PDF: PDF offers support for spot color channels, alpha channels, and paths — options not supported by EPS. (Spot channels are used with custom colors, and alpha channels store information about transparency in the image.) If your file uses any of these features, choose PDF over EPS, if your print shop accepts PDFs. When saving as PDF, the PDF Options dialog box offers Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabilities. If you select the option, the PDF file reopens in Photoshop with layers and editable type.
PSD: Use PSD only if you’re adding the image file to a project in Adobe InDesign CC. Don’t send PSD files to a print shop unless specifically requested to do so by the print shop.
RESAVING IMAGES IN THE JPEG FORMAT
JPEG uses a lossy compression scheme: That is, as part of the compression process, it actually permanently throws away some data when you save your image. The lower the Quality setting, the more image degradation occurs. Take a look at the figure here. The original image is on the left. In the middle is the same image saved in JPEG format with medium quality and then on the right with low quality. Compare the insets on the eyelashes (400% zoom) for the left and right images. See what I mean by degradation? Look closely at the inset to the right and you can even see the 8-pixel-by- 8-pixel blocks used by JPEG during the compression process.
If you save by using JPEG a second time, even more data is thrown away. Every time you save, your image quality suffers. Yes, indeed, you might sometimes need to open a JPEG image, make some changes, and save as JPEG again (perhaps for the web, perhaps to share with non-Photoshop friends and family). To minimize damage to the image, either use the highest setting (12) for the Quality setting or (if you know it) the exact same setting used last in Photoshop.
Formats for PowerPoint and Word
If the final destination of your image is PowerPoint or Word, use the PNG file format. If your image has areas of transparency in it, PNG is definitely the way to go. (Read about the two types of PNG files in the section “Formats for web graphics,” earlier in this chapter.)
What about all that neat clip art that you have on your hard drive? How do you use those images when Photoshop won’t open the vector-based WMF and EMF clip art files? Here’s how you get clip art into Photoshop, quickly and easily:
1 Open a new document in Word (or a comparable word-processing program).
2 Add the clip art.In Word, choose Insert ⇒ Picture ⇒ Clip Art (or your word processor’s comparable command). Click directly on the artwork and drag the lower-right corner to resize it to the dimensions that you need in Photoshop. (The artwork comes into Photoshop at 300 ppi.)
3 Choose Edit ⇒ Copy.The selected image is copied to the Clipboard (the computer’s memory) in Word.
4 Switch to your Photoshop image.
5 Choose Edit ⇒ Paste.You have your clip art, ready to use in Photoshop! Use the Edit ⇒ Transform commands to scale, rotate, and otherwise fit the clip art into your design. (See Figure 2-16.)
FIGURE 2-16: Copy vector artwork from Word and paste into Photoshop.
Chapter 3
Taking the Chef’s Tour of Your Photoshop Kitchen
IN THIS CHAPTER
I know you’re hungry to dive right in and start mixing up some masterpieces, but before you fire up the stove, look around the Photoshop kitchen. Get to know your spoons from your ladles, your pots from your pans. Figure out how to turn on the blender … that sort of thing.
In this chapter, rather than go through all the Photoshop menus, panels, and tools (which would take several hundred very boring pages), I show you some basic operational concepts. (But don’t worry — you can read about how to use specific commands and tools throughout the book, in the chapters most appropriate for them.) Here you discover such things as how to spot which menu commands have dialog boxes, what the little symbol in the upper-right corner of a panel does, and which tools don’t use the Options bar. You also read about customizing your Photoshop environment for faster and more efficient work. Next I show you how to set up Photoshop’s Preferences and Color Settings. And to wrap up the chapter — perhaps the most important section in this entire book — I explain what to do when Photoshop doesn’t seem to be working properly.
Food for Thought: How Things Work
A good understanding of certain fundamental operations and features in Photoshop provides you with the background that you need to follow the recipes or get creative and whip up some delicious artwork.
Photoshop now makes it easier to learn Photoshop as you work. In addition to Tool Tips and Rich Tool Tips (those very short videos you see when pausing the cursor over a tool), you’ll find a Learn button in the upper-left of the home screen. It offers both “in-app” tutorials and links to web-based tutorials. You can open the home screen at any time by clicking the little house button at the far left end of the Options bar.
FIGURE 3-1: Some commands have submenus, and some have dialog boxes.
You access the Search, Learn and Help panel not through Photoshop’s Window menu (the way you open most panels), but rather through the Help menu. Choose Photoshop Help, Hands-on Tutorials, or What’s New in Photoshop to open the panel. (Each menu command opens the panel to the appropriate content.) The keyboard shortcut to open Photoshop Search is ⌘ +F/Ctrl+F. The content available through the Photoshop Search panel is regularly updated, so in that oh-so-uncommon free time you have, you might want to simply browse.
Ordering from the menus
When you’re working in Photoshop,