Photoshop: Introduction to Application Interface
- Stephanie Lynn
- Laura P Rowan
This is a beginner topic. Little to no advanced knowledge is required.
Permission Level
Level 1 or Higher - See permission level document for details
Recommended Tool
This documentation is demonstrating the use of Adobe Photoshop CC (but it will also be very similar in older versions of photoshop)
Here's what the Photoshop interface looks like once we've opened an image or created a new photoshop image.
See the image below for some highlights on relevant parts of photoshop. Not all of these tools/palettes may be visible when you first open photoshop for the first time.
The current zoom level is displayed, just like it is in the document's tab. You can type a different percentage in that field to change the zoom level.
To the right of the zoom level is the Status Bar. By default, the Status Bar displays the color profile of the image. In my case, it's Adobe RGB (1998). Yours may say something different, like sRGB IEC61966-2.1. You can click on that arrow next to the status bar to reveal other document information like width/height, resolution or color image.
The Toolbar (also known as the Toolbox or the Tools palette) is where Photoshop holds all of its tools. You'll find it along the left of Photoshop's interface. There's tools for making selections, for editing and retouching images, for painting, adding type or shapes to your document, and more.
Photoshop includes lots of tools. In fact, there are many more tools than what we see. Most of the tools in the Toolbar have other tools nested in with them in the same spot. Click and hold on a tool's icon to view a menu of the other tools hiding behind it.
For example, by default, the Rectangular Marquee Tool is selected. It's the second tool from the top. If I click and hold on the Rectangular Marquee Tool's icon, a fly-out menu appears. The menu shows me that the Elliptical Marquee Tool, the Single Row Marquee Tool and the Single Column Marquee Tool can also be selected from that same spot.
Directly linked to the Toolbar is Photoshop's Options Bar. The Options Bar displays options for whichever tool we've selected in the Toolbar. You'll find the Options Bar along the top of the interface, just above the document window.
Along the very top of Photoshop's interface is the Menu Bar. The Menu Bar is where we find various options and commands, all grouped into categories. The File menu, for example, holds options for opening, saving and closing documents. The Layer menu lists options for working with layers. Photoshop's many filters are found under the Filter menu, and so on. We won't go through every category and menu item here, but we'll learn all about them in future lessons as they become important. Note that the "Photoshop CC" category on the left of the Menu Bar in the screenshot is only found in the Mac version of Photoshop.
