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A Glossary of Photoshop Terms - "B"


Learn Photoshop terms starting with the letter "B". Find out about baseline shift, batch rename, brush tool, and more.

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    Background button: When printing, the Background button lets you select a color from the Color Picker that will be printed on the page outside the image area. For instance, if you are printing slides for a film projector, you might want the background to be a specific color.

    Background color: The background color can be configured from the toolbox and is used when creating gradient fills, creating a new file using the background color, or filling in an erased area of the image.

    Background Eraser tool: Lets you erase on a layer in such a way as to maintain the integrity of the foreground and other layers and works by dragging the mouse.

    Baseline Shift: Baseline Shift is used to specify how much the text deviates from its normal baseline.

    Batch Rename: Allows you to rename multiple files simultaneously.

    Black Generation: This setting in the Color Settings dialog box determines the amount of black ink used in the CMYK separation. This value is used to determine how dense the darkest shadows in the image will appear. By keeping the values at light or medium, you are preventing loss of color intensity in the image at press time.

    Bleed button: When printing, use this button to create crop marks inside (instead of outside) the image. This allows you to trim the image if needed inside the graphic instead of outside of it. You can specify the width of the bleed.

    Blending modes: A layer’s blending mode determines how the layer’s colored pixels will mix (relate) with the underlying pixels in the image. By default, there is no blending of layers, but by choosing and applying a blending mode, you can change this. When the blending mode is changed, the order of the image’s composition is changed too. Blending modes are generally used to create special effects like adding soft light or hard light or to change the color, saturation, hue, luminosity, or other attributes of how the layers can be combined.

    Blur tool: Blurs an area of the image using any brush you select.

    BMP files: Bitmap files, which are pixel-based files usually considered standard Microsoft Windows files. Bitmap files only support RGB color spaces and 1, 4, 8, or 24 bits per channel.

    Border button: When printing, use this button to create a border around the image’s printed area. The border is black and can be between 0.000 and 0.150 inches.

    Bounding box: A square or rectangle around an image that allows it to be resized or distorted. When printing, check Show Bounding Box. Checking this option adds a bounding box around the image so it can be resized using the corner handles.

    Brush tool: The Brush tool allows you to select a brush, choose its characteristics, including size, shape, spacing, roundness, hardness, angle, diameter, mode, opacity, and more, and then use the brush for various types of artwork

    Brushes palette: Here you can create or access thousands of types of brushes and configure them to meet any drawing need.

    Burn tool: The Burn tool is used to darken areas of an image or print.