Photoshop Tools

Tools

Upon loading Photoshop, a sidebar with a variety of tools with multiple image-editing functions appears to the left of the screen. These tools typically fall under the categories of drawing; painting; measuring and navigation; selection; typing; and retouching. Some tools contain a small triangle in the bottom right of the toolbox icon. These can be expanded to reveal similar .While newer versions of Photoshop are updated to include new tools and features, several recurring tools that exist in most versions are discussed below.

Pen Tool
Photoshop includes a few versions of the pen tool. The pen tool creates precise paths that can be manipulated using anchor points.The freeform pen tool allows the user to draw paths freehand, and with the magnetic pen tool, the drawn path attaches closely to outlines of objects in an image, which is useful for isolating them from a background.

Measuring and Navigation
The eyedropper tool selects a color from an area of the image that is clicked, and samples it for future use.The hand tool navigates an image by moving it in any direction, and the zoom tool enlarges the part of an image that is clicked on, allowing for a closer view.

Selection
Cropping
The crop tool can be used to select a particular area of an image and discard the portions outside of the chosen section. This tool assists in creating a focus point on an image and excluding unnecessary or excess space. Cropping allows enhancement of a photo’s composition while decreasing the file size. The "crop" tool is in the tools palette, which is located on the right side of the document. By placing the cursor over the image, the user can drag the cursor to the desired area. Once the Enter key is pressed, the area outside of the rectangle will be cropped. The area outside of the rectangle is the discarded data, which allows for the file size to be decreased.

Slicing
The "slice" and slice select tools, like the crop tool, are used in isolating parts of images. The slice tool can be used to divide an image into different sections, and these separate parts can be used as pieces of a web page design once HTML and CSS are applied.The slice select tool allows sliced sections of an image to be adjusted and shifted.

Moving
Once an area of an image is highlighted, the move tool can be used to manually relocate the selected piece to anywhere on the canvas.

Marquee
The marquee tool can make selections that are single row, single column, rectangular and elliptical. An area that has been selected can be edited without affecting the rest of the image. This tool can also crop an image; it allows for better control. In contrast to the crop tool, the "marquee" tool allows for more adjustments to the selected area before cropping. The only marquee tool that does not allow cropping is the elliptical. Although the single row and column marquee tools allow for cropping, they are not ideal, because they only crop a line. The rectangular marquee tool is the preferred option. Once the tool has been selected, dragging the tool across the desired area will select it. The selected area will be outlined by dotted lines, referred to as “marching ants”. These dotted lines are called “marching ants”, because the dashes look like ants marching around the selected area. To set a specific size or ratio, the tool option bar provides these settings. Before making a selecting an area, the desired size or ratio must be set by adjusting the width and height. Any changes such as color, filters, location, etc. should be made before cropping. To crop the selection, the user must go to image tab and select crop.

Lasso
The lasso tool is similar to the "marquee" tool, however, the user can make a custom selection by drawing it freehand. There are three options for the "lasso" tool – regular, polygonal, and magnetic. The regular "lasso" tool allows the user to have drawing capabilities. Photoshop will complete the selection once the mouse button is released. The user may also complete the selection by connecting the end point to the starting point. The “marching ants” will indicate if a selection has been made. The "polygonal lasso" tool will only draw straight lines, which makes it an ideal choice for images with many straight lines. Unlike the regular "lasso" tool, the user must continually click around the image to outline the shape. To complete the selection, the user must connect the end point to the starting point just like the regular lasso tool. "Magnetic lasso" tool is considered the smart tool. It can do the same as the other two, but it can also detect the edges of an image once the user selects a starting point. It detects by examining the color pixels as the cursor move over the desired area. A pixel is the smallest element in an image. Closing the selection is the same as the other two, which should also should display the “marching ants” once the selection has been closed.

Quick Selection
The quick selection tool selects areas based on edges, similarly to the magnetic lasso tool. The difference between this tool and the lasso tool is that there is no starting and ending point. Since there isn’t a starting and ending point, the selected area can be added on to as much as possible without starting over. By dragging the cursor over the desired area, the quick selection tool detects the edges of the image. The “marching ants” allow the user to know what is currently being selected. Once the user is done, the selected area can be edited without affecting the rest of the image.

Magic Wand
The magic wand tool selects areas based on pixels. The user only needs to click once, and this tool will detect pixels that are very similar to each other. If the eyedropper tool is selected in the options bar, then the magic wand can determine the value needed to evaluate the pixels; this is based on the sample size setting in the eyedropper tool. When the image requires more than a few clicks, this tool becomes a disadvantage. The user must decide what settings to use or if the image is right for this tool.


Eraser
The eraser tool does exactly what it’s called. It erases an image based on the layer it is on. If the user is on the text layer, then any text that the tool is dragged across will be erased. The erased area will convert the pixels to transparent, unless it is the background layer. The size and style of the eraser can be selected in the options bar. This tool is unique in that it can take the form of the paintbrush and pencil tools. In addition to the straight eraser tool, there are two more available options – background eraser and magic eraser. The background eraser deletes any part of the image that is on the edge of an object. This tool is often used to extract objects from the background. The magic eraser tool deletes based on similar colored pixels. It is very similar to the magic wand tool. This tool is ideal for deleting areas with the same color or tone that contrasts with the rest of the image.

Typing
Photoshop also provides tools for adding and editing text. The type tools create an area where text can be entered, and the type mask tools create a selection area that has the shape of text. The type tool creates vector-based text, so symbols, letters and numbers in various fonts and colors can be re-sized while maintaining the same quality.

Retouching
There are several tools that are used for retouching, manipulating and adjusting photos, such as the clone stamp, eraser, burn, dodge, smudge and blur tools. The clone stamp tool samples a selected portion of an image, and duplicates it over another area using a brush that can be adjusted in size, flow and opacity. The smudge tool, when dragged across part of an image, stretches and smudges pixels as if they are real paint, and the blur tool softens portions of an image by lowering the amount of detail within the adjusted area.
The eraser tool removes pixels from an image, and the magic eraser tool selects areas of solid color and erases them.The burn and dodge tools, which are derived from traditional methods of adjusting the exposure on printed photos, have opposite effects; the burn tool darkens selected areas, and the dodge tool lightens them.

Content-aware
Content-awareness is a useful aspect of Photoshop where image editing is done automatically and intelligently. It comes in two forms, content-aware scaling, and content-aware filling, in which elements in a background automatically recompose according to the areas a user of the program decides to fill or scale. More specifically, content-aware scaling works by rescaling an image and causing its content to adapt to the new dimensions and preserving important areas of it. Content-aware filling functions by matching tone, color, and noise of an area of the image that contained an object or detail in which the user decides to remove.

Healing Tools
With improvement retouching tools like the Clone Stamp tool and Healing Brush tool, imperfections of an image can easily be removed. These tools essentially function by locating a source point (or multiple source points) that can be scaled or rotated in order to cover an imperfection or unwanted detail in a specific area of an image.

The clone stamp tool allows its user to replace one part of an image with another. If part of an original image is damaged, the damaged area can be restored by cloning a similar area from another image or within the current image. This tool works great for removing unwanted blemishes, such as acne and wrinkles, in a photograph. To sample an image, the user must hold down the Alt key (Windows) or the Option key (Mac) then click on the area. Once the sample area has been cloned, the user can drag the clone key to the desired area. An interesting feature about this tool is that it doesn’t just sample within the size of the clone stamp, but it samples everything around it. The user can use this tool like a paintbrush to cover the desired area. Also, the user can clone in multiple areas without having to re-sample.


Puppet Warp
Similar to the content-aware tool, the puppet warp tool reveals Photoshop’s intelligence by allowing a user to reposition an object in an image such as a flower or arm. This is done by using points that outline the structure of an object and easily repositioning in the wanted orientation.

Video Editing
In Adobe CS5 Extended edition, video editing is comprehensive and efficient with a broad compatibility of video file formats such as MOV, AVI,MPEG-4, and FLV formats and easy workflow. Using simple combination of keys video layers can easily be modified, with other features such as adding text and the creation of animations using single images.

3D
With the Extended version of Photoshop CS5, 2D elements of an artwork can easily become three-dimensional with the click of a button. Extrusions of texts, an available library of materials for three-dimensional, and even wrapping two-dimensional images around 3D geometry are all possible with this version of Photoshop. Realism can also be added to an image using the 3D features of Photoshop such as animating image-based lights and depth of field.

Mobile Integration
Third-party plugins have also been added to the most recent version of Photoshop where technologies such as the iPad have integrated the software with different types of applications. Applications like the Adobe Eazel painting app allows the user to easily create paintings with their fingertips and use an array of different paint from dry to wet in order to create rich color blending.

Camera Raw
With the Camera Raw plug-in, RAW images can be processed without the use of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, along with other image file formats such as JPEGs, TIFFs, or PNGs. The plug-in allows users to remove noise without the side-effect of over-sharpening, add grain, and even perform post-crop vignetting.