Using Tools from Photoshop's Toolbar

Now it's time to learn how to use some of the tools in the Photoshop toolbar.

Marquee Selection tools: The following tools allow you to select regions in your image to alter, copy, move, and apply filters.

This is the default selection setting. You can make a selection of any rectangular size and shape.

Elliptical marquee tool: This tool, available when you click and hold down on the selection tool region of the tool bar, selects elliptical spaces. To select a round area, hold the shift key while clicking and dragging.

Single row: This tool will select a 1pixel region that is as wide as your image. Very useful for trimming edges and making straight lines.

Single column: The tool will select a 1pixel region that is as tall as your image. Also very useful for trimming edges and making straight lines.

A Note on Selection Modes (in the options bar):


# Normal mode allows you to drag the cursor to create the selection size you want.
# Constrained aspect ratio allows you to choose a scalable rectangle, say with a width to height ratio of 1 to 2. The selection will grow when you drag, but will remain the same shape.
# Fixed Size/Fixed Aspect Ratio allows you to predetermine the size, in pixels or a ratio, of the selection you will make. When you click with fixed size selected, a selection box of the exact size you specified will automatically appear. With fixed aspect ratio, you can make different-sized selections of the same shape. This is a particularly helpful tool when cropping images to a certain size or drawing identical boxes.

Move Tool
the move tool moves an entire layer at a time. When you have selected this tool, click on a layer in the layer pane, and then click and drag on the image. The current layer will move all at once. You can even move it outside of the current image size. Don't worry, though, parts of an image that move outside the borders still exist - they are just hidden. They will only be cropped out if you flatten the image.

Lasso tools
The lasso selection tools are similar to the marquee tools, except that the lasso tools give you ultimate freedom in terms of the shape of your selection. There are three different lasso tools:

Lasso tool, which allows you to draw a selection by dragging the cursor freehand. The selection will close itself.
Polygon Lasso tool, which creates a selection composed of straight lines that can be as short as one pixel. The selection grows with each additional click. This tool is especially useful for cutting out objects in an image to place on new backgrounds.
Magnetic Polygon Lasso tool works a little like a combination of the other two lasso tool. As you drag, the selection maps to natural borders in the image. This is a useful tool when dealing with well-defined and high-contrast images.

A note about lasso tool options: When extracting part of an image from its background, the result will be choppy and rough around the edges unless you adjust the feather value in the options bar. This fades the edges you create and can smooth the region into its new background.


Magic Wand Tool
The magic wand tool is similar to the magnetic polygon lasso tool except that rather than dragging to make a selection, you click in a region and a selection appears around similar colored pixels. You can control how similar pixels must be to be included in the selection by altering the tolerance value.
This tool is useful for selecting monochromatic regions or pieces of high-contrast images.

Using the Image Menu

Most basic Photoshop tasks involve the Image menu, which I showed you earlier. In this chapter of the tutorial, I’ll go a little deeper into what you can do with the Image menu. I'm skipping around a little here; this represents the most commonly used items on the Image menu.
Mode
The first item on the Image menu is Mode. This is what you use to change the color mode and appearance on the entire image. I discussed RGB, the web mode, and CMYK, the print mode, earlier. You have some other choices here, including grayscale and duotone. Some modes’ availability depends on the pre-existing color mode.


Adjust
You can see that the adjust option on the Image menu gives you a lot of different tools for adjusting your image. The most basic types of adjustments you can make with Photoshop involve colors and brightness.

The most simple is the contrast/brightness adjustment. When you select contrast/brightness, you are confronted with a dialog box with a slider for both brightness and contrast. Moving the sliders to the left makes the picture more murky or darker, and moving the sliders to the right brightens and increases the contrast between the dark and light colors in the image. You can play around with both sliders until you get a suitable mix; the change is previewed in the image. This tool is helpful for brightening pictures that were taken in low light.


The other adjustments you can make with the options on the adjustments menu are a little more complex, and the best way to learn about them is just to experiment. Because Photoshop allows you to preview your adjustments, you can get a good feel for the adjustments without hurting your image.


Image size
Another common basic feature of Photoshop that lives on the Image menu is image size. You use this function to resize an image, and it’s pretty straightforward. When you select image size from the Image menu, a dialog box appears with some numbers corresponding to the current size.

You'll notice that there are two sets of sizes, Pixel Dimensions and Document Size. Pixel Dimensions refers to the image's size on screen, and Document Size refers to the size at which the document will print.You'll notice that all the numbers change when you change one of them. This default setting preserves the original h/w ratio of your image when you make changes to it size. If you want to change only one dimension of the image, uncheck the "constrain proportions" checkbox at the bottom of the dialog.

Notice that in the Documents size settings, you have the option to change the resolution (remember, things images will always be approximately 72 pixels/inch on screen). You can use this to change the resolution of your image, but remember, if you don't want the quality to decrease, you should only go from hi-res to low-res.


Canvas Size
Canvas Size is similar to Image Size, but changes to an image's canvas size can provide you with more working area for your image, in case you want to annotate it, copy more images into it, or perform. any number of other graphic variations.


Crop
The Crop function in the image menu is fairly straightforward. Make a selection, go to Image and select crop, and then everyting outside your selection disappears. The image size reflects the change.

Creating Graphics in PhotoshopAn advantage of Photoshop over basic photo editing software is the capabilities it gives you to create your own graphics. There's an exhaustive number of tools in Photoshop (and resources about them), so I'll just cover the basics.

Most of the functions these tools perform are based on your selection in an image. The effect or tool only operates within a selection.

Make a small selection and select the paintbrush tool. Move the mouse over your selection holding down the mouse button. You'll see that the image is only altered within the selection.

Colors and Graphics

Before I get to some of the main tools, I'll tell you a little about colors. The foreground color, which will be applied by tools like the paintbrush, is represented by the top square in the middle of the toolbar.

Stroke & Fill

The most basic ways to apply colors to an image are to use Fill and Stroke, both available on the edit menu. Make a selection, and choose fill from the edit menu. A dialog will appear asking you to make some decisions about colors and transparency. Make your selections, and press OK to fill the selection with the chosen color. Stroke operates in much the same manner, though you are given the chance to determine the weight of the lines you create.