Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual

Opening an Existing Document

In most programs, opening files is simple and that holds true in Photoshop, too. But Photoshop gives you a few more options than you'll find in some other programs because it can open files saved in its own format (PSD files) as well as a slew of other formats both common and obscure (a feature that makes Photoshop amazingly versatile at working with a wide range of images). Even better, if the program doesn't recognize a particular format, there's a good chance someone has developed a plug-in (companion program) that can. (See Chapter 19 for more than you ever wanted to know about plug-ins.)

Photoshop knows how to open Adobe Illustrator, Camera Raw (Working with Raw Files), JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, EPS, and PDF files (Working with PDFs), along with Collada DAE, Google Earth 4 KMZ, Scitex CT, Targa, and several other file types most folks have never heard of.

You can open files in Photoshop in several ways, including:

• Double-clicking the document's icon, no matter where it's stored on your computer.

  Up To Speed: Raster Images vs. Vector Images

  The images you'll work with and create in Photoshop fall into two categories: those made from pixels and those made from paths. It's important to understand that they have different characteristics and that you can open them in different ways:

  • Raster images are made from tiny blocks of color called pixels, the smallest element of a digital image. The number of pixels in an image depends on the device that captured it (a ...