Photopea Day 1

Outline

Red text indicates changes to the original Photoshop curriculum to adapt to Photopea

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.

What is Photoshop?

Explain the differences between Photoshop and Photopea. Establish that Photopea is a Photoshop wannabe, and that knowing how to edit photos in Photopea is essentially the same as knowing how to edit photos in Photoshop (the interface is very similar). Photopea just lacks features and performance capabilities that Photoshop has.

Navigation:

  • Tools
  • Panels
  • Control panel
  • Menu Bar
  • Zooming (alt+scroll wheel)
  • The “discover” feature for when you can’t find a tool or feature (command/cntrl+F or the magnifying glass in upper right corner)

Layers

  • Explain what Layers are
    • The Layers_Pizza.psd file is good for demonstration here
  • command+J for duplicating base layer

Cropping

  • How to use the crop tool
  • Non-destructive cropping (uncheck “delete cropped pixels”) Photopea does not offer this feature

Straightening

  • How to use the straighten tool (found at the top when cropping) Photopea does not have a straighten feature like Photoshop does. Instead, when cropping a photo, Photopea lets you rotate the crop, which will effectively “straighten” your photo.
    • child-biking.jpg

Dodge and burn

  • Use the same hiker picture from last class, or another image you want to use
  • Dodge to lighten
  • Burn to darken
  • Specify midtones, highlights, or shadows
  • Dodge and burn are destructive edits–copy layers to make it non-destructive
    • underexposed.jpg

Exporting & Saving A Project

  • File>Export As>Go over different options
  • Quick Export as PNG for fast exports
  • Explain the difference between JPEG and PNG 
  • Save as .psd to continue work later

Because Photopea is a browser-based program, you will have to export every project you work on to an external drive. There is no option to save your work online. Clicking “save as PSD” in Photopea just downloads the file to your computer.

Example Activity

  • Have the students work with hiker.jpg and use the tools they learned today. They can: 
    • Crop and straighten the picture so the hiker is more centered
    • Use dodge and burn tools to adjust the colors
    • Save and export the file when they are done

If there’s extra time:

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
    • Adjustment Layers