Image Creation
Starting a document
Creating an image begins with a new-document dialog: width and height (with units), resolution, colour mode, bit depth, and background contents (white, background colour, or transparent). Choose these from the destination, not habit: a web banner might be 1200 × 628 pixels, RGB, 72 ppi; an A4 print at 300 ppi is about 2480 × 3508 pixels. Transparent backgrounds need an alpha-capable format such as PNG or TIFF; JPEG cannot store transparency.
Drawing and composing
Creation tools include brushes, pencils, shape and path tools, type, gradients, solid fills, patterns, and cloning. Layers let you build elements separately and restack or hide them without destroying others. Guides, grids, snapping, and rulers help alignment. The colour picker, swatches, and HEX/RGB/CMYK fields set colour; opacity and blending modes control interaction between layers. Vector creation uses paths, anchor points, and strokes rather than pixel brushes.
Traps: creating at screen resolution and later printing; choosing CMYK for screen-only work or RGB for commercial print without guidance; painting on the background layer when a transparent layer was intended; assuming canvas size can be enlarged later without a quality decision.
Worked example: a logo intended for a website header, a T-shirt, and a poster should be created as vector artwork or at the highest required pixel dimensions, not at the smallest. Rule of thumb: decide final medium, physical size, viewing distance, and colour mode before the first mark.