Menus

| File | Edit | Layer | Select | Filter | Window |
Note: This tutorial does not cover every menu item

Menus selections are used to initiate an action, or make a change to your file or selection. Let’s take a quick look at a few of them.

File — I’ll assume you’re all roughly familiar with the standard File menu items, such as Open, Save, Save As, Close, etc.

Revert - One handy command from File is Revert, which will take you back to wherever you were when the file was last saved.

New — Gives a new canvas. A dialog box lets you specify how many pixels wide and high your document will be. If you have copied something, it will automatically set the size to match what was copied.

Preferences — One Preference command you will want to use is the "Units & Rulers" command. Set your Units option to "Pixels" if it isn’t already. Afterwards, all of your measurements will automatically be in pixels.

Edit — Likewise, the Copy, Cut and Paste functions from the Edit menu. Here are some others worth noting:

Undo/Redo — Good old Ctrl/Command-Z has saved me more times than I can think of. But remember you only get one undo, and that includes selecting and de-selecting. So don’t de-select an area you’ve done something to unless you’re sure you like it. Instead, to see your document without the marching ants, select "Hide Edges" from the View menu, or type Ctrl/Command - h. Don’t forget to turn it back on using "Show Edges," or Ctrl/Command - h again. If you make a mistake, Undo before doing anything else. If you mess up, you can always Revert. The History palette also offers some options for recovering your previous steps. Experiment with it on your own.

Fill — This command will fill your selection with your foreground color.

Stroke — Runs a line along the edge of your selection. A dialog box gives you control over the width of the line and other options.

Free Transform — When enacted, it puts handles around your selection, or the selected entire layer’s contents. You can then scale it, rotate it or move it. Using key combinations you can also skew or distort your selection.

Transform — Gives you access to specific transformation commands.

Image — Commands that affect the entire document.

Mode — Controls what mode you are in. You will almost always want to be in "RGB" mode while working on a document.

Adjust — Gives access to a large number of color adjusting options. For now, lets stick with Brightness/Contrast. Sliders control lightness/darkness and contrast.

Image Size — Is used to change the overall size of the document. Increasing or decreasing the number of pixels makes the whole image larger or smaller. Always make sure the Resolution is set to 72 pixels/inch before changing your document size. Constrain proportions checkbox ensures that your image stays proportional. Uncheck it if you want to squish or expand a dimension. Resample image checkbox ensures that image is scaled to your specifications. Uncheck it if you want to change resolution without losing any pixel data.

Canvas Size — Is used to add or remove "canvas," the area you can work on in your document. Note the "Anchor" box. This allows you to determine where the canvas will be added or removed.

Rotate Canvas — Allows you to rotate the entire canvas 90° clockwise, counterclockwise, 180° or an arbitrary value you type in. This is also where you can flip and image horizontally or vertically.

Layer — Commands for manipulating layers

Effects — Gives access to a number of special effects. These can be applied to any layer, but most often these effects are used on type. Experiment with these effects on your own.

Merge down — Allows you to push two layers together

Flatten Image — Takes all the layers and merges them together. Usually, what you see is what you get after flattening. You will need to flatten your image if you want to save it as a JPEG, GIF or any file format other than Photoshop (.psd). If you have Photoshop 5.5 or ImageReady, you may not need to flatten, however, as you can "Export" the information to a flattened JPG or GIF.

Select — Commands that affect selections

All — Selects everything

Deselect — Deselects everything

Reselect — Gets whatever you most recently selected

Inverse — Deselects your selection and selects everything else

Feather — Allows you to add feathering to a selection; at web resolutions, you will find that 1 to 3 pixels is usually plenty, unless you’re going for a special effect.

Modify — Expand and Contract allow you to add or take away pixels all around your selection

Filters — Bunches and bunches of fun toys. You can use these to manipulate and apply special effects to selections, such as making them look like impressionist paintings or whatever. To tell the truth, you will probably rarely use anything but Sharpen.

Sharpen — Every time you change the size or rotation of a document or selection, Photoshop tends to make it a little softer. Sharpen allows you to make the image look crisper. Try the simple "Sharpen" command. Too much sharpening can sometimes look worse than none at all. If this happens, immediately undo, and try the "Fade Sharpen" command that then becomes available. You can use it to apply a percentage of the full sharpen, say 50%. Note: Because of the softening effect, and because multiple sharpen commands can junk up an image, it’s good to wait until all of your editing is done before sharpening. Also, Sharpen will only affect the layer you have selected, so you may need to sharpen on more than one layer, or flatten the image, and then sharpen.

Window — If you’re missing a window, use this menu to bring it back on-screen.

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