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Photoshop Elements: Lesson 1 Review

"Getting Around Photoshop Elements "

By Sue Chastain, About.com

The Photoshop Elements Workspace

The Photoshop Elements Workspace

It may not seem like we have covered very much so far, but you may be surprised at what you've learned. Let's review what we have studied in Lesson 1: Getting Around Photoshop CS2

  • You learned how to find hidden menus and tools when you see a small arrow on a menu, palette, or tool button.

  • You learned how to identify many of the most commonly used keyboard shortcuts.

  • You learned how to take advantage of tool tips to find your way around the toolbox.

  • You learned how to open a file.

  • You learned how to change the foreground and background colors, swap colors, and reset colors to defaults.

  • You learned how to move, arrange, group, hide and show the palettes and bins.

  • You learned how to access additional palette options through the palette menu.

  • You learned how to customize palettes and move them in and out of the palette bin.

  • You learned how to pan a document with the hand tool.

  • You learned several ways to zoom in and out of documents.

    Let's review each of the keyboard shortcuts and commands we've discussed so far:

    Zoom shortcuts:

    • No modifier key = click to zoom in; click and drag to zoom into a specific area
    • Ctrl-+ (plus sign) (Win) / Cmd-+ (plus sign) (Mac) = zoom in
    • Double click the Zoom tool = zoom to 100% magnification
    • Ctrl-Alt-0 (Win) / Cmd-Option-0 (Mac) = zoom to 100% magnification
    • Double click the Hand tool = zoom to fit the screen
    • Ctrl-0 (Win) / Cmd-0 (Mac) = zoom to fit the screen
    • Alt (Win) /Option with zoom tool = click to zoom out
    • Ctrl-- (minus sign) (Win)/ Cmd-- (minus sign) (Mac) = zoom out
    • Type any number into the status bar magnification level display.

    Opening a File:

    • File > Open
    • Ctrl-O (Win) / Cmd-O (Mac)
    • Click the Open button on the Shortcut Bar

    Other Shortcuts:

    • D = resets the foreground color to black and background color to white.
    • X = swap foreground and background colors.
    • M = marquee tool
    • Shift-M = toggle rectangular and elliptical marquee tools

    Now you are ready to take the lesson one quiz!

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