About Brush

As the name suggests, we use different brush styles in Photoshop to paint. Brush is very flexible in use, not only for painting but you can use it in combination with other tools to select image areas, edit and delete unwanted areas quickly. This is an important tool, quite complex and many options if you learn in depth.

In this lesson, I will present the most basic knowledge, so that you can understand how to use Brush.

Components of Brush

First you create a new Photoshop file with a white background, if you do not know how to create it, you can review the lesson How to create a file in Photoshop.

Next, select the Brush tool in the left toolbar. Then go to Window -> Brush to turn on the Brush Panel (the shortcut to turn on the Brush Panel is F5). In addition, you can go to Window -> Brush Presets to turn on more brush management panels, which I rarely use.

The image above is the components of the Brush

1. Brush Tool in the Tool box (Shortcut B).
2. The Brush Option bar allows you to select the brush, adjust the size, and the transparency.
3. Brush effects. Clicking on each effect will display on the left the options for that effect.
4. Select and manage brushes.
5. Brush parameters. You can adjust the shape, angle, density, distance, etc. of the brush.
6. Brush stroke preview.

How to use Brush

You can immediately draw on the newly created file. Try scribbling a few times.

When drawing, you can also right-click to quickly access the toolbox that allows you to change the brush size and change the brush.

In the Brush Panel you have the option to adjust the brush stroke in more detail. The Brush Tip Shape section allows you to adjust basic parameters such as size, angle, and distance. Some special brush strokes can be even more detailed settings. In addition, you can choose effects for brush strokes such as Shape Dynamic, Scattering, Texture … with each effect also has its own option. This one you can try, I can’t detail the effect ^^.

Some tips when using Brush

Scoring the beginning -> Hold Shift -> Scoring the end to draw a line.

Hold down the shift key and drag the mouse in portrait or landscape direction to draw a horizontal or perpendicular line.

You can switch back and forth between the two selected colors with the keyboard shortcut X. To change the colors back to the default black and white, press the keyboard shortcut D.

Summary

Through this lesson you learned how to use the Brush tool in a basic way. If you love Digital Painting, you can invest in a Wacom drawing board to practice. Hope you create great works like this soon.

And now, open Photoshop and practice from the first strokes.

See you in the next post: How to use Layer Mask in Photoshop.

Click here to return to the basic Photoshop Lessons

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Layer Style

Layer Style is used when you want to create effects for objects such as shadows, floating effects, adding borders, etc. You can download the Photoshop file at the end of the lesson to practice

There are two ways to use Layer Style

• The first way: Right-click on the layer and select Blending Options.
• The second way: You select the layer and then click the “fx” icon at the bottom of the Layer Panel.

After selecting, the Layer Style box appears as shown below:

The Layer Style box consists of three main parts

• List of effects: The effects being used will be selected.
• Parameters of effects: Corresponding to each effect, a parameter table will appear for you to set.
• Preview pane: Show the effect applied to the previous object here.

Function of each style

Styles

Lists Photoshop’s available Styles, you can save the Styles for later use. There are also many styles online for you to download and import.

Blending Options

Do you remember the Blending mentioned in the first lesson on Layers? Here we have some more advanced options like changing the transparency level for each R G B channel separately.

Bevel and Emboss

Use Bevel and Emboss to create a floating effect on the edge of the layer. In the Structure section you can adjust the effect inside or out (Style), the display type of the effect hard or soft (Technique), the density and the size of the effect (Depth/Size/Soften). To change the light direction and blend the light and dark areas you can adjust the parameters in the Shading box.

In addition, in Bevel and Emboss, there are two subsections, Countour and Texture. Countour is used to create grooves on the effect and Texture to add patterns to the object.

Stroke

Use Stroke to outline the Layer. You can adjust border thickness, border position (inside, out, center align), transparency, color…

Inner Shadow

Use Inner Shadow to create a shadow inside the Layer. You can adjust the angle, distance, shadow size.

Inner Glow

Use Inner Glow to create a glow effect inside the Layer.

Satin

This is very suitable for creating effects like Metal Logo on Cars.

Color Overlay

Cover the Layer with a solid color layer with Color Overlay.

Gradient Overlay

Cover the Layer with a Gradient layer. You can choose the fill angle, pour Stlye, choose from the existing gradients or create your own new gradient.

Pattern Overlay

Cover the Layer with a Pattern layer.

Outer Glow

Create a glow effect outside the layer. This is the opposite of Inner Glow.

Drop Shadow

Create a shadow below the Layer.

Below is a summary image for you to easily compare the effects you just presented above.

Using multiple effects on one Layer

You can apply multiple effects to a layer at the same time. Layers with effects will have an “Fx” icon in the Layers Panel. To see the effects being applied to that layer, click the arrow in the word “Fx“.

In addition, you can also turn the effect on and off with the eye icon to observe the change. If you want to change the effect’s parameters, double-click the effect to change it and it will display the Layer Style panel.

Copy, Paste, Delete Layer Style

Photoshop supports you to Copy Style from one layer to another by right-clicking on the layer and choosing Copy Layer Style. Then click on another layer and choose Paster Layer Style. In addition, when right-clicking, there is also a Clear Layer Style option to delete all effects on the active layer.

Summary

Through the lesson on how to use Layer Style in Photoshop, you already know how to use effects in Photoshop. Depending on the design requirements, you can flexibly use the Styles to achieve the most satisfactory results.

The content of today’s post ends here, you can do the exercises I give below to practice. See you in the next post: How to Use Brushes in Photoshop.

Click here to return to the basic Photoshop Lessons

Link to download photoshop file used in the Lesson: layer-style

Practical exercise

Materials provided: A black circle, red flag, yellow star

Request:

Shape the Olympic symbol as shown in the image.
6 circles of 6 different colors, with white border, arranged order as shown in the picture
The red flag has a floating effect

To do this lesson you need knowledge of layer duplication, transform, arrange, move layers, use stroke effects, Bevel & Emboss, Color overlay.

Download Practive-Layer-Style

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How to Duplicate Layers

To duplicate a layer you can do one of three ways:

• Select the layer to duplicate then go to Menu -> Layer -> Duplicate Layer.
• Select the layer to duplicate then press Ctrl + J.
• Select the layer to duplicate then hold Alt and drag the mouse to another location in the Layers panel.

In which the following two methods are the simplest and easiest to use.

How to arrange layers

You can arrange the layer order by selecting the layer and then holding the left mouse button and dragging the layer to the position you want. Or you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + [ to move the layer down, Ctrl + ] to move the layer up.

Move the Layer with the Move tool

To move the layer you use the Move tool (shortcut V) in the tool palette. When Move is selected, under the menu bar will appear Move Option.

The Move option has an Auto Select Layer/Group option. If you choose Auto Select Layer, just click to select a certain layer in the canvas and then drag and drop the layer to the desired position. If you don’t select it, you can only move the currently selected layer in the Layer Panel. The Auto Select Group option is similar to the Layer, except that the object to be moved is the whole Group.

In addition, you can use the function of aligning layers with the Move tool. For example, if you want the circles to align with each other, just select 4 circles and then click the center icon.

Resize the Layer with the Transform tool

Resize, rotate left and right, layer symmetry… are the operations you often have to do in Photoshop. After selecting the layer you want to manipulate, from the Menu you choose Image -> Free Transform (shortcut key is Ctrl + T). Now a rectangle will surround the Layer, you can manipulate the dragging corners to zoom in, zoom out or rotate left and right as you like.

Tip: To not change the ratio of the length and width of the layer when dragging the mouse, press and hold the Shift key.

Transform Options

When you right-click the Transform menu will appear, allowing you to choose the Transform tools that Photoshop provides.

• Free Transform: Resize, rotate the Layer.
• Scale: Change the layer size.
• Skew: Drag the edges of the layer diagonally.
• Distort: ​​Distort the layer by moving the squares on the rectangle surrounding the layer.
• Perspective: Distort the layer according to perspective.
• Warp: Deform the layer according to the perspective freely, can change the curvature of the layer.
• Rotate 180: Rotate the layer 180 degrees.
• Rotate 90 Clockwise: Rotate the layer 90 degrees clockwise.
• Rotate 90 Counter Clockwise: Rotate the Layer 90 degrees counterclockwise.
• Flip Horizontal: Symmetric the layer along the vertical axis.
• Flip Vertical: Symmetric the layer along the horizontal axis.

Studying here, do you find it similar to what you learned in the previous lessons? There is a bit of similarity between the Crop, Resize and Transform tools. So which tool to use for which case, do you have any questions?

• Crop: Used when you want to change the overall layout of the whole image, cut out the unwanted excess.
• Resize: Used when you want to resize to reduce the size of the output image file. Does not change the composition or distort the image.
• Transform: Used when you want to enlarge, reduce or distort an object (Layer) in Photoshop.

Summary

Through this lesson, you have mastered an important tool used to crop images in Photoshop. I have a small exercise below for you to practice.

Once done, let’s move on to the next lesson: How to use Layer style Photoshop.

Click here to return to the category of basic Photoshop series lesson

Link to download Photoshop files and exercises

Photoshop files

I have a Photoshop file with 2 layers Body and Head of Chii cat, please use the Transform tools you just learned to get the resulting file as shown. Link to download Photoshop File here.

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Introduction to Photoshop Layers

It can be understood simply that Layers are image layers, the previous layer is placed on top of the next layer to form a complete image. To make it easier to imagine you can see the illustration below, in the picture is a Photoshop file with 4 layers of circles arranged in the order Orange -> Green -> Blue -> Red. The layer placed on top will mask the layer below. You can download the Photoshop file at the end of the article, I will guide you to learn about Layers based on visual examples for easy understanding.

Elements in the Layer Panel

The Layer Panel is where you manage all Layer-related tasks such as adding, editing, creating masks, hiding layers, changing blend modes, etc. By default, Photoshop has already enabled the Layer Panel located in the lower left corner for you. You can optionally hide the Layer Panel by going to Menu -> Window -> Layer (or using the keyboard shortcut F7).

The Layers panel includes the following main components:

1. Option to show and hide Layers

Layers can have many different types such as images, text, masks, etc. This function is used when you have a lot of layers and only need to display a layer type such as Text to easily change the text content, for example. . This one doesn’t use much either.

2. Blending mode

By default, a layer above will mask the layer below. However, you can choose the blending mode for the layer above to create special effects. For example, in the image below, I have a photo of the sky but it is too cloudy, I find a photo with lots of clouds and put it on top and choose the blending mode for it to be Overlay. The result is a cloudy sky image. You can try each Blend mode to see its effect.

Adjust Layer Transparency

You can customize the transparency of a layer by changing the Opacity parameter. In addition, for layers that use border effects (stroke – will learn in Layer Style), you also have the Fill option, Fill will keep the layer’s border, only the inner part is transparent. You can see the ghost illustration below. With the Opacity = 50% option, both the ghost and the border are blurred, and with the Fill = 50% option, only the inside of the ghost is blurred, the yellow border remains.

Layer lock option

When there is a layer you want to fix in place, you can lock it. There are options to Lock transparent pixels, Lock image pixels, Lock position and Lock all. When a layer is locked, a lock icon will appear to the right of that layer.

Show Layers

Next to each layer there is an eye icon. You click to hide and show the Layer.

List of Layers

Each Layer will display on a row, you can see the thumbnail image (Thumbnail) and the Layer name. You can double click on the text to change the Layer name

Toolbar

In turn from left to right are Layer style, Layer Mask, Adjusment Layer, Group Layer, and Delete Layer. About Layer style, Layer Mask, Adjusment Layer, I will detail in Layer Style and Layer Mask

Group Layer: Used to group layers into a Group for easy management. To group, you select multiple layers by holding Ctrl or Shift and then clicking on each layer, then pressing the Group icon or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + G.

Delete Layer: Use when you want to delete Layer, this is too simple, isn’t it ^^.

So we have finished understanding the composition of the Layer Panel. The next lesson I will learn about: How to move, Resize layers

Click here to return to the category of basic Photoshop series lessons

You can download the Photoshop file used for this lesson at the following link: Layer Practice Exercises

Share if you find the article useful, thank you ^^

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How to use the Crop tool

First you open Photoshop and open any image (if you forgot how to open the file you can see the instructions here). I open the picture of Chii cat for practice, you can download the image I used at the end of lesson. After opening the file, select the Crop tool (shortcut C) on the toolbar as shown below.

You will notice that around the work area will be surrounded by a rectangle with a dashed border. You can use the mouse to drag the edges and corners to change the position, area, and corner of the image in this rectangle. After pressing Enter, the area in the rectangle will be the part of the image that is retained after cropping.

To choose the exact width/height ratio for the frame, you can select Ratio in the option box displayed at the bottom of the menu bar. In addition, you can also choose the type of navigation line displayed when Crop the option bar.

How to resize photos

In Photoshop there are two tools to resize images: Canvas Size and Image Size.

• Canvas Size is used when you want to change the length and width of the canvas without changing the size of the image inside.
• Image Size is used when you want to change the width, the length of the canvas and the size of the image inside to change accordingly.

I’ll write more about it below.

Canvas Size

To use Cavans Size, you access the path: Menu -> Image -> Canvas Size. The Canvas Size dialog box displays information about the current image size, the size of the width, the height of the change, and the direction of the image change. You can see the picture below illustrating the use of Canvas Size, not too difficult to understand, right?

Tip: In the Canvas Size box, there is a check box to select Relative. If you increase the width to 200, the length to 100, instead of having to enter the image size 800×700, you just need to enter 200 in the width, 100 in the length. Try it out.

Image Size

This function is easier to understand, to use you go to Menu -> Image -> Image Size. The Image Size dialog box shows options for resizing the length, width, and resolution. This is used when your image is as large as 6000 x 6000 pixels, you reduce it to 600 x 600 pixels to edit quickly and upload to the web less heavy, for example.

The Image Size dialog box also has a Resample check box that allows you to resize the image when resizing the image. For example, you have an image of 100 x 100 pixels with a resolution of 72 pixels/inch, you resize it to 200 x 200 pixels. So that Photoshop doesn’t have to interpolate more pixels, the resolution will automatically drop to 36 Pixcels/inch. I usually leave Resample automatic, you can try each case to see the difference in quality. One thing to note is that if you increase the image size while keeping the resolution, the image quality will be lower, while reducing the size, the image will only be smaller, the quality will remain the same.

OK, so we have learned about the Crop function, resizing images with Canvas Size and Image Size. If you notice, Crop and Canvas Size can both produce similar results. Which tool to use later depends on your preferences.

The next lesson will be a pretty important one: how to work with layers in Photoshop.

Layers are an indispensable part of learning Photoshop -> Click here to see the next post

Click here to return to the basic Photoshop series article category

Chii cat image file used in the article -> Download

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How to open files in Photoshop

To open the file, from the menu bar, go to File -> Open (Shortcut Ctrl + O), then navigate to the folder containing the file you want to open. Photoshop supports all popular image formats like JPG, PNG, GIF. There are also some formats you rarely hear about such as RAW, SVG, TIF, etc.

You can also use drag and drop files directly into Photoshop, you can see the illustration below.

• If you drag the file to an open tab, the file will create a new layer in the open tab.
• If you drag a file to an empty area on the list of open tabs, it will create a new file.

How to create files in Photoshop

To create a new file, go to File -> New (Shortcut Ctrl + N), a toolbox will appear allowing you to customize the parameters.

The settings include:

• Name: Set the file name.
  Document Type: Photoshop presets some popular sizes such as International Paper, Photo, Web… For each Document Type you can choose the standard sizes shown below. For example, with International Paper, there will be options for paper sizes A3, A4, A5, A6…
• Width/Height: Width/Height. If you selected the Document Type above, the size will automatically appear according to the Document Type you selected. Or you can manually enter the size you want.
• Resolution: Image resolution, usually images for viewing on a computer to 72 Pixels/Inch, images used for printing to a resolution of 300 Pixels/Inch.
• Color Mode: Color mode. The mode used for viewing on a computer is RGB, for printing using CMYK.
• Background Contents: Choose the background color for the canvas, you can choose white, transparent or any color you want.
• Advanced: Advanced options. This is rarely used.

You can save your settings by clicking Save Preset for later use.

After setting the parameters, click OK to finish creating files in Photoshop.

How to save files in Photoshop

Photoshop has two main file saving modes:

• Save in the usual way (Save / Save as)
• Save for web (Save for web)

Save/Save as

To save the file, go to File -> Save or Save As. A toolbox appears that allows you to choose where to save the file and the file format. There are quite a few formats for you to choose from, you can save as PSD for later editing, or save as JPG, PNG, GIF image files… When you press Save an Option box will appear allowing you to customize Select the file quality, you can also preview the generated file size here.

Save for web

To enter the file saving mode to optimize usage on the Web. From Menu -> File -> Export -> Save for web (Shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Shift + S).

Note: In Photoshop versions before CC, the Save for web function does not need to go through the Export place, it is located in File -> Save for web.

Save for web options:
Area 1: File format selection. We mainly use JPEG format for images on the web, GIF format for animation and PNG-24 format with images that require high quality and transparent background such as Logo. The PNG-8 format is similar to PNG-24 but is optimized for images that use less color. For JPEG format, you have an additional Quality option to see the image at what value achieves the best quality/size ratio.

Area 2: Resize the photo. You can resize the image to suit the requirements of the web.

Area 3: For GIF animations, you can use this dialog box to choose whether the animation is repeated or just run once and previewed with the Play button.

Area 4: Output image preview pane. You can choose 2-Up or 4-Up to compare image quality with different output settings. Under each preview pane, there is a file size display, based on which you can save the file with the most satisfactory quality.

Above are the basic operations Open files, Create files and Save files in Photoshop. In the next lesson we will learn How to Crop and resize images (Canvas Size and Image Size) -> Click to see the next post

Click here to return to the basic Photoshop series article category

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• Photoshop versions.
• Working environment in Photoshop CC.
• Three basic operations are often used with the working environment in Photoshop.
• Frequently asked Questions.

Photoshop versions

Up to now, Photoshop has gone through 10 versions: 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, CS2, CS3, CS4, CS5, CS6, CC 2013, CC 2014, CC 2015, CC 2017, CC 2018, CC 2019, CC 2020. In which, according to my personal feeling, Photoshop CC2019 version is the lightest version, suitable for mid-range computer configuration but still full of necessary features. Therefore, in this Photoshop Course, I will guide you on Photoshop CC2019.

You can download all Photoshop version, Portable version in here.

Workspace in Photoshop

The Photoshop CC interface uses black as the main color tone, highlighting the photo editing frame and creating focus when manipulating. The default Photoshop working environment includes 6 main components as shown below.

1. Toolbar (left): Contains tools such as moving the image, selecting an image area, brush, etc. These tools do not change much between versions of Photoshop.
2. Option bar (above): When selecting each tool, the options corresponding to it will be displayed here. For example, you select the Text tool to write text, the options area will show options to change the font, size, color …
3. Menu bar (above): You can open files, save files, use functions to change colors, use filters… from the menu bar.
4. Open files (above the canvas): Lists open files in Tab form. You can quickly move between Tabs with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Tab.
5. Function panel (right): Contains panels like Layer, Color, History… In Menu -> Window lists all the panels used in Photoshop.
6. Work area (center): Contains your art board.

Three basic operations often used with the workspace in Photoshop

Change Screen mode (shortcut F)

You can switch between the three display modes by pressing the F keyboard shortcut or by clicking the Screen Mode icon under the toolbar. This function will hide the toolbox, option box, increase the workspace area. This function is very useful when you have mastered the keyboard shortcuts of basic functions in Photoshop, no need to use toolboxes anymore.

• Standard Screen Mode: Default Photoshop interface.
• Full Screen Mode With Menu Bar: The Photoshop interface retains only the menu bars, toolboxes and function panels.
• Full Screen Mode: Show only the canvas

Zoom in and out of the work area

• Press the Alt key and roll the mouse wheel, the canvas will zoom in and out.
• Press Ctrl + 0 the canvas will automatically fit the display area.
• Press Ctrl+1 the canvas will return to the actual size

You can also use the Zoom tool (shortcut Z) in the tool panel, but I rarely use it, using the shortcut is more convenient.

Move the artboad

When zooming in on the canvas, you may need to move the artboad, you can use the Hand tool (shortcut H). The Hand tool only works in two Full Screen Modes (reviewed above). If you don’t like using keyboard shortcuts, whenever in Full Screen Mode, you can press the SPACE key, the mouse pointer immediately changes to a hand shape for you to move the canvas as you like. Very convenient, isn’t it?

With what I presented above, you have gained an overview of the working environment in Photoshop, know commonly used operations such as zoom in, zoom out, move the canvas… In the next lesson we We will learn how to open files, create files and save files in Photoshop -> Click to see the next post

Click here to return to the basic Photoshop series article category

Frequently asked Questions

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The lessons in Basic Photoshop for beginners I compiled for those who are just starting to learn about design. You will learn about the Workspace, how to manipulate layers, commonly used tools in Photoshop. After that, you will get acquainted with some photo editing operations, color correction. At the end of each section, there will be exercises for you to apply the knowledge you have just learned. At the end of the article series, you will have an overview of Photoshop, know how to use the most commonly used tools, know how to crop photos, correct colors and some quick ways to make your photos beautiful.

Requirements before learning

The computer has Photoshop installed. In this series of articles, I use Photoshop CC. You can use any version, the basic functions are the same. I recomend Photoshop CC 2019, you can dowload here

Contents of lessons

Overview

Lesson 1: Overview of the workspace in Photoshop
Lesson 2: How to open files, create files and save files in Photoshop
Lesson 3: Using the Crop and Image Size tools

Layers

Lesson 4: Working with layers in Photoshop
Lesson 5: Move, resize Layer
Lesson 6: How to use Layer styles in Photoshop
Lesson 7: Using Brushes in Photoshop
Lesson 8: How to use Layer Mask in Photoshop

Text

Lesson 9: How to use the Type Tool in Photoshop

Select

Lesson 10: Overview of the select tool in Photoshop
Lesson 11: How to use the Lasso Tool in Photoshop
Lesson 12: How to use Quick Selection and Magic Wand in Photoshop
Lesson 13: How to use Color Range and Quick Mask Mode Photoshop

Now, let’s start with the first lesson: Overview of the working environment in Photoshop.

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