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Tools - a plethora of them and then some 

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Tutorial order First screen Menu Panels Tools Open an image Layers Masking Adjustment layers Pixel layers

PS CC is certaily not lacking tools and tools modifiers as well as edit modifiers to be used after using a tool!!!  The later being a part of a tutorial.

Because tools are important I kep the last two areas of the interface together.

Tool options

Tool options.  They vary depending on the tool used.  What you will always see is the tool used icon, in this instance the 'hand'.   This icon has a down arrow on the left right side.  The icon indicates that you have additional options.  As a reminder the right drop down is both informative and a way to switch workspace.

When a tool is selected its icon is darkened.

The hand tool is used to move a virtual window over the open image.

If you have split windows with multiple images and want them to move at the same time check the box 'Scroll all windows'

100% is the screen magnification (1:1) (Alt-1).

Fit screen is the defalut (Alt-0) The entire image is visible.

Fill screen fills the image onto the screen from border to border.  The smallest side determines the magnifying.

When working with the hand tool have two alternatives, more efficient or quicker:

1 - Press the Space bar down. This will temporary select the move tool as long as you keep the bar down.

2 - The navigator palette found in the top right panel.  The navigator allows for magnification using the slider placed under the image thumbnail.

Tools

The small arrow on the right corner of a tool indicates that related tools and/or options are available.

Colapse or expand this panel menu. 

Move or place object in an image (V)

Maquee selection tool (M)

Lasso tool (L)

Quick selection tool (W)

Crop tool (C)

Eye dropper (I)

Spot healing (J ~ inactive)

Healing brush (J ~ inactive)

Patch tool (J ~ inactive)

Content aware tool (J ~ inactive)

Paint brush (B)

Clone stamp (S)

History brush (Y)

Eraser (E)

Gradiant (G)

Blur

Sharpen

Dodge tool (O)

Text (T)

Pen tool (P)

Path selection (A)

Hand tool (H)

Magnifier (Z)

Edit tool bar

Background foreground swap (X)

Background/Foreground colors.  The top square indicates the foreground color (D ~ Default = B&W)

Quick mask edit mode (Q)

Change screen mode (F)

For some reason Adobe has decided that the healing tools should be separated. In older versions they were all under the same 'Healing tools' cluster.   I will show how to modify this in order to recreate the 'old way' using the edit tool bar..

Tool selection letters allow you to swich between like tools.  Marquee by example will give you different shapes to choose from.

Last page update: 04/08/2016

It is not what you know that is important, how you use it is.

This site is under construction.

This site is created on my experience, past and present.

It introduces opinions that are not shared by many but reflect what I think is fair and informative.