Adobe Certified Professional Photoshop flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Options bar

The context-sensitive bar below the menu bar that displays settings for the currently active tool, such as brush size, opacity, or selection mode.

Workspace

A saved arrangement of panels, toolbars, and menus. Photoshop ships with presets like Essentials and Painting, and custom workspaces persist between sessions.

Tab key function

Hides or shows all panels for an uncluttered view. Shift+Tab toggles only the right-side dock, leaving the toolbar and options bar visible.

Screen mode cycling

Pressing F cycles through Standard Screen, Full Screen with Menu Bar, and Full Screen modes. The last hides all interface chrome for focused viewing.

History states

The number of undo steps Photoshop retains, set in Preferences and defaulting to 50. Higher values use more memory and scratch disk space.

Non-destructive editing

Editing that preserves original pixels, achieved through adjustment layers, layer masks, and smart objects instead of direct destructive changes like erasing or flattening.

Image Size resample off

Turning off Resample in Image Size changes only resolution metadata. Total pixel dimensions stay fixed, so physical print size scales inversely with ppi.

Canvas Size

Changes the visible document area without scaling existing pixels. The anchor grid determines which edges expand or crop, and content outside the canvas is trimmed.

16-bit channel depth

Each channel stores 65,536 levels instead of 256. This reduces banding in gradients and supports repeated tonal edits with less posterization.

Multiply blend mode

Darkens by multiplying base and blend values, so white becomes transparent and black stays black. Useful for shadows and line art over color.

Clipping mask

Created by Alt/Option-clicking between layers. The upper layer becomes visible only where the layer directly below has opaque pixels, using its alpha.

Select and Mask

A workspace for refining selections using Smart Radius edge detection, Smooth, Feather, and Contrast sliders, with output to a mask or new layer.

Selection modifier keys

Shift adds to an existing selection, Alt/Option subtracts from it, and Shift+Alt/Option intersects. Holding Shift while dragging constrains marquees to squares or circles.

Feather

Softens a selection edge by a specified radius in pixels, creating a gradual transition. Applied via Select > Modify > Feather, it is destructive to the selection.

Levels adjustment

Remaps input black, white, and gamma points to output values. The histogram shows tonal distribution, and per-channel mode corrects color casts.

Curves S-curve

An S-shaped curve steepens midtone contrast while compressing shadows and highlights. Individual channel curves can neutralize color casts without changing overall brightness.

Vibrance vs Saturation

Vibrance boosts muted colors more than saturated ones and protects skin tones. Saturation scales all colors equally, risking clipping in already vivid areas.

Black & White adjustment

Converts to grayscale while per-color mix sliders control how each source hue renders, allowing a red apple to appear light or dark gray.

Shadows/Highlights

Recovers detail in underexposed shadows or blown highlights by lifting or lowering tonal ranges, with radius and tonal width controlling the effect's spread.

Clone Stamp

Copies pixels from a sampled source point, set by Alt/Option-clicking, to the brush area. Alignment and sample-layer options control which layers it reads.

Content-Aware Fill

Reconstructs a selected region using surrounding image data and pattern synthesis. Accessed via Edit > Fill or the Spot Healing Brush in Content-Aware mode.

Layer mask grayscale

White reveals, black hides, and gray produces partial transparency. Painting directly on the mask edits visibility without deleting any image pixels.

Vector mask

A path-based mask giving hard, resolution-independent edges. Shape layers include one by default, and the Pen tool can create and edit its path.

Convert to Smart Object

Wraps a layer's pixels in a container that preserves source data. Transforms and filters become re-editable, and scaling down then up retains original quality.

Smart Filter

A filter applied to a smart object that remains editable. It can be hidden, reordered, or have its parameters changed at any time without re-applying.

Replace Contents

Swaps the source of a smart object while preserving its transforms, filters, and masks. Useful for updating a placed logo across a layout.

Linked vs embedded objects

Linked smart objects reference an external file and update when it changes. Embedded objects store data inside the document and do not track external edits.

Blend If sliders

Layer Style controls that hide a layer based on underlying tonal values. Alt/Option-dragging a slider handle splits it for a gradual transition.

JPEG format limits

Lossy compression, 8-bit depth only, and no alpha channel. Quality settings trade file size for artifacts, and transparency flattens onto a matte color.

PNG-24

Lossless 24-bit format supporting full alpha transparency. Preferred over JPEG for web graphics with transparency or sharp edges like text and logos.

Export As

File > Export > Export As produces JPEG, PNG, GIF, and WebP with scale and quality controls while leaving the open document in its original format.

sRGB vs Adobe RGB

sRGB is the web and screen default with a narrower gamut. Adobe RGB is wider and preferred for print. Converting changes pixel values; assigning does not.