Photoshop tools (besic)
Move Tool (Keyboard: V)
The move tool simply lets you move objects in a given layer around
the Photoshop canvas. To use it, click anywhere on the canvas and drag.
As you drag, the Photoshop layer will move with your mouse.
Marquee (Keyboard: M)
The marquee lets you select part of the canvas in a specific shape.
By default you get a rectangular (or perfect square if you hold down
shift while selecting), but you can also select in the shape of an
ellipse (or a perfect circle if you hold down shift while selecting).
Lasso (Keyboard: L)
The lasso is a free-form selection tool that lets you drag around the
canvas and select anything the lasso'd area covers. Within this tool
you also have access to the polygonal lasso, which lets you create a
selection by clicking around on the canvas and creating points, and the
magnetic lasso, which works the same as the regular lasso but attempts
to detect edges for you and automatically snap to them.
Magic Wand (Keyboard: W)
Clicking an area with the magic wand will tell Photoshop to select
the spot you clicked on and anything around it that's similar. This tool
can be used as a crude way to remove backgrounds from photos.
Crop Tool (Keyboard: C)
The crop tool is used to (surprise!) crop your pictures. You can
specify the exact size and constrain the crop tool to those proportions,
or you can just crop to any size you please.
Eyedropper (Keyboard: I)
The eyedropper tool lets you click on any part of the canvas and
sample the color at that exact point. The eyedropper will change your
foreground color to whatever color it sampled from the canvas.
Healing Brush (Keyboard: J)
The healing brush lets you sample part of the photograph and use it
to paint over another part. Once you're finished, Photoshop will examine
surrounding areas and try to blend what you painted in with the rest of
the picture.
Paintbrush and Pencil (Keyboard: B)
The paintbrush is a tool that emulates a paintbrush and the pencil is
a tool that emulates a pencil. The paintbrush, however, can be set to
many different kinds of brushes. You can paint with standard paintbrush
and airbrush styles, or even paint with leaves and other shapes as well.
Clone Stamp (Keyboard: S)
Like the healing brush, the clone stamp lets you sample part of the
photograph and use it to paint over another part. With the clone stamp,
however, that's it. Photoshop doesn't do anything beyond painting one
area over a new area.
History Brush (Keyboard: Y)
The history brush lets you paint back in time. Photoshop keeps track
of all the moves you make (well, 50 by default) and the history brush
lets you paint the past back into the current photo. Say you brightened
up the entire photo but you wanted to make a certain area look like it
did before you brightened it, you can take the history brush and paint
that area to bring back the previous darkness.
Eraser Tool (Keyboard: E)
The erase tool is almost identical to the paintbrush, except it erases instead of paints.
Paint Can and Gradient Tools (Keyboard: G)
The paint can tool lets you fill in a specific area with the current
foreground color. The gradient tool will, by default, create a gradient
that blends the foreground and background tool (though you can load and
create preset gradients as well, some of which use than two colors).
Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge Tools (Keyboard: None)
All three of these tools act like paintbrushes, but each has a
different impact on your picture. The blur tool will blur the area where
you paint, the sharpen tool will sharpen it, and the smudge tool will
smudge the area all around the canvas. The smudge tool is very useful in
drawing for creating nicely blended colors or for creating wisps and
smoke that you can add to your photos.
Burn, Dodge, and Sponge Tools (Keyboard: O)
The burn, dodge, and sponge tools are paintbrush-like tools that
manipulate light and color intensity. The burn tool can make areas in
your photo darker. The dodge tool can make them lighter. The sponge tool
can saturate or desaturate color in the area you paint with it. These
are all very useful tools for photo touch ups.
Pen Tool (Keyboard: P)
The pen tool is used for drawing
vector graphics.
It can also be used to create paths that can be used for various things
that we'll discuss in a later lesson (although if you watch the video
you can see a type path being created).
Type Tool (Keyboard: T)
The type tool lets you type horizontally. Tools hidden beneath the
horizontal type tool will let you type vertically and also create
horizontal and vertical text masks.
Path Tool (Keyboard: A)
The path tool lets you move any created paths around. It's like the move tool, but for paths.
Shape Tool (Keyboard: U)
The shape tool lets you create vector rectangles, rounded rectangles,
circles, polygons, lines, and custom shapes. These tools are very
useful when designing or when creating shape masks for photos.
3D Tools
These are the 3D tools. We're not going to be dealing with 3D stuff
in these lessons so all you really need to know is that these exist. If
you're curious,
this video will give you an idea of what these tools can do.
Hand Tool (Keyboard: H)
The hand tool allows you to click and drag around the Photoshop
canvas. If the entire canvas currently fits on the screen, this tool
won't do anything. This tool is for easily navigating around when you're
zoomed in, or a picture is simple too big to fit on the screen at 100%.
Zoom Tool (Keyboard: Z)
The zoom tool lets you zoom in and out of the Photoshop canvas by
clicking on a given area. By default, the zoom tool only zooms in. To
zoom out, hold down the option key and use the zoom tool as you normally
would.
Color Selection Tools (Keyboard: D for defaults, X to switch foreground and background colors)
These tools let you manage the colors you're using. The color on top
is the foreground color and the color in back is the background color.
The foreground color is what your brushes will use. The background color
is what will be used if you delete something from the background or
extend it (although now, Photoshop CS5 will give you the option for
using your foreground color instead in some circumstances). The two
smaller icons up top are shortcut functions. The left one, showing a
black square on a white square, will set your foreground and background
colors to the defaults (Keyboard: D). The double-headed curved arrow
will swap your foreground and background color (Keyboard: X). Clicking
on either the foreground or background color will bring up a color
picker so you can set them to precisely the color you want.
Palettes
Palettes are the things that you see sitting over on the right side
of your screen. They make it easy for you to navigate through your
document, add adjustments, switch modes, and other things.
Layers
The layers palette lets you see all the layers in your document. As
you start getting to know Photoshop, you'll find yourself in this
palette more than any other. It'll let you organize and arrange your
layers, set blending modes,
set visibility and opacity of layers, group and merge layers, and a
bunch of other neat things we'll learn about in future lessons.
Adjustments
Your adjustments panel is where you can easily create and edit
adjustment layers. Adjustment layers are non-destructive image
alterations that affect all the layers below them and can easily be
turned on and off. Their most common use is for color correction (namely
the
Levels and
Curves adjustments, but there are many
different kinds of adjustments you can perform that can dramatically
alter the look of your image.
Color Channels
The color channels palette will let you look at the specific colors
that make up your picture. If you're in RGB mode you'll get red, green,
and blue. These color channels will differ if you're in a different
color space (such as
CMYK or
LAB).
When you choose a specific color, you'll notice you'll be shown your
image in different versions of black and white. This is because each
color channel is simply a monochromatic images representing the light in
each channel (e.g. the red channel is just a look at the red light in
your photo). Switching between these different channels is useful for
making color channel-specific touch ups, overall contrast enhancements,
and also for converting your photo to black and white in a compelling
way. This will be discussed in greater detail in a later lesson about
color correction and photo enhancements.
Color Picker
This palette will let you easily alter your foreground and background colors using sliders.
Color Swatches
The color swatches palette is a set of pre-defined colors you can
quickly choose from. You can load in several other pre-made swatch
collections or create your own, too.
History
The history palette lets you go back in time to undo any previous
alterations. The standard undo command (in the edit menu) will simply
toggle between undoing and redoing the latest action performed on your
image. The history panel is where you can go back much further (50
actions by default).
Text
The text palette, and the paragraph palette below it, let you make
all sorts of adjustments to any text you create with the type tool.
These options are very similar to what you'll find in a word processing,
but you can also specify things like character width and spacing which
are more useful in design.
Menus
Most of what you'll find in Photoshop's menus can be found using the
previously discussed tools. Nonetheless, we're going to take a quick
look at some notable items in each of the menus.
File
File, as usual, handles opening, saving, and closing operations.
Towards the end of these lessons we'll be taking a look at your
different saving options (namely
Save for Web).
Edit
Edit, as usual, brings you copy, cut, and paste. In Photoshop, it's also where you transform layers and set your color spaces.
Image
Image brings you canvas and image adjustments, including destructive
effects that you'll also find in your adjustments palette. Options in
this menu are designed to affect the image as a whole, although many
adjustments are applied to only a single layer.
Layer
Layer lets you do all of the things you can do in the layer palette
with a few more options. This menu also lets you create adjustment
layers and smart objects (a group of layers treated as a single object).
Select
While the marquee and lasso tools will be your main means of
selecting things, the select menu can help you refine that selection or
create entirely new selections based on certain criteria (such as color
range and luminosity).
Filter
Filter brings you a wealth of built-in (and, if installed,
third-party) Photoshop filters that can blur, sharpen, distort, and
alter your image (or layers of the image) in many different and unique
ways. The best way to get acquainted with these filters is to try them
all. That can take a little time, but it's fun to play around with them
and see what they do. We'll be getting into the specifics in subsequent
lessons, but only looking at a few commonly useful filters.
Analysis
Analysis provides you with measurement tools. There will be times
when you need them to make accurate alterations to your images. We will
not be covering anything in this menu in these basic lessons.
3D
As previously noted, we're not covering 3D. If you decide to learn
more about 3D later, you may want to explore this menu on your own at
some point.
View
View provides you with various view options, lets you hide and show
line guides you've created (see video for an example), and make
Photoshop snap (or not snap) to corners, edges, and to the grid on the
canvas. Viewing of this invisible grid can also be turned on and off in
the View menu.
Window
Window lets you hide and show certain windows and palettes. You can
also arrange your Photoshop windows and palettes however you want and
save them as a window preset.
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