basics chapter one: learning the tools.

This is a tutorial for those who have never used Photoshop before and are just beginning.
When you first open up Photoshop, it should look a little something like this:

What are those weird little pictures in the left hand corner of the screen? That is the tool box! Here is a diagram of important tools that you will find useful during your Photoshopping ventures.


- The Move Tool is used to... well... move things. With the move tool you can move whatever you like anywhere you like within your workspace. To use it just click on what you want to move and drag it to the desired location, otherwise you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move things in pixel by pixel.
- The Selection Tool is used to select geometric shapes on your image. The rectangular selection tool makes square and rectangular selections. However, if you right click on the selection tool you will get a drop-down menu that looks like this:

The elliptical tool makes selections shaped in circles and ovals.
The single row tool selects in rows, and the single column tool selects in columns.
Pretty self explanatory.
But what happens when you want to make a selection that is not in a specific shape? Then you use...
- The Lasso Tool. The lasso tool allows you to make a freehand selection of your choice. Just click and drag, and the lasso tool will make an independent selection based on what you draw. Once you make a selection, that selection becomes unique. Then you can add certain effects, fill in with color, or delete entirely the part of the image you selected. I'll go more in depth another time.
If you right click on the lasso tool, you will see this drop down menu:

The polygonal lasso tool limits your selection to using straight lines, and a polygonal shape.
The magnetic lasso tool is a smart little tool that identifies the different colors and contrasts in your image and makes a selection based on that.
- The Quick Selection Tool makes fast and easy selections quite like the magnetic lasso tool, but less tediously and usually less efficiently. This tool only comes with Photoshop versions CS3 and later. Right click on the quick selection tool and get this menu:

The magic wand tool does the same, but instead this tool selects an entire area instead of smaller, expandable areas.
Click here for a demo of the quick selection tool vs. the magic wand too.
- The Crop Tool lets you crop your images smaller, helping to get trim off pesky corners or parts of an image that you don't want.
- The Eyedropper Tool is used to take colors from an image. When you click on the section of the image you want to take the color from, the color appears in your color palette.
- The Spot Healing Tool helps erase blemishes and imperfections by cloning areas of the image around the blemish and replacing them.
- The Brush Tool acts like a real life paintbrush- you can paint with it, or use preset brush shapes and pictures to create textures and patterns.
- The Clone Stamp Tool lets you duplicate parts of your image.
- The Eraser Tool is entirely self-explanatory: it lets you erase parts of your image.
- The Gradient Tool fills your image with gradients that you can customize with your liking. Right click and get this drop down menu:

The paint bucket tool fills using solid colors instead of gradients.
- The Blur Tool lets you soften specified areas of an image. Right click and get this drop down menu:

The sharpen tool is the exact opposite of the blur tool. Instead of softening the image it sharpens it.
The smudge tool smudges parts of the image.
- The Dodge Tool allows you to lighten areas of the image. Right click on the dodge tool and get this drop down menu:

The Burn tool darkens and saturates parts of an image.
The Sponge tool saturates and desaturates parts of an image.

Don't be afraid to play around with these tools to really see what they can do. If you make a mistake, just go to edit>undo or press Ctrl+Z!