| Selection Tools |
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A selection isolates one or more parts of your image. By selecting specific areas, you can edit and apply effects and filters to portions of your image while leaving the unselected areas untouched.The easiest way to select pixels in your image is to use the quick selection tools. You can also select areas of a certain shape with the marquee tools or use the lasso tools to make a selection by tracing an element in your image. |
- Lasso Tools
The lasso tool is another selection tool that allows more fine control over the selection area than the basic oval and square marquee shapes. By clicking down and dragging, the lasso tool allows you by freehand to draw the selection line.Many programs offer different types of lasso tools that can be used to make selections. The polygon lasso tool allows you to create a selection by clicking on individual points that connect to create a selection line.
- Magic Wand
The magic wand tool is used to select pixels that are the same color or similar color in an adjacent area. You can adjust the tolerance level of the magic wand tool to determine how similar the colors have to be. A low tolerance means the pixels have to be nearly the same color, while a higher tolerance allows for more variation. The magic wand tool is good for selecting objects from against a solid color background.
- Basic Marquee
The marquee tool is the basic tool that allows you to select all or part of objects. The marquee tool will generally have the option to select either an oval or a square shape as the selection tool, but some programs offer more choices.To select an area, simply click and drag the marquee around the area you want to select. Most graphics programs allow you to draw a perfect circle or perfect square by holding the shift key when you drag. Another common keyboard shortcut is to hold down the space bar while you drag to reposition the location of the marquee.The selected area will be identified by the �marching ants� surrounding it (moving dashed lines). After your selection has been made, the marquee allows you to manipulate the selection in a number of ways. Among these are:
- copy and paste the selection
- apply filters and effects to only the selected area
- add fills using the paint bucket tool
- The Quick Selection Tool
The Quick Selection Tool is a tiny little tool that allows you to paint selected areas with a brush or the paint bucket tool. It's not necessary in most things but comes in very handy at times. I rarely use this tool, but recommend to those who look forward to improving their photos.
- The Move Tool
By definition, the Move tool allows you to select paths, layers, and guides and basically move them around to the desired area. Almost everything that you create in Photoshop will require the move tool. When working with small paths and graphics, the Move Tool is required, without a doubt. Next, let's move on to the Marquee Tool.
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| Alteration Tools
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| Tools | Functions |
| Healing Brush | Corrects small blemishes in scanned photos.Select the tool, hold down the ALT key and left-click on the base color you need to
heal. Then left-click over the blemish. |
| Brush | Draws brush strokes of different thicknesses and colors. Select the tool. Then click on the selected area, drag to draw lines. Use the Options bar to change the brush, mode, opacity and flow. |
| Clone Stamp Tool | Takes a sample of an image and applies over another image, or a part of the
same image. Select the tool. Hold down the ALT key and left-click on a certain point of the document where you want to start your copy point. Then, put your mouse over whatever part of the new document you want the picture to go to. Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse across the page to copy the picture. |
| Art History Tool | Paints over an image using the source data from a specified history state or snapshot.
Select the tool, specify the brush, blending mode, opacity, style, area and tolerance. |
| Paint Bucket | Blurs the sharp edges of an image. Select an area where you wish to apply the tool. Click the tool button and choose the brush, mode, and strength. Drag the brush along the edges. |
| Gradient Tool | Applies a gradient fill to a selected part of the image or to an entire layer. Select an area you wish to apply gradient to, click the tool button, choose a fill in the Optionsbar, click on the starting point, hold the mouse down and drag to the end point. |
| Vector Tools |
| Tools | Functions |
| Pen Tool | The pen tool is a vector drawing tool which allows you to create image. It uses combinations of anchor point to form curve or straight line depends on the how you draw it. The pen tool could be very useful as compare to the pencil tool as it provide high precision. It gives you the feeling as if you are trying to drawing with calculation. |
| Freeform Pen Tool | The mechanism of the freeform pen tool is identical to the pen tool, but it have a different characteristic. Instead of drawing with great precision, the freeform pen tool allows more freedom which is similar to the pencil tool. However as you start drawing, anchor points are form which allows you to fine tune your drawing later. |
| Type tool | The type tool is a tool which allows you to start typing into the canvas. It comes with various options such as changing the font type and font size. |
| Shape Tool | If you want to create general shape such as circle, square or triangle, this is the perfect tool. With this tool, you are able to create free vector shape or perfect vector shape with the press and holding the �Shift� key on your keyboard. Advance option are available such as adjusting the radius of the shape. |
| Other Tools |
| Tools | Icon | Function/Description |
| Move Tool | As the name says the function of this tool is to move.However it only moves selected parts of an image |
| Marquee Tools | This is the tool you will be using to make selections in your image. The selected part of the image will appear surrounded by the so-called �marching ants� and doing the perfect selection will be one of the most important things you�ll need to learn for image editing. |
| Lasso Tools | If you ever need to make a freehand selection, the lasso tool will surely help you. The other useful tools hiding behind it are the polygonal and magnetic lasso. The magnetic lasso is extremely useful if you�re trying to go along an edge but keep making mistakes with the regular lasso. |
| Magic Wand Tool | The magic wand tool will help you instantly select large single colored areas in one single click, and the Quick Select Tool will allow you to use a magical brush to paint over the areas you want selected. |
| Quick Select Tool | Tired of using those boring lasso and marquee tools? Check out the Quick Select Tool. It�s way faster than using Quick Mask Mode and you will grow to like this if you like using brushes for everything. |
| Crop Tools | If something is looking a little too big for you, you�ll find yourself using the crop tool often. And the two useful Slice Tools hiding behind it will be in your hands quite often if you�re going to be using Photoshop to design webpage templates. |
| Slice Tools | If you�re going to use Photoshop to make webpages or if you simply want every single element equally apart from everything that surrounds it then you�re going to fall in love with the slice tool. Simply put � it chops and slices your image into separate segments and it can also help you measure out things you�ll need. |
| Eye-dropper Tool< | Not really much to say here. The eye-dropper tool will let you easily pick up a specific color from your image. |
| Ruler | This tool is used, as the name says, to measure. |
| Notes | If you need to send out a Photoshop project in a PSD file to a buddy or workmate and you need to tell him about something specific about a segment in the image. |
| Count Tool | | With this you can number separate sections of your image. At first sight it may not look as useful, but just like the Notes Tool, it starts to get useful when you need to send your PSD file around for collaboration with someone. |
| Spot Healing Brush Tool | If you ever need to remove a scratch or just remove something from the image that doesn�t belong there the Spot Healing tool is where you go. Using the Spot Healing Brush Tool with the new Content Aware Fill in CS5 you�ll pretty much be able to fix anything �wrong� with your image. |
| PatchTool | Like when patching your jeans, Photoshop�s unique patch tool will pick up a part of the image and patch it up with another part. Easy to use and very useful for removing small objects in low and high detail areas. |
| Red Eye Tool | f you like taking pictures using a flash, you bound to run into Red Eye. Fear not, as Photoshop is prepared for everything, even red reduction with this easy to use tool. |
| Brush Tool | A brush. It can be soft, hard, big, round, square, or even completely customized to make incredible effects. And with the mixer brush tool, you can really go deep into the world of digital paintings since you�ll be able to set just how dry, wet and loaded your artistic brush is. |
| Pencil Tool | If you have used Microsoft Paint then this tool you would be familiar with. Making a tiny 1px square hard-line, the pencil tool is more than perfect for drawing the outline on your new animated character. |
| Clone Stamp Tools | If you ever need to edit something out of an image and those complicated spot healing brushes aren�t your thing, try the Clone Stamp. It will let you sample one area of an image and paint over another, while simultaneously sampling from the area you choose. It�s tough to explain by text, so try it out yourself. You�ll be amazed by how often you�ll start to use this tool. |
| History Brush Tools | The history brush will help you paint over parts of an image and you�ll be painting an earlier version of your image over it. The history brush is easily configurable from the History menu. Oh, and for an even flashier effect, try the Artistic Art History Brush which although is very similar to the Mixer brush tool, will bring some additional options and effects to your brush. |
| Eraser Tools | Nobody is perfect. That�s why we�ll often need to go to our history panel or erase stuff. Well that�s what the erasers are for. One more interesting type of eraser is the Magic Eraser. It will help you instantly knock off single color backgrounds and if you�re planning on using Photoshop for creating a lot of PNG images, than this is going to become your favorite tool of all time. |
| Gradient Tools | It�s always good to have multiple color backgrounds, but let�s keep these multiple colors softly fading into one another, shall we? Indeed we will. The gradient tool can take a boring solid background and add some groove to it by slowly transitioning to a new color. |
| Paint Bucket Tool | Just like in Microsoft Paint, Photoshop has its own bucket tool too. Fill in your selection with a single solid color using the paint bucket tool and a single click. |
| Blur Tool | Not everything needs to be crisp and clear. Sometimes you want to blur things up, whether it�s for an artistic idea or something you want to censor in a screenshot, you�ll find the Blur Tool does its job perfectly. |
| Sharpen Tool | Get things sharp and clear! That�s just what the Sharpen tool is for. Although your images may seem way more crisp and sharp with this tool, watch out not to overuse it. When you�re completely zoomed out of your image everything will look perfect. But zooming in just a bit closer will reveal high image quality loss and color contamination. Just a tip to be careful with the tool. |
| Smudge Tool | Imagine you have a wet canvas. Now you take your finger and smudge it across its surface. This is the same effect you will get when using the Smudge tool on your image. |
| Dodge Tool | Make stuff brighter. The Dodge tool is great for effects but don�t go to heavy on it. |
| Burn Tool | Make stuff darker and create very groovy effects using the Burn tool. Use the tool sparingly as just like the sharpen tool it can decrease image quality and cause color contamination. |
| Sponge Tool | De-saturate colors in s snap. Go as heavy as you want on this � the heavier you go the more black-�n�-white you�re bringing into your image. |
| Pen Tools | These are the tools that you will use to make paths. Paths are pretty useful, mostly if you know how to use them right. |
| Type Tools | Simply put, the type tools let you add text to your image. |
| Type MaskTools | Makes a selection instead of outputting text. Very interesting feature worth a look and worth taking some time to make yourself some interesting text effects. |
| Path Selection Tools | A tool used for selecting and moving your paths. |
| Shape Tools | Yet again, just like in Microsoft Paint you can add some shapes to your image, but seriously, nobody uses these tools, so don�t act all childish drawing squares and lines. |
| 3D Rotation Tools | These are going to be the tools for rotating your 3D objects on your canvas. These are more advanced features you should play with when you get to that level. |
| 3D Camera Rotation Tools | We still have some more tools related to 3D imaging. This time you�ll be using these tools not to rotate the 3D objects themselves, but the cameras looking at them. |
| Hand Tool | When you�re working really, really, really zoomed in, you�re going to need to move around in some way and the Navigator isn�t always the best option available. For these occasions we have the hand tool which allows you to easily move back and forward through your image. |
| Rotate View Tool | If you�re going to use Photoshop for drawings then you will simply love this! The Rotate View Tool will allow you to rotate your canvas sideways at a degree you choose. It�s like rotating the sheet of paper on which you draw in real life! Simply an amazing feature if you ask me, I�m sure you�ll love it too. |
| Zoom Tool | 100% zoom is great but sometimes you need to back away or zoom into your image. The zoom tool will let you do just that with ease. |
