This tutorial is part two of the Introduction to PhotoShop Basics. You can read Part One here if you haven't already.

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This tutorial is aimed toward Adobe PhotoShop CS3, but most PhotoShop versions will largely be the same with regard to this article.
In the first part, we looked at creating a new document and managing layers. In this part, we will look at more tools and layer styles. To start, we will open a new document (File > New) and then choose a 400x300 document. We will unlock the Background layer by double-clicking on it, and name it bg. Choose the gradient tool from the toolbox (press G or left-click and hold the paint bucket icon if it is not visible).
To use the gradient, we will need to left-click and drag the mouse on the canvas where we want it. So left-click the top-left of the blank canvas and hold the mouse button, then drag to bottom right and let go. We should have something like this:

Next, we will create a new layer. We can rename this layer by double-clicking on the text in the Layer Panel:

Name the new layer circle. Now left-click and hold the marquee selection tool until the sub-menu pops out. Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool. Now we will make a selection on our canvas. TIP: If you hold down SHIFT whilst using the Marquee selection tool, it will remain square - that is, the height will match the width. Try it now: hold SHIFT and make a selection on the canvas. You will notice that it will stay a perfect circle. Once we have a seletion, hold SHIFT again and you will notice the mouse cursor change. If we hold SHIFT and make another selection, it will be added to the existing selection. Similarly, if we hold ALT, we can subtract from the existing selection. Try adding another circle to the selection and then subtracting part of it, like so:

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Now we have a selection that resembles a figure of eight. Bear in mind that this is still only a selection - we have not made any changes to our canvas or layer. What we are going to do now is to use the gradient tool again, but this time, when it is selected you will notice at the top we can change the gradient colors:

Click to enlarge.

We can click on the current gradient in this bar at the top and we'll get a window where we can create our own. Alternatively, we can click on the small black arrow next to the current gradient and choose from a few pre-existing gradients. The small icons to the right of this black aroow, also, are different types of gradients. We can choose from linear (default), radial, angled, reflected and diamond. Choose a gradient you like and let's apply it to our selection. You will notice that the gradient only applies to what is currently selected. If we deselect (Ctrl+D), we can see the gradient much clearer:

Now we will use the Text tool. Click the T in the toolbox, and then click anywhere on the canvas you want to add text. If this does not open up the Character window, goto Window > Character. This will give us many options to choose from to set how our text will look - front font and size, to bold, italic, letter-width, etc. Type some text and then play with these settings to see what they do.

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Now we have our text layer, we can apply a layer style to this. We can double-click on a blank area of the layer or right-click the layer and choose Blending Options. This will provide us with the Layer Style window, show below. We will choose the Drop Shadow and accept the default settings, then click Ok. With this being a layer style, we are still able to edit the text and the layer style will stay active and apply itself to our new text. So try that now - change the text by double-clicking the thumbnail of the layer and see the layer style change itself.

Another way we can apply effects to our text is to distort it. When we are editing our text, if we look at the top bar again, we should see this icon toward the right. If we click it we will have access to such options as these:

These options let us warp the text in different ways, and is non-destructible, so we will still be able to modify our text later. Try the different options available.

As I'm sure you have noticed, this tutorial leaves a lot up to you, but that is the great thing about PhotoShop - to really grasp what it can do, you have to do it yourself and play with it and experiment. PhotoShop can be a lot of fun to play around with and a lot of cool things are found by doing so.

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That is pretty much it for this introduction into PhotoShop basics. As you probably already know, PhotoShop has a lot to it - far far too much to cover in two tutorials. Look out for other tutorials to get you started with PhotoShop.

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