Photoshop is a popular software. It includes many features that make designing graphics for the web incredibly simple! These tutorials are based around Photoshop 5.0, but if you have an earlier or later version you should still be able to find your way around. The tutorial is also based on the Mac version of Photoshop, but again, there is little difference.

Before you can start to create a graphic you will need to get familiar with some of the Tools you have available to you in Photoshop 5.0. As you progress through the tutorials, the instructions will only show you a screen capture of new information.

So make sure that you understand what you are doing in each of the tutorials as you progress.

After opening the software you'll see several small windows on your desktop

This is the Tool bar. On it you will see the different tools you have available in Photoshop. The Marquee Tool Used to select areas of your work If you put the mouse on the Marquee Tool, click and hold you will get several options. These options are: Rectangle, Ellipse, horizontal line, vertical line, and the cropping tool. The Move Tool Allows you to move selected areas on the canvas. The Magic Wand Allows parts of an image to be selected The Pencil Tool Acts like a pencil It can be switched to the Line Tool The Type Tool Allows for the placement of text on the canvas. The Gradient Tool Blends the foreground and background color It has several options that are accessed by clicking The Paint Bucket Allows for changing the color of large areas. Should be used with caution. The Eyedropper Allows for the selecting of a color.

Now that you know a bit about the tools you have available to use, let's start to create an image. Move your cursor to File and click. This window should appear. Choose New because you want to create a New image.

You now have the option of deciding how big the Canvas is going to be for your New image. Don't worry about making it too big now. You will learn how to Crop your image to the correct size later. You should, however set the Resolution to 72 pixels per inch. This is the recommended resolution for images for the Web. You should also work in RGB mode. You can change the mode later if you need to.

You now have a Canvas on which you will work.