Photoshop Fundamentals Week one: Tool Bar 101
workshop by Swinson Studios
Tool Bar 101 Welcome to Photoshop Fundamentals! We cannot wait to share all of our knowledge with you! This is going to be a wealth of information and learning, and we will pack a lot of information into each week. We truly hope that you grow and learn as a photographer and artist. Photoshop can seem like a beast, but we are here to help you break it down and unveil all the amazing features it offers! If you have any questions at all, please jump onto the forum and post them in the Q+A thread.
Above is an example of how your photoshop should look. If for some reason your workspace doesn’t look like this, select window > workshop > essential. You can customize your toolbar later, but lets all start out one the same page. 2
Tool Bar 101 This first week we will cover the tool bar and all of the tools available to you. The tools are placed vertically on the left hand side of your screen. It is important that you become familiar with all these tools, even if you only ever use them once, so we’re going to tackle them one by one. Many of these tools are going to have ‘sub-tools’ built into them. The small triangle in the bottom corner lets you know that there are more options/tools available for use, you can view these options by clicking on the tool for a few seconds or right clicking with your mouse. There are a few tools in here that we will only go over lightly, if much at all. They are tools that, in my 7 years, have very rarely used. You will also notice at the top there is a horizontal tool bar. This area here is your options tool bar. You will adjust your tool and its preferences here.
Tool Shortcuts: With your keyboard you can quickly move from one tool to the next with one keystroke. I will note each shortcut when we talk about the tools. These will become more habitual for you and you will begin to memorize them the more you use them... most of them are pretty obvious. :) toolbar
options toolbar 2
Tool Bar 101
The Move Tool: What: The Move Tool is pretty self explanatory. It is used to move layers, objects, pixels, text and just about anything else. Why: I find myself using this tool frequently when I’m using/creating card templates or doing a composite/head-swap on a photo. How: Hit V to shortcut to this tool.
The Marquee Tool: What: The Marquee Tool allows you to make selections in rectangular, elliptical (circular), row or column form on your image or layer. As an option you can hold down the shift key while making your selection to create a perfect square or circle. Why: There are many ways to use the marquee tool. More often than not, when I use this tool, I am making adjustments, such as exposure or contrast, to a specific area of the image. *I have never used the single row or column marquee tool, as it only selects one pixel (row or column) of the image.
How: Hit M to shortcut to this tool.
Here you see I’ve selected part of the image with the rectangular marquee tool.
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Tool Bar 101 The Lasso Tool:
What: The Lasso Tool is another way to select a specific area of your image. This tool gives you three different options: Lasso, Polygonal Lasso and Magnetic Lasso. These allow you to select parts of your image with different ways/methods.
Why: Similar to the Marquee Tool, this can be used to make changes to certain areas of your image, but not others. You will have more precision with the Lasso Tool versus the Marquee Tool. How: Hit L to shortcut to this tool on your keyboard.
Lasso Tool: When selecting a part of your image with this tool, it will be a freehanded selection with not help or guiding from Photoshop, giving you 100% control.
Polygonal Lasso: This option of the lasso tool will help you select the area of your image you desire by the use of straight lines that you will guide along your selection.
Magnetic Lasso: When you use the magnetic lasso Photoshop will select where to pinpoint and will guess, based on the file, what you are trying to select. This option works great on solid colors that have strong defining lines. 4
Tool Bar 101 The Quick Selection + Magic Wand Tool:
What: Both the Quick Selection Tool and the Magic Wand Tool are yet another way to select specific areas of your image. The Quick Selection Tool, like it’s name, will allow you to quickly select parts of your image. It works best with areas that have strong contrast between tones. The Magic Wand Tool does the same thing, but will select areas of your image that have similar luminance (brightness/tone). Unlike the Quick Selection Tool, the Magic Wand Tool gives you the option to adjust the tolerance (see next page for more info on tolerance). Why: Again, like the previous tools, this is used to select desired areas of your image. How: Hit W on your keyboard to shortcut to this tool.
Quick Selection Example: As you can see here, I used the quick selection tool and clicked on the white floor. I made the selection larger (while this tool knew to continue selecting the surrounding white floor) by brushing onto the surrounding areas I wanted selected with the + quick selection tool. If you accidentally brush onto an undesired area, you can quickly select the brush with the - sign brush, and remove that areas from your selection. 5
Tool Bar 101 The quick selection + magic wand tool continued: Magic Wand Tool As I said on the previous Tolerance: 20 Tolerance: 90 page, he Magic Wand Tool works similarly to the Quick Selection Tool. Here though you have the option to adjust the ‘tolerance’ of the wand. The wand will select areas of your image based on tone and color. The two images above show you different tolerance settings. With my tolerance set at 20, the selection is smaller, because we are only allowing Photoshop to select pixels that are 20 shades lighter and 20 shades darker the area we selected. You can see that when we changed the tolerance to 90, much more of the image was selected. Decrease the tolerance and less is selected, increase the tolerance and more is selected.
The other preference you have for this tool in the options bar is ‘Contiguous’. When you have the box checked, Photoshop will only select the pixels (set by tolerance) if they are touching one another. When you have the box unchecked Photoshop will select all the pixels in the entire image, (depending on your tolerance setting) regardless of whether they are touching or not.
Contiguous checked, tolerance: 30 Contiguous unchecked, tolerance: 30 6
Tool Bar 101 The Crop Tool + The Slice Tool: Crop ratios
You have the option to straighten your image using the crop tool.
What: The Crop Tool is used to crop your images. You can select the ratio you desire in the options bar (pictured above). You can also choose what type of grid that appears on your image. I use the rule of thirds option 100% of the time. You can also turn off the option to see any type of overlay/ grid by turning it off in the options bar. The images to the right are just two examples of available options (rule of thirds and grid). Why: We don’t always get it right in camera! How: Hit C to shortcut to this tool on your keyboard. rule of thirds
grid display
***The Slice Tool is something we won’t be diving into. This is used mainly for web designers who are creating websites in Photoshop. Since this is already so much information to take in, we don’t want to add in another tool that you, at this time in your journey, more than likely will not be using. 7
Tool Bar 101 The Eyedropper, Color Sample, Ruler + Note Tools:
What: The Eye Dropper and Color Sample Tool are used to pick up colors from your image/documents (we will cover the ruler and note on the next page).
Eyedropper Tool
Why: I find myself using this tool when I am painting color back into an image, as well as when I am working on more client based products, like birth announcements. How: Hit the I key on your keyboard to shortcut to this tool.
Color Sample Tool
To use the eye dropper tool simply click on any area of your image that you want to sample. You will see that the color will change here in the screen. This is the start to a powerful tool that you will see in use in later weeks.
If you need to take samples from more than one area of your image you will want to use the ‘Color Sample Tool’. This will allow you to select up to four areas of your image. When choosing the areas you want to sample, hold down the shift key when you click. You will see, in the bottom right corner, your samples information will show up. We will cover, in later weeks, when and why to use this tool.
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