Project 1a Selection, Zoom, and Curves

Welcome to semester 2 of the New Media Academy.
It's great to see the dedicated New Media Producing students back and ready to get serious.
Today we began the Visual Design requirements for Adobe Associate Certification.

We covered:
1. File Organization
2. A refresher with the Photoshop CS3 interface

• The top Menu Bar
• The Tools Options Bar, just below the menu
• The Tool Box on the left side of the screen
• The Bridge Button
• And the Floating Palettes, on the right side

3. Three ways to Open a file:

• File > Open
• Drag the file to the Photoshop icon
• Tools Options Bar > Adobe Bridge Button > navigate to the folder > Double click image

4. Hold the cursor over a Tool until the Tooltip and the keyboard shortcut appear.
5. Zoom Tool:

• Keyboard shortcut: Z
• Click, Hold, and Drag to select and Zoom into a specific area
• Double Click on the Zoom tool to get it back to 100%
• Apple/Command+0, to Fit image to screen
• Hold Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) with Zoom tool to zoom out

6. Click on the double arrow at the top of the Tool Box to change it to Double-Column view
7. Zoom Level/Percentage and Status Bar, in the lower left corner of the document window
8. Selection Tools:

• Click and hold on the Rectangular Marquee tool to reveal more Selection Tools
• Hold cursor over and Option or Alt click to cycle through hidden tools
• Using the Elliptical Marquee tool (0) select an area on your image
• A selected area of an image becomes the only editable area of the image
• The animated dashed line or marching ants indicates that the area inside is Selected
• You can drag the selection to better align it with an object in your image

9. Deactivate your Selection:

• Choose Select > Deselect
• or Command+D (Mac), Control+D (Windows)

10. Reselect a circle:

• Press Option+Shift (Mac) or Alt+Shift (Windows) and drag outward from the center of the circle. Release the mouse, then the keyboard keys

11. Change the selection:

• Choose Select > Inverse
• Choose Image > Adjustments > Curves or Command+M (Mac) or Ctrl+M (Windows)
• Make sure the Preview box is checked
• Experiment with some of the Presets, then change the Output: to 150
• Click OK to close the Curves dialog box
• Choose Select > Deselect and the marching ants will disappear

12. Go to File > Save As, rename, and choose a new location on your computer
13. This is the end of the first Photoshop Visual Design Project
14. Now you can quit Photoshop if you would like to