What is Photoshop?

Here’s a really brief history of one of the most iconic and recognizable pieces of software ever developed:

When starting with any quality project, you need to start from QUALITY ASSETS (ingredients.) The better the quality of the images you start with, the better your project will turn out. I HIGHLY recommend downloading HIGH QUALITY IMAGES as often as possible. You maybe used to using Google Images for everything. There are many reasons why this is a bad idea…

I almost always start with UNSPLASH: https://unsplash.com/

Unsplash contains HIGH QUALITY photography that you HAVE PERMISSION to use in your projects. Photos, like music, movies, video games, etc. are copyrighted by the creator. Each creator can decide whether to share a creation or not. Just because you see it on the Internet or Google Images, that DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN USE IT. The people who submit photos to Unsplash know that they are going to be used and have given permission to do so!

You can search for just about anything on Unsplash. The more general your search term, the more results you’ll get. If you’re looking for HOCKEY, you’ll find a lot of photos. If you want a photo of your favourite Winnipeg Jet (hint: it’s Nikolaj Ehlers, of course), you won’t find nearly as much.) Keep your search fairly general if possible:

Note that some photos are labelled Unsplash+. You have to pay for those ones!

Luckily, those ones are usually kind of lame, so there are lots of free options available.

If you see a photo you like and it is NOT Unsplash+, hover over the bottom right. You’ll see an arrow on top of the photo. The easiest way to download the best quality image is to just click that arrow!

There are many other FREE photo sites like Unsplash that you might find useful. I have links to a bunch of them on my LINKS page.

GOOGLE IMAGES

Sometimes, just can’t find what you’re looking for and must resort to using Google Images. It happens. If you have another option, please use a site like Unsplash, but if you really need that photo of Nikolaj Ehlers, Google Images might be the way to go:

Go here: https://images.google.com/

IMPORTANT TIP: Under the Search bar, there’s a button that says Tools. Click it!

You can limit the search to only give you (fairly) high quality images by going under Size and choosing Large

Sometimes you might want a photo without a background. You can click the word Color:

and set that to Transparent, which should give you photos without a background:

Honestly, it doesn’t always do a good job, but you can usually find something.

You’ll know a photo has a transparent background if it has a checker board pattern around it:

If you find a photo you like, RIGHT CLICK your mouse on it and choose Save Image As…

I HIGHLY recommend saving important images in your OneDrive folder. If you save something in Downloads and need it later, you may not have access to that image any more.

PHOTOSHOP

Open Photoshop

There is so much to learn in Photoshop! I’ve been using the program since before you were born, and there’s still so much that I don’t know! Spend some time looking at the great tutorials available sometime: