Lesson #06 The Photoshop Edit Function
Written By Darren

In the days of easels and pallets, fixing a mistake or resizing a painting were either daunting tasks or just not doable. If you accidentally painted an arm coming out of the right ear lobe instead of the shoulder, you pretty much had to start your painting all over. Thank goodness for computers and the life-saving "Undo" command. This single command is probably the most used function for me when I'm doing my design work. My fingers actually on the Ctrl and Z keys (the Undo keystroke) while I'm working on a project which also allows me to quickly move between the Undo keystroke and the Save keystroke (Ctrl+S).

The "Undo" command is one of several functions that are accessible from the Edit dropdown menu.

As with most software programs, this function will allow you to "undo" the last thing you did. Did you accidentally swipe your paintbrush across the face of a gorgeous model giving her a moustache that even Groucho Marks would be proud of? No problem. Just simply use the Undo command and you're back to the state you were in just before you butchered her lovely chompers.

The "Step Backward" and "Step Forward" allow you to quickly Undo and Redo, but they allow you go back or forward more than just one step/state. So, if you messed up 7 steps ago, you can click the Step Backward function several times until you're back where you want to be. If you look closely at the keystrokes for the Undo, Step Forward and Step Backward functions, their common keys are Crl+Z. So, the only additional keys you'll have to remember are the Alt and Shift keys.

The Fade Fill command is a pretty cool tool that will allow you to "fade the fill" on a particular layer. For instance, if I had an image of a girl selected and filled the image with black, I can change the opacity of that black fill by moving the slider on the Fade Fill tool. This only affects the layer you are on and eliminates the need to have a seperate layer for the black fill.

The Copy, Paste and Cut functions are pretty self-explanatory and used in many other applications you are probably already using. But, what about the Paste Into, Copy Merged and Clear commands? The Paste Into is used once you copy something and want to paste that into a particular selection that you may have selected with the magic wand, for instance. The Copy Merged command allows you to copy every layer that is viewable with the area that you selected to be copied. The regular Copy command will only copy the particular layer you are on, in most cases. However, sometimes you want to copy all of the layers. That's when you will use the Copy Merged command. The Clear command works much like pressing the delete key and Cut command, with the exception that you can't paste the cleared area anywhere once you clear it out.

The Fill command works in a way much like if you were to take a bucket of paint and pour it over a certain area of your artwork. You can select an area with the magic wand tool or with one of the other selection tools anduse the Fill tool to fill that highlighted area with colors or patterns.

The Stroke command is one that I use a lot when placing a border around a square picture or even when I want to place a border around text.

With Photoshop 6.0+, this function has also been added to the Layer Styles, and I now use the Styles function for text now because I don't have to Rasterize the text in order to Stroke it.

The Free Transform and Transform tools are going to be some of your most used image editing functions. They allow you to scale, skew, and do all kinds of sizing and rotating manipulations. You use the scale and rotating functions by clicking and dragging the little sqares that appear on the corners and sides of the image when you select these tools.

Suppose you made a cool looking blob and you want to save that image for later use, maybe as a paint brush or something that you can Fill into a selected area. The Define Pattern and Define Brush allow you to do this. I made this little blob here that I want to later use with my paint brush tool so that when I paint or dab with the paint brush tool, it will output this little blob.

I first save my image as a PSD file. While the file is still open, I select "Define Brush" and click OK. Now, when I select one of the paint tools, such as the airbrush, my new design is shown as one of the brushes...pretty cool, eh?

Photoshop is a very powerful program, especially when it comes to the customizing features. There are plenty more and we'll discuss some of them as well in the next tutorial.