• Move tool

Move tool is the most important tool used in Photoshop – any selection you move is using this tool only. To select this tool press letter V in your keyboard. It looks like a black arrow.move tool

  • Open an Image

In the menu bar, go to file option and click on open to open an image. (Or) Press Ctrl+O command using your keyboard to open an image. Click here to open a sample picture in new tab. Your screen look something like the below image when you are done.

  • Marquee tool

It is the most basic of all tools. To select this tool, simply click the letter M in the keyboard. There are three variations in Marquee tool

  1. Rectangular Marquee tool.
  2. Elliptical Marquee tool for circles and ovals.
  3. Single-pixel Marquee tool for both vertical and horizontal.

Select the Elliptical marquee tool now, place your cursor somewhere of the image, then click and drag the mouse. The selection expands, with the pixel values to the right of the selection and then release the mouse button. Hold in the middle of the selection, and move the cursor, you will see how the selection moves with you.  You can apply filters to the selection, move it and copy it. Anything you can do in Photoshop starts with a selection.

Marquee Tool image

  • Lasso tool

The Lasso tool is closely related to the Marque tool. This tool is used to make a freeform selection. Click the letter L in the keyboard to select this tool. There are three variations in Lasso tool

  1. Lasso tool.
  2. Polygonal Lasso tool.
  3. Magnetic Lasso tool.
  4. Firstly, select the basic Lasso tool, click and hold the cursor and draw a selection around the house. End the selection where you have started. To deactivate the selection, press the command Ctrl+D.                                       Polygonal Lasso tool image
  5. To change the cursor to the Polygonal LassoTool, press the command Shift+L. Click anywhere on the image. Observe, if you move your mouse, the point remains pinned and a dashed line extends towards the cursor. Click again, and that next point becomes pinned and you can continue clicking until your selection is complete. Click on the Esc key in your keyboard to cancel the selection in progress.
  6. Again press Shift-L to select the Magnetic Lasso tool. Like the lasso tools, the click point is the black pointer in the upper left of the cursor. If you drag, the selection actually snaps as you move.As you advance, at the top of the Photoshop window, some tool modifiers are present like: Feather, Anti-alias, Width, Contrast, and Frequency. Try each of these and observe what effect they have on your selections.
  • Quick selection tool

Press the letter W to select this tool. There is another variation in this tool that is the Magic Wand tool.

  1. Click and hold in the middle of the house picture. While drag to the left or the right it means scrubbing the house with the cursor and observe how the selection grows as you do this. If you select the roof, balcony, and all the rest of the house, you may notice that some of the other things are selected too.
  2. To eliminate the shrubbery with the Quick Selection tool is to select the Subtract version of the tool or simply press and hold the Alt key, which for the short term switched the tool to the subtracting version and you can observe the tool switch modifiers at the top of the screen.                                                                                     Quick selection tool image
  3. Click and drag slightly on the other things, and it will be deselected and you can adjust the sensitivity of the selection by adjusting the size.
  • Crop tool

This is the most used tool in Photoshop. It can dramatically improve the composition of your photographs. To select this tool press the letter C. There are other two variations in this crop tool. They are Slice tool & Slice select tool.

  1. To crop an image, click and drag on the image area you want to crop. The result is area to be cut will be diffused. Make a selection equal to this and then press Enter. Observe how that’s changed the entire focus of the picture. To restore the image to its original dimensions anything else, click Ctrl+Z. You can step back through your editing history using Control+Alt+Z.                                                                                                            Crop tool image
  2. Perspective Crop used to adjust the relative perspective of the image as you crop. It is an interesting and powerful tool and it’s a more advanced feature.
  3. The Slice tools are part of the Crop menu. These are designed to carve up an image for placement into web pages.
  • Text tool

In general a picture is a worth of thousand words, but sometimes you want words too.  Click near the bottom of the picture with this tool and blinking text insertion cursor you will see on the picture. Type “Sweet Home” and depending on settings, it would be large, or very small, or a hard to read color. The text attributes is at the top of the Photoshop window.

Text tool image

  1. Font family: This menu lets you select the desired font. Type the font name and it will auto fill as you type (or) you can choose from the font list.
  2. Font style: There are related font styles for the font family like Bold, Italic, Light, Medium, etc. they will be available in this menu.
  3. Font size: This adjusts the size of the font. Choose a size from a small list or you have the option of entering a specific font size.
  4. Anti aliasing: It determines the strength of the edge blending. To turn off anti aliasing choose “none”, and text is turn into like it was in 1984.
  5. Justification: In the selected layer, this justifies all text to the left, center, or right.
  6. Color: To change the color, click on the chip and select a color. If any text is selected and all the future text will be appear with that new selected color. The color chip will display a question mark (?)It means you selected a text field with multiple colors and all other text attributes will appear as blanks.
  7. Warp: This “warps” the text on the horizontal or vertical axis or it bends the text. Select the text layer and click on the Warp button.
  8. Panels: To fine-tune your text, click on the Panels button. It will open up with Character and Paragraph.  You will also change the format of text with this option.

Painting Tools

  • Brush tool

This tool is home to the color replace tool, pencil tool and the Mixer Brush. Select this tool by pressing letter B in your keyboard. You can use different brushes here. Everything is very bit mapped so the Pencil tool features not anti aliasing. For replacing one color or range of colors with another color the Color Replacement tool can be useful.

  1. You can adjust the Opacity and Flow. Opacity adjusts the color transparency and Flow adjusts how much color is placed on the canvas with each stroke. Clear the canvas by pressing the command Ctrl+Delete and your canvas will fill with the background color. Pressing the command Alt+Delete will fill with the foreground color.                                                                                                                                                                                                   Brush tool image
  2. Pick a brush is very easy with the brush picker at the top left of the Photoshop window. Diameter of the brush is determined by Size and Hardness refers to the edges. You can use the sliders or enter the number directly.
  3. The Mixer Brush: It mixes different colors together as the way that an artist’s mixes colors on a palette. Pick a color and click on the Foreground Color chip at the bottom of the list.
  • Shape tool

This tool is used to draw the desired shape and allows specifying any number of sides. There are several variations in this tool like rectangle tool, polygon tool, line tool, custom shape tool etc. This tool lets you choose Shape, Path, or Pixels. The fill color is selected using the Fill popup menu and the outline color is selected by using the Stroke menu and its width is set with the stroke width menu.

  • Gradient tool

This tool is used to fill an area with a smooth blending between 2 or more colors. Choose the blue, red, and yellow gradient by clicking on the gradient palette. You can apply a gradient with different overlay styles to an image. Click on the gradient palette to edit. Move the points to lay down the start and end points for each color. Click on the colored tabs to select a color for each point, then click on the black tabs to assign opacity and close the Gradient Editor.

Gradient Tool image

  • Paint Bucket tool

This tool is used to fill any given area with the color of your choice. Most applications need the filled area to be a solid color and this tool is vitually in every paint application. Press command Ctrl+Delete to clear the canvas and fill with white.

Retouching Tools

  • Clone Stamp tool

This tool is used to pick up part of the image, and copy it to another part of the image. At the top of the window, to the right of the Clone Stamp icon select a brush by clicking on the icon. You need to select what you’re actually copying before you can clone the image. If you are going to hide an image, hold down the Alt key and click on the image. To soften the edges of the cloned area, set the Hardness to 0%.

  1. If the “Aligned” is checked, it will result in evenly-tiled patterns and if it is Unchecked it will restart the tile with every click of the mouse.
  2. If the “Impressionist” is checked, it will provide you random dots of color taken from the pattern.
  • History Brush tool

This tool is used to take back to previous versions of your image and lets you to paint in prior versions. Select History from the Window menu and at the top of the History window, you’ll see a thumbnail of the image. With your History Brush, click and hold the mouse and start painting. This tool will take back you to prior versions and use the History Brush tool to paint the image back to the original.

  • Spot Healing Brush

This tool is used to paint over your image with another part of the image. It can deliver amazingly natural results and works from the area around where you are painting. Make small strokes on the image, you will see the some part of image disappear.

  • Dodge tool

This tool is used to Masking parts of the photograph and blocked the light getting to the photograph, burning, or letting more light through, darkened the burned area. Press Shift-O and switch to the Burn Tool. Dodge the water around the image. Observe how the water becomes much darker, but the bright images are hardly affected at all. You can really make an image pop with use of the Dodge and Burn tools.

Advanced tools

  • Pen tool

This tool is excellent and a more advanced tool for making very precise and editable selections. It will need some practice to use well. Select the tool by clicking on the letter P in your keyboard. It will look like the nib of a fountain pen.

  1. If you see extra points, remove them by move your cursor through the initial point and press Alt+mouseclick on that point. Then extra points extended will be removed.
  2. Initially set a point on the image you want to select. You will observe two grips extend from the initial click point, the anchor point and in a straight line. Select the whole image by framing point by point.
  3. If you move your cursor around another anchor point, you will observe that line twisting like a rubber band. To close the loop, click on the initial anchor point finally.