Photoshop Basics Tools
This tutorial will teaches you some basics of Adobe Photoshop tools.
Move Tool
It is used for moving the selected area of an image or the entire area if nothing is
selected. Use this tool to, well, move things. Usually you use it to move a Layer around
after it has been placed. Hold the [Shift] key to limit the movements to vertical/horizontal.
Shortcut key to Select the move tool from the Tool Bar by pressing "V"
Rectangle Marquee Tool
By using marquee tool we can select a portion of the image with different shapes. With this selection we can apply
different color effects like gradient tool, stamp tool etc to further enhance the image effect.
The marquee tools are selection tools which allow you to select rectangles, ellipses and 1-pixel rows and columns.
Shortcut key "M".
Lasso Tool
Photoshop's Lasso tools are designed for freehand selecting, and will create straight edge and freehand selection lines. Among
its many uses, it is often used for carefully selecting certain elements of an image or creating certain shapes.
The lasso tools are used to select an irregular area. These tools include the Lasso Tool, the Polygonal Lasso Tool and the
Magnetic Lasso Tool.
Shortcut key "L".
Magic Wand Tool
This tool slects a consistently colored area. You can set Tolerance in the Options palette of the Magic Wand tool.
How to make fast selections with Photoshop's Quick Selection and Magic Wand tools.
Shortcut key "W".
Crop tool
The crop tool is probably one of the easiest tools to use, but probably not used as often as it should.
Use the crop tool in Photoshop to crop down an image. Trim away portions of a photo that you may not particularly like and
focus on the section of the image that you want to highlight.
Shortcut key "C".
Slice Tool
Slices are especially useful for Web designers who mock up entire Web pages in Photoshop during the design process, and then
want to export the graphics and the HTML code needed to reproduce the mock-up as a Web page.
It slices an image into sections. This is most commonly used in web work to make very large images easier to handle, allows
you more control, and also enables you to add additional Alt data to each of the separate images which will help your page
feed search engines better and get more visitors to your site.
Shortcut key "K".
Spot Healing Brush Tool
The healing brush is just an incredible tool in Photoshop and excellent for correcting imperfections in your shots such as
troubled skin, sensor dust and creases.
The Healing Brush is similar to the Clone Stamp Tool in that it is used to sample from an image to correct or enhance other
areas of the image. It samples the colour, luminosity and texture of the source area separately and blends it with the
destination area. This means you can get excellent results without having to do things manually.
Shortcut key "J".
Brush Tool
Brush tool is one of Photoshop's most basic tools allowing you to draw freehand shapes and lines. The tool allows precision
and correction abilities as well as some tricks using brushes.
Shortcut key "B".
Clone Stamp Tool
Photoshop's clone stamp tool allows you to duplicate part of an image.
Using this tool, you can copy a portion of an image and reapply it repeatedly to cover an unwanted portion of the image.
Shortcut key "S".
History Brush Tool
The History Brush Tool allows you to paint and reveal previous states of images. This can be very useful in creating effects.
History Brush is one of the most versatile retouching tools in Photoshop. It can be used to restore a modified, retouched
photo to an earlier state.
The use of the History Brush has become quite varied- it is no longer used solely to fix mistakes, but to achieve effects
and even assist in extracting an object from your image.
Shortcut key "Y".
Paint Bucket Tool
The Paint Bucket lets you color in an entire area with just one click.
The paint bucket tool is another very useful tool and simplest of the painting tools. It used to fill areas with solid color or patterns. The paint bucket
tool works much like the magic wand selection tool in that it fills with color based on color similarity as determined by
the tolerance setting you choose in the tool settings.
Shortcut key "G".
Eraser Tool
The Eraser tool allows you to erase any part of a document you want. Of all the tools available in Photoshop, the eraser is
the most insightful. The eraser is basically a brush which erases pixels as you drag it across the image. Pixels are erased to transparency, or
the background colour if the layer is locked.
Shortcut key "E".
Blur Tool
With the Blur Tool, you can soften portions of an image. This tool can cause areas of an image to appear as if they were out of focus.
The Blur Sharpen and Smudge tools are artworking tools that can give photos a different perspective. Also useful for graphical work they are
well worth learning.
Shortcut key "R".
Dodge Tool
The Dodge, Burn, and Sponge tools are similar to conventional darkroom tools.
Dodging and Burning is actually more of a lighting correction than an exposure correction, but it seems to fit in the catagory anyway.
The dodge tool lightens the pixels you paint, and the burn tool darkens the pixels you paint. It's not entirely different
from using Levels or Curves. The difference is that you are not applying the changes to the entire image; you're applying
them only to the places you paint with the brushes. Think of it as a way of selectively adjusting the brightness or darkness
of your image.
Shortcut key "O".
Pen Tool
The Pen Tool can be one of the best Tools in Photoshop.
With the Pen Tool, we can create lines and curves that can be put together to create custom shapes. If we combine the pen
tool with some of the other vector shapes, we can create some intricate, scalable objects.
Shortcut key "P".
Type Tool
Whenever you want to add text to a Photoshop document, whether it's a single letter or several lengthy paragraphs, you use
Photoshop's Type Tool. The Type tool lets you add text to your image. You can format the text in many ways, including font,
size, style, color, alignment, horizontal or vertical orientation, kerning, leading, tracking, indenting, line spacing, and more.
You can even stretch and warp the shape of the text in varied and interesting ways.
Shortcut key "T".
Path Selection Tool
You can reposition a path component (including a shape in a shape layer) anywhere within an image. You can copy components
within an image or between two Photoshop images. Using the path selection tool, you can merge overlapping components into a
single component. All vector objects, whether they are described by a saved path, a work path, or a vector mask, can be
moved, reshaped, copied, or deleted. You can also use the Copy and Paste commands to duplicate vector objects between a
Photoshop image and an image in another application.
Shortcut key "A".
Rectangle Tool
This tool is a shape tool. With the help of Rectangle Tool, we can draw rectangular shape of any size. We can also draw shape
of a square with the help of this tool.
Shortcut key "U".
Notes Tool
The note tool can come in handy as you get further advanced in using Photoshop. You can easily write down note, thoughts,
remember techniques or create notes for clients or other users on how to fix the file up...you get the idea.
After slaving away creating beautiful design comps or prototypes in Photoshop, you will most likely have to show them to a
client, colleague, or creative director to get feedback. Often, this process generates some confusion as emails and verbal
exchanges go back and forth. To reduce uncertainty and mix-ups, use Photoshop's Notes tool to place comments and suggested
edits directly in the file.
Shortcut key "N".
Eyedropper Tool
The Eyedropper tool allows you to alter the prominent color so that it has a shade which is identical to the color already
present on the canvas. This is an excellent tool to use for situations where you want to match up colors which are hard to find.
Shortcut key "I".
Hand Tool
The Hand Tool is used to navigate to another area of an image when all of the pixels won't fit on the screen. You select the
hand tool and click on the image and drag to the location in the image that you want to be.
You can get to this tool at any time when using any other tool by pressing and holding the [Spacebar].
Shortcut key "H".
Zoom Tool
Photoshop's "zoom" facility is very versatile and allows you to zoom in and out of an image in many different ways. You can
even have different views of the same document open at once, with different zoom levels.
Shortcut key "Z".
Foreground and Background Color
Color selection is the act of picking the color that you want to use in part of your image. At any one time, Photoshop
remembers two colors for you: the foreground color and the background color. The foreground color is used when you paint,
fill, or stroke selections; the background color is used to make gradients and fill in the erased areas of an image.
Some filters also use the foreground and background colors.
Quick Mask Mode
Photoshop's Quick Mask mode is a really versatile way to select things. Instead of creating marquees as you do with the
other tools, you can "paint" the selection using any of Photoshop's painting tools. You can even use the other selection tools
on the Quick Mask, as if it was a regular image. This makes the Quick Mask mode a very powerful feature of Photoshop.
Change Screen Mode
Pressing the 'F' key allows you to scroll through the different screen modes. The first mode is Standard Screen mode which
is the default. (1) Standard screen mode (2) Maximised screen mode (3) Full screen mode with menu bar (4) Full screen mode