Photoshop CS5 new features are awesome!

In just 3 days you’ll be able to see all the new features available in Creative Suite 5. Adobe has been giving some “sneak peeks” at some of those features. In case you’ve somehow missed all the buzz about those features, here are a couple of places you should check out. There are some great videos that demonstrate the new features. I highly recommend watching at least these two videos:

• Puppet Warp feature in Photoshop
• Content-aware scale in Photoshop

Where to find out about the new CS5 apps:

• Photoshop on Facebook
• Illustrator on Facebook
• Creative Suite 5 Buzz Hub

Next week I’ll post about some of the places you can find good learning material about CS5.

Photoshop shortcuts

Do you spend hours and hours working in Photoshop? If so, you can save loads of time by using shortcuts. Even learning and using just a couple of shortcuts can increase your efficiency and productivity by hours over time. Here is a very thorough article on keyboard shortcuts by Tom Giannattasio. It’s loaded with illustrations and is definitely worth bookmarking.

There is also a goldmine of information about keyboard shortcuts in the online Photoshop Help. Check out these two items:

• Customizing keyboard shortcuts
• Default keyboard shortcuts

If you are already using shortcuts and wonder about some of the reasoning behind the shortcut changes in Photoshop CS4, you should read John Nack’s blog post about it called, Shortcut changes in PSCS4.

Learning Photoshop.com for iPhone, Android, or WinMobile phones

Are you trying to learn how to use Photoshop.com on your mobile device? There are some handy videos and Help resources to get you up to speed quickly. For regularly updated information, check out:

• Photoshop.com Help & Support page
• Photoshop.com forums

FAQ’s for each mobile platform can be found here:

• Photoshop.com iPhone and iPod Touch FAQ
• Photoshop.com Android FAQ
• Photoshop.com WinMobile FAQ

Want video tutorials? Check out Learn Photoshop.com on Adobe TV–it has loads of Photoshop.com videos.

New Photoshop Elements 8 tutorials

Happy New Year! Did you get Photoshop Elements 8 as a gift and you are now ready to learn how to use it? Well, here are some links to great learning resources.

Video tutorials
For both Windows and Mac users, go to Adobe TV. I highly recommend these two programs:

• Learn Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows
• Learn Photoshop Elements 8 for Macintosh
• There are a few videos here as well: Photoshop Elements Techniques Learning Center

Text tutorials
If you prefer written tutorials instead of videos, here are some good places to look:

• Photoshop Elements Key Concepts
• Photoshop Elements Online Help (Windows)
• Photoshop Elements Online Help (Macintosh)
• Elements Organizer Online Help
• Photoshop Elements tutorials from Peachpit

Offerings from the community
Sometimes the best tutorials and advice comes from the community. Try looking at forums. Here are some good ones:

• Elements Village – Elements for Beginners
• Adobe’s Photoshop Elements Forum

Here’s a nice tutorial on selecting and the smart brush from Priyanka Azad. She created this tutorial in the Community Publishing System on Adobe.com. Anyone can publish tutorials there, including you!

Create your own Adobe tutorial

Many people who use Adobe’s products have a huge amount of experience and expertise to share. What’s really inspiring to me is to see a very cool image that someone created and then have them walk me through how they did a particular technique. Are you one of those people? If so, you might be interested in creating a tutorial using Adobe’s new Community Publishing System. Your tip or tutorial will end up on Adobe.com. Here’s what you do:

1. Download the Community Publishing AIR app.
2. Use one of the prebuilt templates or upload your content in any form you wish.
3. Your content will show up in content searches when people are looking for help for Adobe products. It might even be linked to from the product Help and Support pages.

You can find more information about Community Help here.

 

Creating arrows and arrowheads in Illustrator

There is more than one way to create an arrow using Illustrator. First, you can always draw your own arrow with the pen tool. Or, you might want to use a pre-designed arrow by using the Add Arrowheads filter or a brush or symbol. And finally, you can use an arrow design that is part of a font. To learn how to make an arrow, here are some good resources for you. If you want arrow and arrowhead instructions for Illustrator CS6, see this blog post: Creating arrows and arrowheads in Illustrator CS6.

To create arrows:

• Add arrowheads to lines

• Create and reshape arrows and curved arrows (video tutorial)
• Use a symbol

These are the arrows you can use with the Symbol Tool. To get this palette, choose Window > Symbols to display the Symbols palette. Then from the Symbols palette pop up menu, choose Open Symbol Library > Arrows.

• Use a brush

These are some of the arrows you can use with the Brush Tool. To get this palette, choose Window > Brushes to display the Brushes palette. Then from the Brushes palette pop up menu, choose Open Brush Library > Arrows and choose one of the three libraries of arrow brushes.

• Use a font that contains arrow characters

To see if a font contains arrow characters, choose Window > Type > Glyphs. Select the font at the bottom of the palette and then scroll through the glyphs (characters) to search for arrows.

Digital imaging key concepts and terms

Are you just starting out with digital imaging? If you’re a beginner with digital photo-editing, you’ll need to understand some basic concepts. This isn’t always as easy as it should be. What if the beginner tutorial contains words or ideas that you haven’t learned yet? Are you wondering things like:

• What is a “color cast”?
• What’s the difference between “resize” and “resample”?
• What does “sepia tone” mean?

If you want to learn about some of these basic ideas, Adobe is testing a new idea: Illustrated Key Concepts. Each page contains a definition of the basic concept, an illustration of the concept, related terms, and a list of related tools in Photoshop Elements. Once you’ve learned what a sepia tone image is, you can click on the tool name and learn how to create a sepia tone image using Photoshop Elements.

The pages also contain lots of other “related terms” to help people find the right page. Sometimes you may not know the correct term for something. These related terms are meant to help searchers get close. So, for example, if you wanted to find info on creating sepia toned images but you searched for “antique” photos, you could land on Sepia Tone page anyway.

Check out the Key Concepts Index page to see the full list with links and comments. If you find this helpful or have suggestions, leave us a comment. Here are the Key Concepts:

Digital image basics

• Aliasing & Anti-aliasing
• Canvas
• Color mode or Image mode
• Compression
• Keywords
• Raster & Vector
• Resolution
• Sample
• Selection
• Zoom

Layers

• Adjustment layer
• Background
• Composite
• Flattening
• Layer
• Transparency & Opacity

Photo adjustments

• Color cast
• Contrast
• Exposure
• Highlight & Shadow
• Lighten
• Saturation & Desaturation
• Sharpen

Special effects

• Blur
• Clone
• Filter
• Gradient
• Grayscale
• Panorama
• Sepia tone
• Vignette

Transformations

• Bounding box
• Crop
• Resample
• Resize
• Rotate
• Scale
• Skew
• Transform
• Warp

Getting started videos for Photoshop Elements 7

Are you just learning to use Photoshop Elements 7? This set of videos should help you get started.

• What is Photoshop Elements?
• Getting photos from files and folders
• Getting photos from a digital camera

• Touring the Organizer interface
• Viewing photos
• Selecting photos
• Rotating photos
• Hiding and deleting photos
• Moving files

• Using the Guided Edit mode
• Touring the Full Edit interface
• Using tools
• Saving files
• Manual selection tools
• Automatic selection tools
• Using the new Smart Brush tool
• Converting color to black-and-white
• Creating text
• Editing text

• Making a photo book
• Making a photo collage
• Creating a slide show
• Making a panorama

• Using email and Photo Mail
• Printing your photos
• Signing up for Photoshop.com
• Viewing and sharing your photos online
• Backing up and synchronizing albums online
• Finding ongoing inspiration from Adobe.com

These Getting Started videos were created by Lynda.com. Adobe is offering this set of videos for free to help users get oriented to the software. For the complete set of videos, see the full title, “Photoshop Elements for Windows Essential Training” by Jan Kabili.

In addition to the Getting Started videos, Adobe is also offering a set of intermediate tutorials and videos to further your learning. I highly recommend working your way through the Getting Started videos before you tackle the “Learn More” set of tutorials.

Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Bridge tutorials

Just signing off for the year. I wanted to tell you that my posts will be less frequent from now on. I will still be posting occasionally when I find a really good topic with great tutorials to tell you about. For now, I highly recommend that you look to the following links for really great content that is being updated regularly:

Photoshop Help and Support

Bridge Help and Support

Lightroom Help and Support

Illustrator Help and Support

If you have great tutorials, try using the comment feature at the bottom of the Help pages to submit your content. If the writers like your work, they might include it in the documentation and give you credit!

Have a great holiday season. See you in 2009. Happy New Year!

Luanne Seymour
Sr Instructional Designer, Digital Imaging
Adobe Systems Inc.

Illustrator CS4 Help is live in several more languages

Adobe posted Illustrator CS4 Help on the Web in English a few weeks ago. (Here’s a link to the “What’s New in Illustrator CS4” section.)

Now, the localized (i.e., translated) versions of online Help are available in German, French, Italian, Dutch, Chinese, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, and Korean.

German: Verwenden von Adobe Illustrator CS4

French: Utilisation d’Adobe Illustrator CS4

Italian: Utilizzo di Adobe Illustrator CS4

Spanish: Uso de Adobe Illustrator CS4

Dutch: Adobe Illustrator CS4 gebruiken

Chinese simplified: 使用 Adobe Illustrator CS4

Chinese Traditional: 使用 Adobe Illustrator CS4

Korean: Adobe Illustrator CS4 사용

Danish: Bruge Adobe Illustrator CS4

Swedish: Använda Adobe Illustrator CS4