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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Tool Bar 101 The Eyedropper, Color Sample, Ruler + Note Tools Continued: Ruler tool:
While the ruler tool is meant to measure the dimensions of your screen, I like to use this tool to straight the horizon lines in my image. It is as simple as drawing a line across the horizon line and clicking ‘straighten’ that is seen in the option bar. (I underlined the line made by the ruler tool in red, so that it is more visible-your line will be gray). After it corrects the image, you will have a transparent background around the edges (see image below). All you simply need to do is crop out those areas. You can see the final crop in the last image below.
***The note tool is also another tool we will not be touching on. While its simple and the name says it all, lets focus more on the pieces of Photoshop that are more important in editing your images.*** 9
Tool Bar 101 The Healing Tools: Spot Healing Brush Tool, Healing Brush Tool, Patch Tool, Content Aware Move + Red Eye Tool What: All these tools will help you ‘heal’ desired areas of your images.
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Why: Nothing is perfect, right? These tools will help you heal blemishes, move objects in the background, cover up under eye circles and much more. How: Hit the J key on your keyboard to shortcut to this tool. I am going to go in depth with each of these tools, whereas we kind of breezed over the previous tools.
Spot Healing Brush Tool:
1. You can see that I have circled the areas of her skin that I want to correct. 2. The black dot under her nose is what it looks like when I brush over the area to heal it.
blemishes to be removed
This is more of a preference, but I prefer to have the brush be harder, so that I have a more pinpointed area.
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3. I do the same thing to the blemish on her chin. Here you see that I’ve brushed over the areas that need to be removed (blemishes). With the ‘content aware’ selected in the option bar. This quickly removes the acne.
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Tool Bar 101
before
after I cleaned up additional areas of her face, and you can see how just a few clicks here and there can drastically improve your subject’s skin. The spot healing brush works well on multiple types of situations, not just cleaning up skin. I use it often to remove unwanted items in the background. 11
Tool Bar 101 Spot Healing Brush Tool, Healing Brush Tool, Patch Tool, Content Aware Move + Red Eye Tool:
Healing Brush Tool: The Healing Brush is very similar to the Spot Healing Brush. The only difference is that you select the spot (by alt+clicking) you want the brush to reference when it ‘heals’ the desired area. In the image to your left, I wanted to remove the logo/branding off of their coats. Those are circled in white. While hold the alt key, I sampled the area circled in red. After releasing the alt key I then brushed over the logo and Photoshop made it disappear!
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Tool Bar 101 Spot Healing Brush Tool, Healing Brush Tool, Patch Tool, Content Aware Move + Red Eye Tool
Patch Tool:
Just like the previous tools, the Patch Tool is used to remove/change parts of an image. When selecting the Patch Tool I set the ‘patch’ to ‘content aware’ in the options bar and the ‘adaptation’ to ‘medium’. If l am working with just an objects in the background I use content aware because I want it to be more precise and detailed. As you can see in the image, there is another cabin off the right of the frame that I’d like to remove. To do this, I simply draw around the cabin with the Patch Tool and the cabin is selected. Next, I drag the area that is selected to another area of the background that I want to replace the cabin with. Here I dragged it to the left, into the trees. After I let Photoshop work its magic, the trees now look like this:
You can see that this doesn’t look natural, so I repeated the above steps on one of the white patches. On the next page is the final image. 13
Tool Bar 101 Spot Healing Brush Tool, Healing Brush Tool, Patch Tool, Content Aware Move + Red Eye Tool
Patch Tool Continued:
click here to watch the patch tool in action password: Sw1ns0n 14
Tool Bar 101 Spot Healing Brush Tool, Healing Brush Tool, Patch Tool, Content Aware Move + Red Eye Tool Content Aware Move Tool is really an incredible tool that has come out with CS6. Content Aware Move Tool: The doesn’t work on every image, the ones that it does, it is pretty amazing!
Modes: There are 2 modes you can use this tool in. Move will move an object in your image while repairing the area you moved them from. The extend option will allow you to make objects bigger/longer (see video on next page for more info on extend). Adaptation: This option tells Photoshop how much it can blend the edges of your selection. Make sure, when selecting the object that you leave a little space around the subject/ item to allow Photoshop some wiggle room. The ‘very strict’ option gives PS less room when blending the edges of the object. The ‘very loose’ option does the opposite. You may have to play around with the options a few times depending on what it is.
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While it
1. This is my original image, and I wanted to make the little girl fly just a little bit higher
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2. I drew a line around the girl, making sure to give a little extra space around the object so Photoshop has more pixels to work with.
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3. Next, I drag my subject to where I want her. Notice that I made sure they were not over lapping one another. I found that this gave a much cleaner result. 4. Isn’t it amazing what Photoshop can do? The next page will show you the before and after at a larger size.
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Tool Bar 101 Spot Healing Brush Tool, Healing Brush Tool, Patch Tool, Content Aware Move + Red Eye Tool
Content Aware Move Tool Continued:
before
after
Click here to watch a video on the content aware move tool. password: ContentAware 16
Tool Bar 101 Brush Tool:
What: The Brush Tool is used to paint onto your image. The three most important aspects of this tool are the size, hardness and opacity options it give you. Size: How big or small the brush is. Hardness: How soft (more blur) the edges of your brush are. If you select it at 100% hardness, the edges will be very strong with no blur to them. Opacity: How strong or weak you want the brush effect to be on your image. Why: This is the tool that I use the most, mainly for working with layer masks, which we will go in depth on later in the course. How: Hit B on your keyboard to shortcut to this tool.
By clicking the brush can in the options bar, it will pop up this larger option box for you to work from.
This is where you will change the size and hardness of your brush. A quick shortcut to change the size of your brush, you simply hit the bracket keys. ([ ]) ‘[‘ key to make it smaller and the ‘]’ to make it larger. If you want shortcut to the hardness/softness you will use the same shortcut, but you will hold down the shift key while hitting either ‘[‘ or ‘]’. Here you can select the colors you’d like to use. To toggle between the two colors, hit ‘x’ on your keyboard.
mode: these are all the options you can use your brush in, which we will cover later.
To quickly change the opacity of your brush, type in the percentage (number) you’d like to paint at. As long as you have the brush selected you don’t even need to have the opacity option selected. Try it out!
Pencil Tool
Color Replacement Tool
Mixer Brush Tool
The Pencil Tool is very similar to the brush tool, but it doesn’t have the hardness/softness option. I do not use this tool at all, I believe it is geared more for graphic designers.
This tool is just like the name says. It is used to take one color and replace it with another while keeping intact the texture of the object you are changing. There are better ways to do this as I feel that this tool is outdated.
I have never had a need for this brush. It is used to mix the colors of your image, almost like you are painting. Lets leave this out, and focus on tools that you will use more frequently. 17
Tool Bar 101 Clone Stamp Tool + Pattern Stamp Tool What: The clone stamp tool is used to copy or ‘clone’ one part of an image to another area.
In the image below I have circled the area I want to cover up red (the house). The blue areas are where I want to copy from so I alt+clicked to copy those pixels. My clone stamp brush is set at 100% opacity and as soft as possible so that the edges blend well smoothly.
Why: I use this tool quite frequently when I am working on newborn sessions, filling in and smoothing out the background blanket. I also use this tool to remove areas of the background that I don’t want there. How: You will alt+click on the area you wish to copy from and then brush over the area you want to alter. To shortcut to this tool hit S on your keyboard. *The Pattern Stamp Tool does the same, but with a pattern and is rarely used.
Below is the final image after cloning.
This is my edited image, and I’d like to remove the house in the background using other elements of the trees in the background so that it blends nicely and seamlessly.
Click here to watch a video on the clone stamp tool. password: CloneStamp
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Tool Bar 101 History Brush Tool + Art History Brush Tool
What: The History Brush Tool allows you to restore desired areas of an image to a previous state, without removing all the adjustments made to the image. Why: I do not use this tool, mainly because you can do the same thing, in a non-destructive way, with layers and masks. We will cover that more in next week, but I still want you to understand how it works.
In the history panel you can see all the work that has been done to the image. If you look at the top, you see a snap shot of your image in the original state. If you select the history brush and paint over certain areas of your image with that brush, it will bring those specific areas back to the original state.
history panel
How: Hit the Y key on your keyboard to shortcut to this tool.
Art History Brush Tool We will skip this version of the tool because in my honest opinion, it is pretty useless.
You can also ‘snapshot’ your editing progress by clicking the snapshot button (which looks like a camera) at the bottom of your history panel.
Once you’ve made another snapshot you will have the option of which ‘snapshot’ you’d like the history brush to reference. 19
Tool Bar 101 Eraser Tool, Background Eraser Tool + Magic Eraser Tool: What: The eraser tools allow you to delete/erase areas (or pixels) of your image. Why: To erase parts of your image (or layers) permanently. How: To shortcut to this tool, hit the E key on your keyboard.
Eraser Tool: This will erase into a solid white background. You can adjust the opacity/hardness/size the same way you would a brush.
Background Eraser Tool: When you use this option you can increase/ decrease your tolerance levels and it will affect how much or little is erased to the background layer.
Magic Eraser Tool: This works similarly to the magic wand tool. Simply click an area of your image and Photoshop will erase that area, and other similar areas, depending on what your tolerance is set at.
This is another tool that I do not use and find to be a little bit dated.
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Tool Bar 101 Gradient Tool + Paint Bucket Tool: Photoshop provides a few different color combinations.
Gradient Tool:
What: The gradient tool adds a gradient to your image. Why: There are a lot of uses for gradient tools, more-so for graphic designers, but there are times that I will use them. This is something we will touch on in Week 3. How: Hit the G key to shortcut to the Gradient Tool.
You will draw a line across your image to lay the path for the gradient. Whichever preset you’ve selected, it will overlay onto your image. This tool is something that we will dive into much more in a more advanced course.
Paint Bucket Tool: What: The Paint Bucket Tool lets you drop color into your image. Why: For photo editing purposes, this tool is something I never use. It, like some others, it is geared for graphic/web designers. How: You can adjust the tolerance of the paint bucket, allowing for more or less coverage.
final edit.
tolerance: 32
tolerance: 75
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Tool Bar 101 Blur Tool, Sharpen Tool + Smudge Tool: What: These tools are pretty self explanatory. They are used to blue, sharpen and smudge. Why: While these can get their job done, I find that there are other ways to achieve blur, sharpening and smudging much more effectively. We will talk about this in later weeks. How: You can adjust the opacity/blending modes/hardness for each tool, just like the Brush Tool. There is not a shortcut for these tools.
Blur Tool: before
after
I used the Blue Tool at 100% with the blending mode at normal. Above you can see how it blurs his eye.
Sharpen Tool:
before
after
Here is set the Sharpen Tool at 50% and ran it over his right eye. You can see how it pixel-ates the colors in his eyes. Like I said, we will cover other, more effective ways to sharpen your images.
Smudge Tool: before
after
I never really use the Smudge Tool, but here you can see that when it is set at 100% strength and 100% hardness it works very well to fill in or add hair to specific areas. 22
Tool Bar 101 Burn Tool, Dodge Tool + Sponge Tool: What: These tools are used to darken (burn), lighten (dodge) and adjust the saturation (sponge) in your images.
before
Why: I use the Dodge/Burn tools quite frequently in my work flow, I love the control they give to darken/lighten specific areas. How: There are many ways to adjust these tools and I will go over each of these so you can see the full capabilities. To shortcut to this tool hit O on your keyboard.
Burn tool
Here you choose what range you want to burn or dodge (shadows, mid tones or highlights).
One of the biggest things I use the Burn Tool for is creating slight vignettes and making my subject pop out of the background. For this purpose I set the range of the Burn Tool to ‘shadows’ and make the exposure low, to around 20%. That way I can gradually add to the image as I go. It is VERY important to make sure that the ‘Protect Tones’ box is checked. When it is unchecked you get much The areas that I burned in are inside the red boxes. more drastic results.
after
I wasn’t too worried about the skin tones of the other subjects, as I wanted to really make this one bridesmaid pop.
Click here to watch a video on how I use the burn tool. password: Sw1ns0n
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Tool Bar 101 Burn Tool, Dodge Tool + Sponge Tool: Dodge Tool:
*This is what it will look like if I did not have ‘protect tones’ checked. You can see in this image, versus the one to your left, that Photoshop ignored the details in his sweater. This is why it is important to have ‘protect tones’ checked. Edited image.
As you can see, I lose a lot of detail in Here is the after. You can see a little his sweater. To bring that up I select bit more detail in his sweater without the Dodge Tool, set the range to ‘shad- having to lighten the entire image. ows’ and my exposure to 50% and brush over the darkest areas of his sweater.
Here I dodged his face using the mid tones range at 10%. It still has a little too much contrast for my taste, so we will use it for example purposes only.
Now I changed the range to highlights and you can see how drastic the change is. I almost never dodge or burn using the highlights range. 24
Tool Bar 101 Burn Tool, Dodge Tool + Sponge Tool:
Sponge Tool:
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SOOC
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The Sponge Tool is a great for quick saturation adjustments. In the options tool bar you can change the mode in which you use the sponge tool (saturate or desaturate). The flow option is the strength you’d like to set the sponge at. In image #1, I set the sponge to saturate, the flow at 50% and made sure the ‘vibrance’ box was checked (the vibrance option will give the sponge a more dramatic effect by increasing/decreasing the contrast). I then brushed over the sky a few times. In image #2 I used the same settings for but switched it to desaturate. You can easily see the changes made to the sky. 25
Tool Bar 101 Pen Tool, Freeform Pen Tool, Add Anchor Point Tool, Delete Anchor Point Tool + Convert Point Tool: What: This tool allows you to make vector shapes and is more of a tool you would use if you were in Adobe Illustrator. The other ‘sub-tool’ options allow you to alter and change the shapes. Why: Again, this is used mainly for graphic designers. We will not be covering this tool for now, there are more important aspects of Photoshop to focus on. How: Hit the P key on your keyboard to shortcut to this tool.
Horizontal Type Tool, Vertical Type Tool, Horizontal Type Mask Tool + Vertical Type Mask Tool: What: The Type Tool is used to add text or to change existing text. I use this quite frequently when designing marketing pieces or working on cards for clients. Why: To add text to your file/image. How: Hit the T key on your keyboard to shortcut to this tool. alignment
font selection
font style
font color
font size
You can also change the shape of your font. By clicking the T with the curve underneath it. You will have a lot of option to choose from and is pretty easy to adjust. Take a moment and play around with it to see all the options it gives.
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Tool Bar 101 Path Selection Tool + Direct Selection Tool: What: The Path Selection Tool is used to change paths of your vector shapes or anchor points. Why: Again, this is geared more towards graphic designers, so we will leave these tools alone. How: Hit A on your keyboard to shortcut to this tool.
Rectangle Tool, Rounded Rectangle Tool, Ellipse Tool, Polygon Tool, Line Tool, Custom Shape Tool: What: This is another one of those tools that is pretty self explanatory. Why: You can create shapes and lines onto your images. It is a very easy tool to understand so we will leave it at that. :) Play around with it and see what you can create, other than that we will more than likely not touch on this tool again. How: Hit the U key on your keyboard to shortcut to this tool. The ‘Fill’ option will be the color you’d like the shape to be. You can add a stroke (outline) with the ‘Stroke’ option.
Hand Tool + Rotate View Tool: What: The Hand Tool allows you to drag your image with the click of your mouse. The rotate view tool change es the view of the image in Photoshop, versus being straight on and like how you shot it in camera. Why: When I am editing an image that is zoomed in, I like to use the Hand Tool to navigate more precisely over larger areas. For example, when I am cleaning up skin blemishes, and I know that I need to be zoomed in, I use the hand tool to drag to the next area instead of zooming out and then back in. The rotate view tool, I do not use at all. When you click and move your cursor around it will rotate the image. How: You can hit the H key to shortcut to the Hand Tool and R to shortcut to the Rotate Tool. Though, you can access the Hand Tool by simply holding the space bar down while using other tools, without switching over to the hand tool and back again.
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Tool Bar 101 Zoom Tool What: The Zoom Tool is another self-explanatory tool. You can zoom in and out on your image. Why: I frequently use the Zoom Tool to make sure that I am getting close enough to specific areas. This allows any changes I am making to be more precise and accurate. How: There are a few ways to use the Zoom Tool. When you have the Zoom Tool selected, all you have to do is click the image. You can zoom in by making sure the ‘+’ symbol is selected in the options bar and have it zoom out by having the ‘-’ symbol selected. To make this more seamless and fluid, click on the image, while you have the zoom tool selected and slide your cursor side to side to zoom in and out. If you are using another tool and want to quickly zoom without switching tools, you just need to hold down the command key (CTRL on PC) and space bar at the same time, then slide side to size to zoom in and out.
Misc. Items:
Clicking this will set your brush colors back to default, black and white (shortcut: D).
Foreground + Background color
Quick Mask We will learn about this in week 2.
Screen Mode
Clicking these will swap the colors of your brush between the two colors you have selected (shortcut: X).
The screen mode button is found a the bottom and it simply changes the way you see your screen. Hit the F key on your keyboard to flip through viewing options.
I use the foreground/background quite frequently. Mainly when working on layer masks which we will touch on next week. If you click on the foreground or background color box, a color picker will pop up, allowing you to select the desired color.
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Tool Bar 101 Week One Assignment: For our homework assignment this week, I have provided 2 images that I’d like for you to edit. Please download the high resolution images HERE. When you are ready to post your assignment, please post in the ‘Week One’ forum with your name, followed by ‘Homework Week I’. For example: Martha Black - Homework Week I.
Image One: Use the clone tool to fill in the areas of the blanket. Bonus Assignment: Use one of your own images and utilize the tools we’ve talked about this week. If you decide to do this assignment, please let us know what you did, step by step.
Image Two: Use the healing tools to remove blemishes. Also, use the burn tool to darken the image in the desired areas and use the dodge tool to brighten any desired areas. 29