Let's now take a closer look at the structure of a Photoshop document.

The general structure of a Photoshop document consists of the artboard, or

the area in which your content displays, and

layers of content stacked one on top of another.

Let's have a closer look at artboards.

The artboard is an area in which all of our content will display in our

final graphic.

Think of the artboard as a frame for our content.

We can have the content outside of our artboard, but

it won't show in the final product.

We're also able to adjust our artboard size in a few ways.

One way is to view the Properties panel and

input the exact number in which we want to have the artboard displayed.

Another is to use the Crop tool and use the click and drag handles to adjust

the size While not as precise,

we can always make adjustments in the Properties panel if need be.

Using the Crop tool on an artboard will not modify the content of the artboard,

and we can essentially use the same handles to expand the artboard again.

Similarly, the Artboard tool can be used to click and drag, or

select a pre-set from the top tool bar.

Next, let's have a look at layers.

Layers represent different pieces of content within the document stacked

one on top of the other.

Within the Layers panel, we can add new layers.

We can change the order.

And we can also change the visibility.

The order of layers can be important on how the final graphic appears, so

if you happen to have a photo filter on top of another photo filter,

it will likely have a different effect if you change them.

Generally, any time you add new content to a Photoshop document,

it will likely create a new layer.

So, for example, the Type tool.

If we happen to type in some new content here,

it adds it to its own layer within the Layers panel.

However, things like painting with the Brush or

Gradient tool will only affect a currently selected layer that already exists.

That's looking pretty horrendous, so I'm gonna go ahead and

click on the History tool and go back a few steps.

Keeping the Photoshop document organized will come in very handy

as you add content and layers.

We can group layers within folders and create additional artboards.

Within the Layers panel, clicking on a folder icon will create a new folder,

and we can drag whatever content we'd like within that folder.

As your document grows in layers and possibly artboards,

it's a good practice to name them.

One way we can rename a layer is within the Layers panel itself.

Just double-click on a layer name and give it a title.

This will help you keep track of what's going on in each layer.

Now, things are a bit different if we've opened a photo that

isn't a native Photoshop document or a PSD file.

Let's open this original JPG file from my camera.

If we take a look at our Layers panel,

we don't see that this image lands in an artboard, and is simply a layer.

Using the Properties panel to adjust the size, or

using the Crop tool will indeed cut off our content.

And I'm not able to uncrop this as we did before.

Again, I'm going to head back to the History panel and undo that change.

If we would like to create an artboard, we can use the Artboard tool to draw one.

If we take a look at our Layers panel, we can see that we have indeed created our

own artboard, and our photo has remained in it's own layer.

That's the general structure of a Photoshop file.

Layers are the building blocks of any Photoshop document,

and artboards are the frames that hold those creations.

Folders can be used to help group your layers and stay organized.

In this stage, we've introduced the mighty graphics tool, Photoshop.

We went through a brief history of the application and

learned a bit about how it evolved.

From two brothers simply wanting to display an image on a screen to a world

recognized app that's used in many stages of a standard creative process today.

We took a brief look at the user interface of Photoshop and shared a few tips for

rearranging your panels, and where to look for adjustments for an active tool.

We then deconstructed a Photoshop document learning about layers,

artboards, and how they work together.

In the next stage, we'll dive in head first and

start creating our ads for client's photo studio