • Which adjustment layer did you use?
  • What did it do to your picture?