Anyone have the patience to walk me through Photo Shop?

photoshop is a beast. two companies ago i had a staff of professional artists and illustrators - and it was a chore to learn some basic stuff - even with all those resources available. and i still don't really know ****, imo.

layers are key. learn about layers and how to use them.

for a swath of blue - use the paint bucket to "fill" areas (including, the entire area).

to pick the blue color, click on the black/white squares at the bottom of the toolbar - click on the "front" color (probably black) and set the blue you want - that's now your "foreground color". then the paint bucket will "paint" with that color.

g/l!

i imagine there are useful "photoshop for dummies" books out there.

doody.

 

search for photoshop tutorials on the web ... they are immensely useful.

edit - deleted all this as I realized you're not there yet, and it would just make things even more confusing ... lol

 

i would ask cmy, the guy mastered it.

 

I am pretty great with P-shop. It took me some years to really master the program.

Doody is right about the layers. Everything is layers in P-shop. Layers are basically like shapes... you start with one, the background. If you insert text, it will be a new layer. Then lets say you put a circle in there, it will be its own layer. You could create your own layer that was the full size of the screen and on that layer add a shape you came up with. Whats the point of this? Well, you can change how layers interact. You can put one layer above another. If you had a green circle as a layer you could put your text above that and the background of your text would be that circle. You can change how layers interact, so you could set an upper layer to "color burn" and it will darken the layer below where they intersect.

Sounds very complicated I know.

Anyway, to do what you want, open up a new document. Choose the "fill" tool (paint bucket), at the bottom of the toolbar is two colored boxes, the upper/left one is the fill color, right/lower color is the background (not used on fills). Click the upper/left fill and change it to the color blue you want. Then click on your screen and it will fill it in blue. Then click the text tool, in the top toolbar (right below the file/edit/select toolbar thing) you will see a colored block. Click this, its the color for your text. Up top you can also change the font, point size, etc. Click on your document, and a cursor pops up. Type your test. Then the move tool (top right on toolbar) will allow you to move it around on the screen.

Make sure the "layers" window is open (Window -> Layers). you will see 2 layers, one background and one that is your text. Double click on the text layer (click off to the right or it will just try to rename it). It will bring up a series of options. You can add a drop shadow, outer glow, inner glow, embossing, stroked outlines, etc. Play around with these settings and you can come up with some nice stuff.

Hope it helped!

 

Here's a quick pic to complement what SRT Mike already said
http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/6779/untitled28jq.jpg

1 is where you need to turn black into blue (double-click)
2 is where you select the correct tool (you may have to right click to get it)
3 is your Text tool

To have a better look, I suggest you right click on your text layer, go for Blending Options, and experiment from there.

You can also change the shape of your text using the T with an arrow under it symbol, next to where you selected the colour for your text. There again, experiment.

PS ... don't mean to be harsh or rude, but if you're having trouble writing some text on a coloured background ... the learning curve may be quite steep. But we're here to help ya out all along!

Some quick shortcuts.
D will get you back to default colours (black foreground on white background)
Ctrl+N will open a new document
Ctrl+T (Free Transform) will allow you to resize, move, rotate, skew and do all sort of stuff to your layer. Super useful.

 

Pete.

How many more of these are you planning to miss while facing your computer screen?

YOU'RE ON VACATION!!!!!!!






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You can use the tool at the top right of the tool window, the little arrow thingie.

Or use Free Transform (Ctrl+T). This will allow you to move it around if you're inside the rectangle it will draw, rotate your text if your cursor is outside the rectangle, or resize it if you are on one of the squares at the corners. Note that if you hold shift while resizing it will keep the height/length ratio.