Photoshop for Beginners 2: Tools

Knowing how to use the tools in Photoshop is paramount to any project you need to work on.
There are a few other guidelines I'll throw into the mix as well to optimize and ease your way through the program. It will be painless, I promise.

The best way to familiarize yourself with anything is to actually use it, so open an image in Photoshop (File/Open) that needs a little attention. Be sure to have the Layers Window open and off to the side. First thing you are going to do is click on the "View" drop menu and click on "Ruler". I make sure this is always opened with each image as I like to see what I'm working with. The other thing I always do is, again, drop the "View" menu and click on "Fit on Screen".

On with the tools. On some of them you will notice a little triangle on the bottom right. This means there is more than one tool to choose from. For example, the Marquee tool may be showing as a rectangle, but click on that triangle and you will see 3 more tools: Elliptical Marquee, Single Row Marquee and Single Column Marquee. Marquee tools, along with the Magic Wand and the Lasso tools, are all for selecting or outlining. Whatever tool you are using, its selection will be whiter than the rest, so you always know what tool is ready to be used.

As I mentioned, the Marquee tool is a selecting tool. When you click on it, you will notice in the bar at the top(just under your menus) is an Options bar for it. Click on the first square, then, with your mouse, click on your image and drag the tool outward. If you were to hold your shift key down while doing so, you would get a perfect square. Having the ruler visible becomes handy because you can then select a measured portion of your image, if you so desire. But there's another reason to have that ruler visible....

You can be precise in your selection when the ruler is visible by clicking on the ruler and dragging a blue line right where you want your selection to be. Try dragging the line to the two inch mark both from the horizontal and vertical rulers. If you don't hit your mark, click on the Move tool, the arrow and plus sign icon, then you can go back and move the lines to where they need to be. Do the same for all four sides. Now, go back to your Rectangle Marquee tool and you will see a little plus sign on your image. Move that to your guidelines until it turns orange. Click and drag and your selection is now precise.

Next to the selection options is the "Feather" option. This softens the line you made with the marquee tool and thus will soften whatever you are planning to do. If you apply a filter, it will blend; the higher the number you put in, the softer and wider the blend. Next is "Style". Normal is totally your control; Fixed Aspect Ratio is the ratio between width and height, ie; 2 width to 1 height will give you a selection that is twice as wide as it is high. Fixed Size is just that and it actually kind of cool if you want to play around with it. Set the sizes and just click on the image. You can click over and over willy nilly and it will keep selecting only that size.
To get rid of your marquee tool, simply hit Ctrl D or go to the Select menu and click on Deselect.

The Magic Wand tool selects similar colored pixels within the image. You can adjust the range of selection by changing the number in Tolerance in the options bar. Play with the different selections to see what they do; the first square is simple selection, the second can be used when you want more than one color selected; the third will subtract an area if you click on it; the fourth is usable within a Marquee tool as it will only select the color within the marquee (intersect with selection). You'll notice three more things, Anti-alias, whic gives a smooth line, Contiguous, which, if checked will only give you a color that runs continously or, if unchecked, will select that color throughout the image.

The last tool for selecting is the Lasso and there are three there. The first lasso, which, not so coincidently looks like a lasso is a freeform tool that you have to continuously drag without clicking except for beginning and ending. That one takes a great deal of practice to master and is best used for things that don't need precision, just general in-the-area selecting. The second choice is the Polygon Lasso, which you use by clicking around your chosen area. The third, the Magnetic Lasso, also clicks around your chosen area, but is also drops itself to similar pixels. It can be a royal pain in the ass sometimes. Lasso options are the same as the other selection tools.

OK, I think that's enough to play with. Keep playing with the selection tools and their options to get a feel for what they are capable of. Remember, it's Ctrl D to deselect and when closing the image, remember NOT to save any changes!! Even if you think you didn't do anything, the computer thinks you did, so just say "No".