Part 2 Digital Media Application Software

Text 1: An Introduction to Photoshop

On opening Photoshop, you will see the following four items: Menu bar, Toolbox, Tool Options bar, Layers Palette. These will be used for shortcuts in many of the activities.

Menu bar—Click any of the words in Figure 12 to see a menu of options in that category—File and Edit are some of the commonly used for saving and opening files, and copying and pasting images.

Toolbox—The Toolbox contains tools that let you type, select, paint, draw, edit, move, and view images. Below are some of the tools that you may often use.

Rectangular Marquee tool—Used to select sections of a graphic.

Move tool—Used to nudge a selection.

Crop tool—Used to cut down the dimensions of a picture.

Paintbrush tool—Used to draw and touch up an image.

Paint Bucket tool—Used to fill in a selection.

Type tool—Used to add text.

Eyedropper tool—Used to select a specific color in a photo.

Zoom tool—Used to magnify an image.

Tool Options bar—Most tools have options that are displayed in the Tool Options bar. These options change as different tools are selected.

Layer Palette—Layers provide a powerful way for you to organize and manage the various components of your image. By placing an element on a separate layer, you can easily edit and arrange that element without interfering with the other parts of the image.

1.Creating a New Image

Choose File | New

Set the width and the height from inches to pixels which are standard dimensions for web images.

For this image, set the width and height to 600 and 100 respectively. Click OK.

2.Creating Text Graphics

Click the Create a New Layer in the Layer Palette (Figure 13).

Click on the Type tool.

Click on Set Foreground Color to bring up the Color Picker dialog box.

Check Only Web Colors.

Select your favorite color and click OK.

In the Tool Options bar, set the font to Arial Black and change the size to 48pt.

Type Photoshop.

Note: A quick way to set the foreground and background colors to black and white is by pressing the D key.

Note: When developing graphics for the web, it is usually a smart idea to stay with Only Web Colors. These colors usually look the same on various monitors.

3.Saving Images

Here are several options for saving an image in Photoshop.

File | Save—Save a file, repeated use of Save will overwrite the original file with changes.

File | Save As—Save a file with a new name and in a new location, and you then are working on the new file you just named.

File | Save for the Web—When using this option, it optimizes your file for web use.

For your purposes here, choose File | Save As. Now we need to select a file format. Here are the most commonly used formats to save images.

.psd—Photoshop Document Format, saves your image and all your layer effects so that you can edit it at a later time.

.gif—Graphical Interchange Format, use this format for saving images for the web. This will compress the file for faster downloads on the web.

.jpg—Joint Photographic Experts Group, great for photographs, however, Web browsers only use 216 colors.

Save your file in a .psd format so you can edit and make changes to it at a later time.

New Words and Expressions

palette n. 调色板，控制面板

item n. 项目

category n. 种类，类型

contain vt. 包含，容纳；相当于

nudge vt. 轻推，推进 n. 轻推，推动

dimension n. 尺寸，维

magnify vt． 放大，扩大 vi. 放大，扩大；有放大能力

arrange vt． 整理，布置，安排 vi． 作安排，作准备

optimize vt. 使最优化，使尽可能有效，使完美 vi. 持乐观态度

compress vt. 压，压缩；归纳，精简

download vt. [计算机]下载

Exercises to the Text

1.Translate the following words and phrases into English.

（1）“矩形选择”工具（2）“移动”工具（3）“裁切”工具（4）“画笔”工具（5）“油漆桶”工具（6）“文本”工具（7）“吸管”工具（8）“放大镜”工具（9）前景色（10）背景色（11）“颜色拾取”对话框

2.Translate the following paragraphs into Chinese.

(1) On opening Photoshop, you will see the following four items: Menu bar, Toolbox, Tool Options bar, Layers Palette. These will be used for shortcuts in many of the activities.

(2) Layer Palette—Layers provide a powerful way for you to organize and manage the various components of your image. By placing an element on a separate layer, you can easily edit and arrange that element without interfering with the other parts of the image.

(3) When developing graphics for the web, it is usually a smart idea to stay with Only Web Colors. These colors usually look the same on various monitors.