Photoshop Terms A to Z - Glossary of the Letter "H"

Joli Ballew
Categories : Publishing ,Multimedia
Tags : Multimedia publishing topics dtp tips

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Halftones: Halftones are dots of a specific shape, such as an ellipse or a circle. Halftones dictate how much of each color goes on the material at press time. Varying how large or small the dots are determines the actual color printed on the shirt. Because halftone dots are so small, they fool us into thinking that we are seeing the real image, when in reality we are just looking at a combination of dots.

Hand tool: Allows you to scroll through an image that doesn’t fit completely in the viewing window. It’s like using the scroll bars at the bottom and right side of the window, except you do the moving with the mouse by dragging. When the Hand tool is chosen, the cursor becomes a hand.

Handle: Small squares that appear around an object when transforming it that allow you to move, resize, reshape, or distort the image.

Hardness: Controls a brush’s hard center and can be set using the slider or by typing in a number. Hardness can be compared to using a pencil by pressing hard to create a darker and more forceful print; lower this number for a softer effect.

Healing Brush tool: The Healing Brush let you correct imperfections in images such as dirt, smudges, and even dark circles under a subject’s eyes. You can match the background texture, lighting, and shadows or shading to “cover up” these flaws.

Heat transfers: Used when names, numbers, one-of-a-kind artwork, artwork with many different colors, gradients, and process color, and short runs are desired. With a heat transfer, there are no screens to burn, and you (should) get what you see on your computer screen. Heat transfers can be used on mouse pads, can coolers, puzzles, tote bags, and similar products, and they are quite easy to produce in Photoshop. You use a heat transfer press to apply the transfer to the product.

Hidden tools: In the toolbox, many of the icons have arrows in the bottom-right corner. This signifies that there are additional tools located underneath the tool that is showing. Selecting a hidden tool from the toolbox can be achieved by clicking, holding, and choosing the tool you want from the resulting list of tools.

History Brush: You can use the History Brush to paint over something that you’ve recently added to an image to erase it.

History Palette: Shows the list of steps taken to create the image that you are currently working on. The History palette helps you correct errors (by storing what you’ve done to a file previously) and allows you to “go back” to a point before a particular edit was made simply by clicking on the appropriate step.

HSB: This mode uses a color’s hue, saturation, and brightness to define it. Hue is defined by its location on the color wheel and is denoted by a number from 0 to 360 degrees. Saturation is the purity and strength of the color and is defined by the percentage of gray in the image (0 to 100 percent). Brightness is how light or dark a color is and is defined by a percentage (0 percent is black and 100 percent is white).

This post is part of the series: Photoshop Terms from A to Z - A Glossary

Learn common and obscure terms used by Adobe Photoshop in this A-to-Z series.