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Photoshop

New Images

Creating New Images

When you create a new image in Photoshop, you set options for naming the image, setting its width, height and resolution, as well as the background colour. These options are set in the New dialog box.

Practice Exercise: Creating a New Image

Let's try out the options by creating a new image.

1. From the menu bar select File > New or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-N (Cmd-N). The New dialog box will appear on your screen. These options are important when preparing your new image, so we will examine each individually.

Name

In this field you will enter the name of your new image. Making the name simple but descriptive will assist you in finding images as your image library grows over time. For this example, we'll call our image first_image.psd.

2. Click into the Name field and enter that file name. The .psd following the name of the image identifies the file type to the computer as a Photoshop file. Ensure that any images you create have the .psd file extension or they may not be recognized properly.

Width and Height

The width and height entered here will determine how wide and tall the image will be. This step and our next step (resolution) are the most important of all information within this dialog box. This is because the size of the image cannot be changed without causing noticeable damage to the image's appearance. The width and height can be set using pixels, inches, centimetres, points, picas and columns. Because we are working with the Web, we need to use pixels.

3. Go to the pop-up menu beside the Width field and choose pixels. Then enter 350 in the text entry field.
4. Choose pixels in the Height pop-up menu and then enter a value of 200. This will give us an image that is 350 x 200 pixels.

Resolution

Resolution is the next consideration when creating a new image. As discussed previously, the standard resolution for Web images is 72 ppi (pixels per inch).

5. Enter 72 in the Resolution field if it isn't already set to that value.

Colour Mode

The Colour Mode pop-up menu allows you to select a colour space to work in. The colour space that we need to work in for the Web is RGB. The RGB colour space is preferred for most image editing and manipulation in Photoshop. Because RGB has a 24-bit colour depth, a wide variety of filters and other manipulation tools can be applied to the image. Working with a lesser colour depth (or mode) will make some of these filters and tools unavailable.

6. Click on the Colour Mode pop-up menu and select RGB Colour. (It may appear as the default setting.) Make sure that 8 bit is also chosen

Background Contents

The Background Contents option assigns a background colour or transparency to your image. The options are:

• White: creates an image with a white background.
• Background Colour: creates an image using the background colour displayed in the Toolbox. The background colour is the one on the right of the two colour swatches.
• Transparent: creates an image without any colour. Transparency is displayed with a grey and white check pattern by default.

7. Select the Transparent option and click OK to create your first new image. Leave the image open for the next lecture.

Preset

This option lets you choose from preset document sizes. Any time you change any of the settings yourself (as we have just done), the Preset option will change to show Custom.

In the example shown at the right, the Preset menu is displayed and Web was chosen. This activates the Size option.

Size

The options shown in this menu apply only to the Web preset. If another preset had been chosen, a different set of Size options would appear.

Creating New Images Summary

• When creating a new image you will assign a name to it that will be followed by the .psd file extension, used for Photoshop files.
• The next step is to set the width and height of the new image using pixels as the unit of measurement.
• For use on the Web, the image Resolution should be set to 72 ppi.
• The Colour Mode should be set to the RGB colour space for images that will be used on the Web.
• The Background Contents option sets the background colour or transparency of the new image.
• The Size presets lets you select from a list of preset document sizes.

Creating New Images Keyboard Shortcuts:

• New Image: Ctrl-N (Cmd-N)

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Photoshop - TOC - Introduction - Books -
New Images - Links - Questions -
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Photoshop - TOC - Introduction - Books -
New Images - Links - Questions -
[ 1 ] - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 -