The menu bar consists of nine menus; What are they?
File, Edit, Image, Layer, Select, Filter, View, Window, and Help.

Some menu commands are followed by ellipses (...) What does this indicate?
A command that is followed by a dialog box where you can enter additional settings.

When drawing a rectangular or circular selection, you press this key to ensure a perfect round or square shape.
Shift

To temporarily hide the pallets on your monitor screen you would press which key?
Tab

Which key would you press to hide and unhide the Layer Palette?
F7

What is the advantage of using layers?
Layers allow you to work on one element of an image without disturbing the others. Think of layers as sheets of acetate stacked one on top of the other. Where there is no image on a layer, you can see through to the layers below. You can change the composition of an image by changing the order and attributes of layers.

A new image in Photoshop has a single layer. The number of additional layers, layer effects, and layer sets you can add to an image is limited only by your computer's memory.

Layer sets help you organize and manage layers. You can use layer sets to semantically arrange your layers to reduce clutter in the Layers palette. You can nest sets within other sets. You can also use layer sets to apply attributes and masks to multiple layers simultaneously.

How do you hide or show individual layers?
To change the visibility of a layer or layer effect click the eye icon next to a layer to hide its content in the document window.

How can you make artwork on one layer appear in front of artwork on another layer?
The stacking order in the Layers palette determines whether the content of a layer or layer set appears in front of or behind other elements in the image. To change the order of layers and layer sets drag the layer or layer set up or down in the Layers palette. Release the mouse button when the highlighted line appears where you want to place the layer or layer set.

How can you manipulate multiple layers simultaneously?
You can link the layers you want to adjust by selecting one of the layers in the Layers palette, and then clicking the square box to the left of the Layer name of the layer to which you want to link it. Once linked, both layers can be moved, rotated, or sized together.

When you've completed your artwork, what can you do to minimize the file size without changing the quality or dimensions?
In a flattened image, all visible layers are merged into the background, which greatly reduces the file size. Flattening an image discards all hidden layers and fills the remaining transparent areas with white. In most cases, you won't want to flatten a file until you have finished editing the individual layers.
Note: Be sure to save a copy of your file that includes all layers if you want to edit the original image after the conversion.

What exactly are we doing when we ctrl-click onto a layer?
Ctrl+clicking on a layer will select that entire layer.
For example: If your layer is a red circle with a transparent background, ctrl+clicking it will select the red circle.

If I have an image open and I want to put a new image onto another layer what is the best way to do this?
Click on the image and drag it over onto the other image. That will automatically create a new layer for that image or press Ctrl+A to select the entire image, then Ctrl+C to copy it. And then click on the layer where you want to paste it and click Ctrl+v.

You are getting an error message about "nothing to copy". What is wrong?
You are trying to copy on the wrong layer. Make sure the layer that you are trying to copy is the active one. (the one that is highlighted in your layers palette).

Once you've made a selection, what area of the image can be edited?
Only the area within the selection can be edited. If you want to edit the outside of the selection, click on Select - Inverse.

How do you add to and subtract from a selection?
To add to a selection, hold down Shift, and then drag or click the active selection tool on the area you want to add to the selection. To subtract from a selection, hold down Alt and then drag or click the active selection tool on the area you want to remove from the selection.

How can you move a selection while you are drawing it?
Without releasing the mouse button, hold down the spacebar, and drag to reposition the selection.

When drawing a selection with the lasso tool, how should you finish drawing the selection to ensure that the selection is the shape you want?
To make sure that the selection is the shape you want, end the selection by dragging across the starting point of the selection. If you start and stop the selection at different points, PhotoShop draws a straight line between the start point of the selection and the end point of the selection.

How does the magic wand tool determine which areas of an image to select?
The magic wand tool lets you select a consistently colored area without having to trace its outline. You specify the color range, or tolerance, for the magic wand tool's selection
Note: You cannot use the magic wand tool on an image in Bitmap mode.

What is tolerance, and how does it affect a selection?
The magic wand selects adjacent pixels based on their similarity in color. The Tolerance setting determines how may color tones the magic wand will select. The higher the tolerance setting, the more tones the magic wand selects.

What does the blur and what does the sharpen filter do?
The blur filters which is part of the focus filter group, soften a selection or an image, and are useful for retouching. They smooth transitions by averaging the pixels next to the hard edges of defined lines and shaded areas in an image. The sharpen tool focuses soft edges to increase clarity or focus.

What does feathering do?
Feathering blurs edges by building a transition boundary between the selection and its surrounding pixels. This blurring can cause some loss of detail at the edge of the selection. You can define feathering for the marquee, lasso, polygonal lasso, or magnetic lasso tool as you use the too. Feathering effects become apparent when you move, cut, copy, or fill the selection.

What does resolution mean?
The degree of sharpness of a displayed or printed character or image. Resolution refers to the number of pixels that describe an image and establish its detail.

How can you use the crop tool in photo retouching?
A crop tool can be used to trim, scale, or straighten an image.

What is saturation, and how can you adjust it?
Vividness of hue; degree of difference from a gray of the same lightness or brightness. Also called intensity. Saturation is the strength of purity of color in an image. You can increase or decrease the saturation by selecting Image-Adjustment-Hue/Saturation.

What is the effect on an color image when you desaturate it completely?
The image will be changed to gray-scale.

What are the advantages of using the Unsharp Mask filter on an image?
The Unsharp Mask filter corrects blurring introduced during photographing, scanning, resampling, or printing. It is useful for images intended for both print and online viewing. The Unsharp Mask filter adjusts the contrast of the edge detail and creates the illusion of a more focused image.

What does the burn tool do? What does the dodge tool do? (toning tool)
The toning tools consist of the dodge tool and the burn tool. Used to lighten or darken areas of the image, the dodge and burn tools are based on a traditional photographer's technique for regulating exposure on specific areas of a print. Photographers hold back light to lighten an area on the print (dodging) or increase the exposure to darken areas on a print (burning).

What does the sponge tool do?
The sponge tool subtly changes (reduces) the color saturation of an area.

What does the Eyedropper tool do?
The eyedropper tool samples color to designate a new foreground or background color. You can sample from the active image or from anywhere else on the screen.

What happens when Noise is added to an image?
Noise applies random pixels to an image, simulating the effect of shooting pictures on high-speed film. The Add Noise filter can also be used to give a more realistic look to heavily retouched areas.
The Noise filters add or remove noise, or pixels with randomly distributed color levels. This helps to blend a selection into the surrounding pixels. Noise filters can create unusual textures or remove problem areas, such as dust and scratches, from an image.

The extract tool can be found under the many Filters in PhotoShop. What is the purpose of this tool?
The Extract command provides a sophisticated way to isolate a foreground object and erase its background on a layer. Even objects with wispy, intricate, or undefinable edges may be clipped from their backgrounds with a minimum of manual work.

What is the RGB Model?
A large percentage of the visible spectrum can be represented by mixing red, green, and blue (RGB) colored light in various proportions and intensities. Where the colors overlap, they create cyan, magenta, yellow, and white.
Because the RGB colors combine to create white, they are also called additive colors. Adding all colors together creates white--that is, all visible wavelengths are transmitted back to the eye. Additive colors are used for lighting, video, and monitors. Your monitor, for example, creates color by emitting light through red, green, and blue phosphors .A large percentage of the visible spectrum can be represented by mixing red, green, and blue (RGB) colored light in various proportions and intensities. Where the colors overlap, they create cyan, magenta, yellow, and white.

What is a GIF?
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is the file format commonly used to display indexed-color graphics and images in hypertext markup language (HTML) documents over the World Wide Web and other online services. GIF is designed to minimize file size and electronic transfer time. GIF format preserves transparency.

What is a JPEG?
Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format is commonly used to display photographs in hypertext markup language (HTML) documents over the World Wide Web. JPEG format supports CMYK, RGB, and Grayscale color modes. Unlike GIF format, JPEG retains all color information in an RGB image but compresses file size.
A JPEG image is automatically decompressed when opened. A higher level of compression results in lower image quality, and a lower level of compression results in better image quality. In most cases, the Maximum quality option produces a result indistinguishable from the original.
JPEG does NOT preserve transparency.

What format is a PhotoShop file saved in by default?
PhotoShop format (PSD) is the default file format and the only format that supports all PhotoSshop features.

What is opacity?
Opacity specifies the maximum amount of paint coverage applied by the brush, paintbrush, pencil, clone stamp, pattern stamp, history brush, art history brush, gradient, and paint bucket tools.
A layer's opacity determines to what degree it obscures or reveals the layer beneath it. A layer with 1% opacity appears nearly transparent, while one with 100% opacity appears completely opaque.

What is the difference between bitmap images and vector based graphics?
Computer graphics fall into two main categories--bitmap and vector. You can work with both types of graphics in PhotoShop and ImageReady; moreover, a PhotoShop file can contain both bitmap and vector data.

Bitmap images
Bitmap images--technically called raster images--use a grid of colors known as pixels to represent images. Each pixel is assigned a specific location and color value. For example, a bicycle tire in a bitmap image is made up of a mosaic of pixels in that location. When working with bitmap images, you edit pixels rather than objects or shapes.

Bitmap images are the most common electronic medium for continuous-tone images, such as photographs or digital paintings, because they can represent subtle gradations of shades and color. Bitmap images are resolution-dependent--that is, they contain a fixed number of pixels. As a result, they can lose detail and appear jagged if they are scaled on-screen or if they are printed at a lower resolution than they were created for.

Example of a bitmap image at different levels of magnification

Vector graphics
Vector graphics are made up of lines and curves defined by mathematical objects called vectors. Vectors describe an image according to its geometric characteristics. For example, a bicycle tire in a vector graphic is made up of a mathematical definition of a circle drawn with a certain radius, set at a specific location, and filled with a specific color. You can move, resize, or change the color of the tire without losing the quality of the graphic.

Vector graphics are resolution-independent--that is, they can be scaled to any size and printed at any resolution without losing detail or clarity. As a result, vector graphics are the best choice for representing bold graphics that must retain crisp lines when scaled to various sizes--for example, logos.

Example of a vector graphic at different levels of magnification
Because computer monitors represent images by displaying them on a grid, both vector and bitmap data is displayed as pixels on-screen.