Main Photoshop tools and selection tools

Healing brush

• The healing brush lets you fix imperfections. Things like scratches or blemishes can be blurred away. It does this by blending the imperfection into the rest if the image giving it the effect of healing.

Brush tool

• The Brush tool allows you to draw with smooth and refined edges. You can change the opacity, brush size and the flow to get different effects.

The airbrush tool

• The air brush tool is a little different to the brush tool as it allows you to improve photographs by adding tone.

Pencil tool

• A lot like the brush tool, the pencil too also allows you to sharpen and refine edges.

Clone stamp

• Allows you to clone a colour or image (hence why its called a ‘clone stamp’)- can be used to fill in unwanted gaps in an image.

History brush

• Allows you to create a previous form of an image.

Eraser

• Removes any unwanted parts of the image. You can alter opacity and size and you can strengthen the weakness of hardness of it depending on how much you want erased.

Background eraser tool

• Background eraser tool Magic eraser tool – This is used for erasing parts of an image of the same colour. You can alter the tolerance (sensitivity). Its very helpful when erasing unwanted backgrounds.

Gradient tool

• Creates a background which fades from one colour to another.

Paint bucket tool

• Allows you to fill an area with a block colour- great for backgrounds if you want one colour.

Blur tool

• This tool allows you to blur out certain areas of photographs or texts- if you use this to blur out the background of a phorograph of a person then the main focus is on the person- gives a professional look which is great for magazine covers.

Smudge tool

• I use this tool to smooth out the edges of photographs if they have been edited. It smudges the area selected giving a smoother appearance.

Dodge/burn tool

• Allows you to lighten/darken pixels as you go over them with the tool

Sponge tool

• Used to adjust saturation levels of images

Pen tool

• Simple tool used to create lines.

Text tool

• This allows users to add text to a document.

Rectangle tool

• Allows you to create shapes such as rectangles, rounded rectangles, ovals, circles etc.

Rectangle marque tool

• Used to select rectangular and sqaure areas.

Elliptical marque tool

• Used to select ellipses and circles.

Lassoo

• Freehand tool used to outline shapes.

Polygon lassoo tool

• Used to select shapes by creating small lines around them and joining them together to form the full shape of the area.

Magnetic lassoo

• Same as polygon lassoo but has a magnetic pull to the colour of the shape you are selecting therefore it is easier to do.