How to Use Adobe Photoshop Tools
Launch Photoshop., Open a document., Select the Marquee tool (M)., Select the Lasso Tool (L)., Select the Quick Selection tool (W)., Select the Crop Tool (C)., Select the Text Tool (T)., Create a sized text field., Close the window.
Step-by-Step Guide
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Step 1: Launch Photoshop.
If you don't currently own Photoshop, you can download a free trial version at Adobe.com.
On the right side of the page, click on the Try It button.
You can get a 30-day, fully-functioning trial to see if Photoshop is right for you. -
Step 2: Open a document.
Command+ click (Windows:
Ctrl+click) here to open a sample picture in a new tab.
You can use to follow along with this tutorial.
Drag the photo to the desktop, then open up that image in Photoshop.
When you're done, your screen should look something like this: , You can do this by clicking on the icon, or by typing the letter M. (For the remainder of this tutorial, the key shortcut will be shown after the tool name.) The Marquee tool is the most basic of all tools.
It's something you're already familiar with: virtually every application and operating system selects things the same way: click and drag to select a region of the screen.
Photoshop is no different.
Clicking and holding on the Marquee icon will give you a small popup menu where you can select the variations:
Rectangular marquee (the default); Elliptical marquee, for selecting circles and ovals; and a single-pixel marquee for both horizontal and vertical.
For now, select the Rectangular marquee, place your cursor somewhere in the upper left of the image, then click and drag the mouse.
You will see the selection expand, with the pixel values to the right of the selection.
Drag towards the center, until the values are roughly W: 300 H: 200, then release the mouse button.
Click and hold in the middle of the selection, and move the cursor—notice how the selection moves with you.
Drag the selection so that it surrounds the tan house on the hill, as shown:
From here, you can copy the selection, move it, apply filters to it—pretty much anything you can do in Photoshop starts with a selection. , Closely related to the Marquee tool is the Lasso tool.
Like the Marquee tool, the Lasso is used to make a selection.
However, with the Lasso tool, you can make a freeform selections.
Its variants include the Polygonal Lasso tool, and the Magnetic Lasso tool.
Select the basic Lasso tool, and try it out.
Click and hold the mouse button, then draw a selection around the small white sailboat that's left of center in the window.
When you get to the bottom, release the mouse button—the selection will auto-complete.
Now press Command-D (Control-D on a PC).
This will deactivate the selection.
Note that this works for all selections.
Press Shift-L.
This will change the cursor to the Polygonal Lasso Tool. (Shift plus the tool shortcut will cycle through the other related tools).
Notice the black arrow on the top left of the Polygonal Lasso cursor: that's where the click point is.
Click once, anywhere on the image.
Notice as you move your mouse, the starting point remains pinned, and a dashed line extends towards the cursor.
Click again, and that next point becomes pinned.
You can continue clicking until your selection is complete: as simple as a triangle, or as complex as you like.
When you reach your last click point, double click instead of single click, and the polygon will automatically close.
Press the Escape key at any time to cancel the selection in progress.
Press Shift-L again.
This selects the Magnetic Lasso.
Like the lasso tools, the click point is the black pointer in the upper left of the cursor.
Try this: click and hold the mouse button with the cursor pointing at the water line of the bow (front) of the boat, and drag around the boat slowly.
Notice as you drag, the selection actually snaps to the boat as you move! At the top of the Photoshop window, you'll see some tool modifiers:
Feather, Anti-alias, Width, Contrast, and Frequency.
As you advance, try each of these and see what effect they have on your selections.
Hover over any interface element to see tool tips for that particular tool or setting. , This is the advanced version of the Magic Wand tool (which is still available as an alternate tool).
Try this: click and hold on the tan house in the middle of the picture.
While holding the mouse, drag to the left or the right, "scrubbing" the house with the cursor.
Notice how the selection grows as you do this.
Make sure you select the roof, balcony, and all the rest of the house is selected.
When done, you may notice that some of the shrubbery is selected, too:
There are two ways to eliminate the shrubbery with the Quick Selection tool.
The first is to select the Subtract version of the tool.
The other way to subtract from the selection is to simply press and hold the Option (Alt) key, which temporarily switched the tool to the subtracting version (you can see the tool switch modifiers at the top of the screen as you do this.) Either way, click and drag slightly on the offending shrubbery, and it will be deselected:
You can adjust the sensitivity of the selection by adjusting the size.
The larger the size, the more will be selected.
Try it out: click the standard Quick Selection tool, set the size to 100, then try selecting the house again. , According to Adobe, this is the most used tool in Photoshop.
It's one of the tools that absent anything else, can dramatically improve the composition of your photographs.
When you select the Crop tool, you will notice small handles on the corners, and on the edges in the center of the image:
To crop an image, either drag the handles to surround the part of the image you wish to keep, or click and drag inside the image to draw the area to crop.However you do it, the result will be the area you're keeping will be normal, and the area to be cut will be dimmed.
Make a selection similar to this, then press Enter:
Notice how that's changed the entire focus of the picture.
Before you do anything else, click Undo (Command-Z, Mac, or Control-Z, PC) to restore the image to its original dimensions.
If did make further changes, you can step back through your editing history using Command-Option-Z (Control-Alt-Z).
Perspective crop.
Rather than just a plain rectangle crop, Perspective Crop lets you adjust the relative perspective of the image as you crop.
While an interesting and powerful tool, well worth experimenting with, it's a more advanced feature that will be covered in more advanced tutorials.
The Slice tools, also part of the Crop menu, are designed to carve up an image for placement into web pages.
Like the Perspective crop, this is an advanced feature to be addressed in more suitable tutorials. , They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes a picture is not enough: you want words, too! Photoshop's text tool gives you a few options.
With the Text tool selected, click near the bottom left of the picture.
You'll see a blinking text insertion cursor.
Type "Boats in the Bay." Depending on your settings, it might be too large, or too small, or a hard to read color.
The editor for the text attributes is at the top of the Photoshop window:
Font family.
This menu, like all font menus, lets you select the desired font.
You can select from the list, or type in the font name.
It will autofill as you type.
For the purposes of this tutorial, select Helvetica.
Font style.
If there are related font styles for the font family (e.g., Bold, Italic, Light, Medium, etc.), they will be available in this popup menu.
If the menu is grayed, that means there are no variations on the current font family.
For our purposes, select "Regular." Font size.
This adjusts the size of the font.
You have the option of entering in a specific font size, or choosing a size from a small list.
For fast, flexible, and easy font size changes, click and hold on the T icon to the left of the field, and drag to the left or right: the size should change dramatically.
Antialiasing.
This will determine the strength of the edge blending. "None" turns off antialiasing, and text is rendered like it was rendered in 1984: like blocky stair steps.
Here's a comparison of the different antialiasing settings:
Justification.
The icons say it all: this justifies all text in the selected layer to the left, center, or right.
Color.
This color chip defaults to the foreground color when you first choose the Text tool.
To change the color, select the text layer itself, or with the Text cursor, any part of the text in a field.
Click on the chip, select a color, and any selected text, plus all future text will be that new color.
Note:
If you select a text field with multiple colors, the color chip will display a question mark (?).
All other text attributes will show as blanks.
Warp.
This bends, or "warps" the text on the horizontal or vertical axis.
To use it, simply select the text layer, click on the Warp button, and work the Style and sliders to find the right look .
For this, we'll use the Flag style, and set the bend to 100%.
Panels.
The Panels button opens up two more palettes:
Character and Paragraph.
Use these to fine-tune the look of your text. , To do this, click and drag from the top left corner of where you want your text box to appear, to the bottom right corner of the box.
You'll see a rectangle on the screen, with handles on the corners and sides.
Type some a couple sentences into the box.
Don't worry if the text is too big or too small.
When you're done entering text, press the Enter key.
If your text is too small, use the Font Size control (at the top) to make it larger.
Conversely, if your text is too large, use the Font Size control to make the text smaller.
You can also adjust the size of the text field: hover over one of the handles for a couple seconds, and your cursor will change to a double arrow.
Click and drag to resize the text box: the text will flow within the boundaries of the box. , Save the file if you like, or discard changes.
Either way, you can always get an untouched version here. -
Step 3: Select the Marquee tool (M).
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Step 4: Select the Lasso Tool (L).
-
Step 5: Select the Quick Selection tool (W).
-
Step 6: Select the Crop Tool (C).
-
Step 7: Select the Text Tool (T).
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Step 8: Create a sized text field.
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Step 9: Close the window.
Detailed Guide
If you don't currently own Photoshop, you can download a free trial version at Adobe.com.
On the right side of the page, click on the Try It button.
You can get a 30-day, fully-functioning trial to see if Photoshop is right for you.
Command+ click (Windows:
Ctrl+click) here to open a sample picture in a new tab.
You can use to follow along with this tutorial.
Drag the photo to the desktop, then open up that image in Photoshop.
When you're done, your screen should look something like this: , You can do this by clicking on the icon, or by typing the letter M. (For the remainder of this tutorial, the key shortcut will be shown after the tool name.) The Marquee tool is the most basic of all tools.
It's something you're already familiar with: virtually every application and operating system selects things the same way: click and drag to select a region of the screen.
Photoshop is no different.
Clicking and holding on the Marquee icon will give you a small popup menu where you can select the variations:
Rectangular marquee (the default); Elliptical marquee, for selecting circles and ovals; and a single-pixel marquee for both horizontal and vertical.
For now, select the Rectangular marquee, place your cursor somewhere in the upper left of the image, then click and drag the mouse.
You will see the selection expand, with the pixel values to the right of the selection.
Drag towards the center, until the values are roughly W: 300 H: 200, then release the mouse button.
Click and hold in the middle of the selection, and move the cursor—notice how the selection moves with you.
Drag the selection so that it surrounds the tan house on the hill, as shown:
From here, you can copy the selection, move it, apply filters to it—pretty much anything you can do in Photoshop starts with a selection. , Closely related to the Marquee tool is the Lasso tool.
Like the Marquee tool, the Lasso is used to make a selection.
However, with the Lasso tool, you can make a freeform selections.
Its variants include the Polygonal Lasso tool, and the Magnetic Lasso tool.
Select the basic Lasso tool, and try it out.
Click and hold the mouse button, then draw a selection around the small white sailboat that's left of center in the window.
When you get to the bottom, release the mouse button—the selection will auto-complete.
Now press Command-D (Control-D on a PC).
This will deactivate the selection.
Note that this works for all selections.
Press Shift-L.
This will change the cursor to the Polygonal Lasso Tool. (Shift plus the tool shortcut will cycle through the other related tools).
Notice the black arrow on the top left of the Polygonal Lasso cursor: that's where the click point is.
Click once, anywhere on the image.
Notice as you move your mouse, the starting point remains pinned, and a dashed line extends towards the cursor.
Click again, and that next point becomes pinned.
You can continue clicking until your selection is complete: as simple as a triangle, or as complex as you like.
When you reach your last click point, double click instead of single click, and the polygon will automatically close.
Press the Escape key at any time to cancel the selection in progress.
Press Shift-L again.
This selects the Magnetic Lasso.
Like the lasso tools, the click point is the black pointer in the upper left of the cursor.
Try this: click and hold the mouse button with the cursor pointing at the water line of the bow (front) of the boat, and drag around the boat slowly.
Notice as you drag, the selection actually snaps to the boat as you move! At the top of the Photoshop window, you'll see some tool modifiers:
Feather, Anti-alias, Width, Contrast, and Frequency.
As you advance, try each of these and see what effect they have on your selections.
Hover over any interface element to see tool tips for that particular tool or setting. , This is the advanced version of the Magic Wand tool (which is still available as an alternate tool).
Try this: click and hold on the tan house in the middle of the picture.
While holding the mouse, drag to the left or the right, "scrubbing" the house with the cursor.
Notice how the selection grows as you do this.
Make sure you select the roof, balcony, and all the rest of the house is selected.
When done, you may notice that some of the shrubbery is selected, too:
There are two ways to eliminate the shrubbery with the Quick Selection tool.
The first is to select the Subtract version of the tool.
The other way to subtract from the selection is to simply press and hold the Option (Alt) key, which temporarily switched the tool to the subtracting version (you can see the tool switch modifiers at the top of the screen as you do this.) Either way, click and drag slightly on the offending shrubbery, and it will be deselected:
You can adjust the sensitivity of the selection by adjusting the size.
The larger the size, the more will be selected.
Try it out: click the standard Quick Selection tool, set the size to 100, then try selecting the house again. , According to Adobe, this is the most used tool in Photoshop.
It's one of the tools that absent anything else, can dramatically improve the composition of your photographs.
When you select the Crop tool, you will notice small handles on the corners, and on the edges in the center of the image:
To crop an image, either drag the handles to surround the part of the image you wish to keep, or click and drag inside the image to draw the area to crop.However you do it, the result will be the area you're keeping will be normal, and the area to be cut will be dimmed.
Make a selection similar to this, then press Enter:
Notice how that's changed the entire focus of the picture.
Before you do anything else, click Undo (Command-Z, Mac, or Control-Z, PC) to restore the image to its original dimensions.
If did make further changes, you can step back through your editing history using Command-Option-Z (Control-Alt-Z).
Perspective crop.
Rather than just a plain rectangle crop, Perspective Crop lets you adjust the relative perspective of the image as you crop.
While an interesting and powerful tool, well worth experimenting with, it's a more advanced feature that will be covered in more advanced tutorials.
The Slice tools, also part of the Crop menu, are designed to carve up an image for placement into web pages.
Like the Perspective crop, this is an advanced feature to be addressed in more suitable tutorials. , They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes a picture is not enough: you want words, too! Photoshop's text tool gives you a few options.
With the Text tool selected, click near the bottom left of the picture.
You'll see a blinking text insertion cursor.
Type "Boats in the Bay." Depending on your settings, it might be too large, or too small, or a hard to read color.
The editor for the text attributes is at the top of the Photoshop window:
Font family.
This menu, like all font menus, lets you select the desired font.
You can select from the list, or type in the font name.
It will autofill as you type.
For the purposes of this tutorial, select Helvetica.
Font style.
If there are related font styles for the font family (e.g., Bold, Italic, Light, Medium, etc.), they will be available in this popup menu.
If the menu is grayed, that means there are no variations on the current font family.
For our purposes, select "Regular." Font size.
This adjusts the size of the font.
You have the option of entering in a specific font size, or choosing a size from a small list.
For fast, flexible, and easy font size changes, click and hold on the T icon to the left of the field, and drag to the left or right: the size should change dramatically.
Antialiasing.
This will determine the strength of the edge blending. "None" turns off antialiasing, and text is rendered like it was rendered in 1984: like blocky stair steps.
Here's a comparison of the different antialiasing settings:
Justification.
The icons say it all: this justifies all text in the selected layer to the left, center, or right.
Color.
This color chip defaults to the foreground color when you first choose the Text tool.
To change the color, select the text layer itself, or with the Text cursor, any part of the text in a field.
Click on the chip, select a color, and any selected text, plus all future text will be that new color.
Note:
If you select a text field with multiple colors, the color chip will display a question mark (?).
All other text attributes will show as blanks.
Warp.
This bends, or "warps" the text on the horizontal or vertical axis.
To use it, simply select the text layer, click on the Warp button, and work the Style and sliders to find the right look .
For this, we'll use the Flag style, and set the bend to 100%.
Panels.
The Panels button opens up two more palettes:
Character and Paragraph.
Use these to fine-tune the look of your text. , To do this, click and drag from the top left corner of where you want your text box to appear, to the bottom right corner of the box.
You'll see a rectangle on the screen, with handles on the corners and sides.
Type some a couple sentences into the box.
Don't worry if the text is too big or too small.
When you're done entering text, press the Enter key.
If your text is too small, use the Font Size control (at the top) to make it larger.
Conversely, if your text is too large, use the Font Size control to make the text smaller.
You can also adjust the size of the text field: hover over one of the handles for a couple seconds, and your cursor will change to a double arrow.
Click and drag to resize the text box: the text will flow within the boundaries of the box. , Save the file if you like, or discard changes.
Either way, you can always get an untouched version here.
About the Author
Brenda Turner
Committed to making lifestyle accessible and understandable for everyone.
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