Photoshop.CS.Bible [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Conventions

Every computer book conforms to its own special brand of logic, and this one is no exception. Although I try to avoid pig latin — ellway, orfay hetay ostmay artpay — I do subscribe to a handful of conventions that you may not immediately recognize.

Vocabulary

Call it computerese, call it technobabble, call it the indecipherable gibberish of incorrigible propeller heads. The fact is, I can't explain Photoshop in graphic and gruesome detail without occasionally reverting to the specialized language of the trade. However, to help you keep up, I can and have italicized vocabulary words (such as bit depth) with which you may not be familiar or which I use in an unusual context. An italicized term is followed by a definition.

If you come across a strange word that is not italicized (that bit of italics was for emphasis), look it up in the index to find the first reference to the word in the book.

Commands and options

To distinguish the literal names of commands, dialog boxes, buttons, and so on, I capitalize the first letter in each word (for example, click the Cancel button). The only exceptions are option names, which can be six or seven words long and filled with prepositions such as to and of. Traditionally, prepositions and articles (a, an, the) don't appear in initial caps, and this book follows that time-honored rule, too.

When discussing menus and commands, I use an arrow symbol to indicate hierarchy. For example, Choose File Open means to choose the Open command from the File menu. If you have to display a submenu to reach a command, I list the command used to display the submenu between the menu name and the final command. Choose Image Adjustments Invert means to choose the Adjustments command from the Image menu and then choose the Invert command from the Adjustments submenu.

The whole platform thing

This is a cross-platform book, which means it's written for both Windows and Macintosh users. Photoshop is virtually identical on the two platforms, so it makes little difference. However, the PC and Mac keyboards are different. The Ctrl key on the PC translates to the Command key (z) on the Mac. Alt translates to Option. And because Apple's mice do not include right mouse buttons, right-clicking on the PC becomes Control-clicking on the Mac. Throughout this book, I try to make things as unambiguous as possible by mentioning the Windows keystroke first with the Macintosh equivalent second, usually in parentheses.

Version names and numbers

A new piece of software comes out every 15 minutes. That's not a real statistic, mind you, but I bet I'm not far off. As I write this, Photoshop has advanced past numbers altogether and arrived at Version CS. But by the time you read this, the version may be CS.01 or CS 8.0.1 or some other minute update to the product. Heck, it might have even progressed to a whole new set of letters entirely. You could be working in Photoshop IH (Innovative Hangout), Photoshop PH (Prolific Habitat), or even Photoshop DB (Demiurgic Bog). So know that when I write Photoshop CS, I mean any version short of the next major upgrade to the product, whatever that may be.

Similarly, when I write Photoshop 7, I mean Versions 7.0 and 7.0.1, Photoshop 6, means Versions 6.0 and 6.0.1; Photoshop 5 means Versions 5.0, 5.0.2, and 5.5; Photoshop 4 means Versions 4.0 and 4.0.1; Photoshop 3, means Versions 3.0, 3.0.1, 3.0.3, 3.0.4, and 3.0.5 — well, you get the idea.

Icons

Like just about every computer book currently available on your greengrocer's shelves, this one includes alluring icons that focus your eyeballs smack dab on important information. The icons make it easy for folks who like to just skim books to figure out what the heck's going on. Icons serve as little insurance policies against short attention spans. On the whole, the icons are self-explanatory, but I'll explain them anyway.