The screen on the right shows the workspace for Photoshop:
1 Tool box, full of selection tools, brushes, erasers, and other fun things,
2 Menus with several layers of drop down menus & dialogues,
3 Tool options are context sensitive and allow customization of tools,
4 Navigator/Info/Colour palettes allows zooming in and out, shows information about the cursor point and selection of colours,
5 History/Actions/Layers palettes allow multiple backward steps, automation of tasks and manipulation of layers and
6 Active image window contains your image.

After launching Photoshop, images are opened via the File/Open dialogues. If several images are used to create a plate, open them all and make each the final resolution and final size using the Image/File Size dialogue (seen to the right) with Resample Image checked. If the images are not all at the same resolution the size will change when that figure is combined with another that is at different resolution. Make sure that Constrain Proportions is checked, otherwise you may accidentally distort the height/width ratio of your image.

Choose the image that will become the top left figure in the final plate and re-size its working canvas using the Image/Canvas Size dialogue below. The 3 x 3 grid by the red arrow below allows you to select where new canvas space will be added. Typically, by clicking the top left square and increasing the size, the existing figure is placed at the top left and the total image space is increased by adding empty space to the right and bottom of the figure.

Other figures can then be cut and pasted into the canvas and moved around as appropriate using the move tool which is the top right thing in the tool box.

The Palettes, shown at left, are a set of controls on tabs that allow Navigation through the picture and selection of screen magnification, allow measurement of tones, distances and angles via Information, selection of Colour for the foreground and background as used by paint brushes, fills and type, manipulation of the Layers of which many images consist, multiple undos by stepping backward through Histories and automatic replaying of a series of individual steps through recorded Actions.

Other palettes used less often and not shown include Swatches that allow colour selection from a preset range of colours, Styles that allow application of style effects to a layer, Character and Paragraph, that allow more detailed control of type than given by the Tool Options at the top of the workspace, Channels, that allow manipulation of the individual RGB (red-green-blue) or less often the CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) components of the image and Paths, that allow selections and outlines to be exported to vector based software such as Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw.

We usually try to have a minimum number of palettes open, grouped in two sets of threes: Navigation, Information and Colour and Layers, Histories and Actions.

Many Photoshop images are made up of a series of Layers while being assembled. Each time something is pasted into an image, it becomes a new layer. Each time more type is set into the image it becomes another layer called whatever the type says.

The Layers palette shows the picture's layers from top to bottom and tell about the blending of each. Each layer is similar to a sheet of transparent plastic and the areas that show as checkerboard in the thumbnail views at 2 are transparent space, except the bottom, background layer at 3 which remains opaque. Type remains editable type on "T" layers at 1 until they are rasterized.

At the top of the palette are blending and locking options and at the bottom are copying, deleting and special effects buttons that amongst other things allow straight type to become 3-D shadowed type.

The saving of layers is only fully supported in the .PSD file format. It is usual to save the file with layers as a .PSD file and then, from the drop down menu at 4, flatten the image and save as a .TIF file for publication.

When it is time to print your plate, bear in mind that a Photoshop picture is the image, the whole image and nothing but the image. Unlike word processor documents, margins do not exist in Photoshop. The margins of your print will be the page size minus the image size divided by two. The image will be centered on the page so to pull an image out of the binding of a thesis, add a white strip to the image itself by increasing the width using the Canvas Size with a right box clicked so that the new space is added to the left of the figure.

Proof your images by Printing to the black and white laser printer. When they look good, Export them to the Kodak XLS8600 colour printer . If you plate is a black and white image, first use the Image/Mode/RGB command and make sure your whole image size is not more that 8" wide by 8.93" deep. Check to make sure the Kodak printer is set to raster mode and not postscript mode. Another alternatiuve is to Print them to the Epson 3000. When using this printer make sure that the Printer Properties are set to the right size of paper and right type: gloss, matt etc. Better papers allow higher resolution printing, however it is considerably slower.