All About Photoshop, The Tools and Photoshop Shortcuts!! & Toolbar explanation

Did you ever wonder while working in Photoshop: what does this tool do? Then you are at the right place. Here you will learn what are the most used tools in Photoshop, their names, what to do with the chosen tool and for purpose they are.
I made this even for those who just started Photoshop and would like to know more about the strange button to the left (or right) that they don't have a clue about. The keyboard shortcut is in ( ).

Photoshop Tools!

Rectangular Marquee Tool (M)
Use this tool to make selections on your image, in a rectangular shape. This changes the area of your image that is affected by other tools or actions to be within the defined shape.
               Holding the Shift key while dragging your selection, restricts the shape to a perfect square. Also You can expand your selection by holding SHIFT and selecting the area you want added to the current selection.
               Holding the Alt key while dragging sets the center of the rectangle to where your cursor started. Also You can make your selection smaller by holding ALT and selecting the area you don't want in the selection.

Elliptical Marquee Tool
Used to select an elliptical (round) area. You can expand your selection by holding SHIFT and selecting the area you want added to the current selection. You can make your selection smaller by holding ALT and selecting the area you don't want in the selection.

Single Row Marquee Tool
Selects a single pixel row. You can expand your selection by holding SHIFT and selecting the area you want added to the current selection. You can make your selection smaller by holding ALT and selecting the area you don't want in the selection.

Single Column Marquee Tool
Selects a single pixel column. You can expand your selection by holding SHIFT and selecting the area you want added to the current selection. You can make your selection smaller by holding ALT and selecting the area you don't want in the selection.

Move Tool (V)
Use this tool to, well, move things. Usually you use it to move a Layer around after it has been placed. Hold the Shift key to limit the movements to vertical/horizontal. Use the mouse or the arrow keys to move it.

Lasso Tool
Selects an area of your choice. Click and hold the left mouse button to select. When the left mouse button is released the area will be closed with a straight line from the ending point to the starting point.
Hold ALT while selecting to create a straight line. You can expand your selection by holding SHIFT and selecting the area you want added to the current selection. You can make your selection smaller by holding ALT and selecting the area you don't want in the selection.

Polygon Lasso Tool (L)
Selects an area of your choice. Click to start selecting, then make the selection click by click. The selection will go from point to point (were you clicked) with straight lines. Hold SHIFT while selecting to make horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines. You can expand your selection by holding SHIFT and selecting the area you want added to the current selection.
You can make your selection smaller by holding ALT and selecting the area you don't want in the selection.
            In other words; use this to draw selections in whatever shape you would like. To close the selection, either click on the beginning point (you'll see the cursor change when you're on it), or just double-click. When holding the Ctrl key, you'll see the cursor change, and the next time you click, it will close your selection.

Magnetic Lasso Tool
Selects an area of your choice. Click to start selecting, move the tool over the image to create the selection. This tool will guess were you want to select by selecting were the colors differ the most in the area were you move your mouse. If you think you should help it a bit just click were you want it to go next. This tool is very nice if you want to select something on a background with a completely different color. You can expand your selection by holding SHIFT and selecting the area you want added to the current selection. You can make your selection smaller by holding ALT and selecting the area you don't want in the selection.

Magic Wand Tool (W)
Selects a colored area. Click in the area you want to select. This tool will select an area that has one color. For example if you click in a bright red area it will select the whole bright red area, but not the green area next to it. By setting the tolerance higher it will also select the slightly darker and lighter red next to it. You can expand your selection by holding SHIFT and selecting the area you want added to the current selection. You can make your selection smaller by holding ALT and selecting the area you don't want in the selection.
            In other words use this to select a color range. It will select the block of color, or transparency, based on wherever you click. In the Options Bar at the top, you can change the Tolerance to make your selections more/less precise.

Crop Tool ( C )
The Crop Tool works similarly to the Rectangular Marquee tool (see above if you have no short-term memory). The difference is when you press the Enter/Return key, it crops your image to the size of the box. Any information that was on the outside of the box is now gone. Not permanently, you can still undo.

Slice Tool (K)
This is used mostly for building websites, or splitting up one image into smaller ones when saving out. It's kind of an advanced tool, and since you're in here for the basics, we'll kind of skip over it. The slice tool is very useful when building websites. You can use it to tear an image down in to separate images, put into a html table. When you want to save the stuff go to File>Save for Web... or hit ALT+SHIFT+CRTL+S and save it. Photoshop will automatically create a html file with the table for you.

Slice Select Tool
The slice tool is very useful when building websites. Use this tool to set the slices options. Double click on a slice and an option menu will pop up with various html options like creating a link out of the image.

Spot Healing Brush Tool (J)
This is a really useful tool. Mildly advanced. You can use this tool to repair scratches and specs and stuff like that on images. It works like the Brush tool (see below). You choose your cursor size, then holding the Alt key, you select a nice/clean area of your image. Let go of the Alt key and paint over the bad area. It basically copies the info from the first area to the second, in the form of the Brush tool. Only, at the end, it averages the information, so it blends.

Healing Brush Tool
This tool can be used to repair an image. When holding ALT you can select the source from were you want to copy. After selecting the source, brushing over the image will copy from the source to the spot were you are brushing and repair the image. This can be used to repair little scratches in the image.

Brush Tool ( B )
This is one of the first tools ever. It's what Photoshop is based off of. Well, not really, but it's pretty basic. It paints on your image, in whatever color you have selected, and whatever size you have selected. There's a lot of options for it, but this is basic, so you don't get to learn them. you can also download or make your own brushes to use. Just do it.

Clone Stamp Tool (S)
This is very similar to the Healing Brush Tool. You use it the exact same way, except this tool doesn't blend at the end. It's a direct copy of the information from the first selected area to the second. It is basically used to copy parts of the image. Hold ALT to select the source, then brush on the place you want the source to be copied to. With this tool you can do stuff like giving a person a third eye. When you learn to use both of these tools together in perfect harmony, you will be a Photoshop MASTER! Not really, it's just less irritating & quite interesting.  :)

Pattern Stamp Tool
With this tool you can brush a pattern on the image. Very useful if you want parts of the image to have a pattern.

History Brush Tool (Y)
This tool is basically an undo tool, but then better. This tool works just like the Brush Tool; except the information that it paints with is from the original state of your image. If you go Window>History, you can see the History Palette. The History Brush tool paints with the information from whatever History state is selected.
                      It is a very useful tool if you want to do an effect on just a part of the image. Do the effect, then take the History Brush Tool, in the history window click on the step you made before the effect and then brush over the parts of the image you didn't want the effect on.

Art History Brush
The Art History Brush is almost the same as the normal History Brush except it uses styles. You can select a style to use and it will paint with styles. So instead of a regular brush, you just have an artistic brush.

Eraser Tool (E)
This is the anti-Brush tool. It works like an eraser (duh) and erases whatever information wherever you click and drag it. If you're on a Layer, it will erase the information transparent. If you are on the background layer, it erases with whatever secondary color you have selected.

Background Eraser Tool
This tool will erase the 'background' of an image. It just erases everything except the color you choose.

Magic Eraser Tool
This tool works just like the Magic Wand Tool except it erases instead of selects.

Gradient Tool (G)
You can use this to make a gradiation of colors. Gradiation doesn't appear to be a word, but it makes sense anyway. It creates a blending of your foreground color and background color when you click and drag it.

Paint Bucket Tool
This tool enables you to paint large areas at once. Just click where you want to paint and it will paint everything within the tolerance you selected to the foreground color.

Blur Tool ( R )
The Blur tool is cool. It makes things blurry. Click and drag to make things blurry. The more you click and drag, the blurrier things get. It works like normal brushes so again you can use custom brushes on this tool.

Sharpen Tool
The Sharpen Tool is used to sharpen an image. It works like normal brushes so again you can use custom brushes on his tool.

Smudge Tool
The Smudge Tool is used to smudge an image. It works like normal brushes so again you can use custom brushes on his tool.

Dodge Tool (O)
This tool isn't as crappy as the car brand. It's actually used to lighten whatever area you use it on. As long as it is not absolute black. Absolute black won't lighten.

Burn Tool
The Burn Tool is used to give shadows to/darken your image.

Sponge Tool
The Sponge Tool enables you to desaturate/saturate your image.

Path Selection Tool (A)
You use this tool when working with paths. Since this is all about the basics, I won't go into details. It's related to the Pen Tool (see below) though.

Direct Selection Tool
With this tool you can select a layer by simply clicking on it.

Patch Tool
This tool can be used to repair an image. With this tool, select the part you want to repair. Then move the selection to another place, and Photoshop will use the second position to repair the first position.

Horizontal Type Tool (T)
It makes type. Or text. Or whatever you want to call it. You can click a single point, and start typing right away. Or you can click and drag to make a bounding box of where your text/type goes. In short, this tool is used to put some text into an image. It will write horizontal (like the name suggests). There's a lot of options for the Type Tool. Just play around.

Vertical Type Tool
This tool is used to put some text into an image. It will write vertical (like the name suggests).

Horizontal Type Mask Tool
With this tool you can make a selection in text shape. You type your text and it will make a mask (which is a selection). You can use it to cut your text into an image. It will write horizontal (like the name suggests).

Vertical Type Mask Tool
With this tool you can make a selection in text shape. You type your text and it will make a mask (which is a selection). You can use it to cut your text into an image. It will write vertical (like the name suggests).

Pen Tool (P)
This tool is for creating paths, in which you would use the Path Selection Tool to select the path. Paths can be used in a few different ways, mostly to create clipping paths, or to create selections. You use the tool by clicking to add a point. If you click and drag, it will change the shape of your path, allowing you to bend and shape the path for accurate selections and such.

Freeform Pen Tool
With this tool you can make shapes by simply drawing a path.

Pencil Tool
This tool is normally used to create little dot's in an image. It works about the same as the brush tool.

Add Anchor Point Tool
This tool enables you to make extra anchor points in a path you made before using the Pen Tool.

Delete Anchor Point Tool
This tool enables you to delete anchor points in a path you made before using the Pen Tool.

Convert Point Tool
This tool enables you to convert/manipulate anchor points in a path you made before using the Pen Tool.

Color Replacement Tool
With this tool you can replace a color in an image with the color you want. Click and hold on the color you want to replace and start brushing. It will replace the color selected with the foreground color.

Rectangle Tool (U)
By default it draws a Shape Layer in the form of a rectangle. It fills the rectangle with whatever foreground color you have selected. It's pretty complicated, don't hurt yourself with this one.

Rounded Rectangle Tool
With this tool you can create a rectangle with rounded corners in your image in the foreground color.

Ellipse Tool
With this tool you can create an ellipse in your image in the foreground color.

Polygon Tool
With this tool you can create a polygon in your image in the foreground color.

Line Tool
With this tool you can create a line in your image in the foreground color.

Custom Shape Tool
With this tool you can create a custom shape in your image in the foreground color. You can choose from standard or imported shapes.

Notes Tool
This tool can be used to attach notes to an image. You can use it to remember things you want to do later or if you made an image for someone and you want to tell/explain him something. Note that notes only work in .psd files.

Audio Annotation Tool
This tool can be used to attach audio messages to an image. You can use it to remember things you want to do later or if you made an image for someone and you want to tell/explain him something. Note that audio messages only work in .psd files.

Eyedropper Tool (I)
This tool works by changing your foreground color to whatever color you click on. Holding the Alt key will change your background color.

Color Sampler Tool
With this tool you can sample a color. Click on the color you want to sample and Photoshop will give you all information/real values of the color.

Measure Tool
With this tool you can measure in various units of measurements like centimeters, inches, pixels, percentages, etc.

Red Eye Tool
This tool repairs red eyes. There's a lot of photos were people have red eyes, it's something most people don't like. With this tool, select the eyes and they will be repaired automatically.

Hand Tool (H)
You can really make short work of your job with the Hand Tool. It's for moving your entire image within a window. So if you're zoomed in and your image area is larger than the window, you can use the Hand Tool to navigate around your image. Just click and drag. You can get to this tool at any time when using any other tool by pressing and holding the Spacebar.

Zoom Tool (Z)
Pretty obvious what this tool does. It allows you to zoom into your image. Don't be dumb, it doesn't actually change the size of your image. Hold the Alt key to zoom out. Holding the Shift key will zoom all of the windows you have open at the same time. Double-click on the Zoom Tool in the palette to go back to 100% view.

Select Colors
Used to select the foreground/background color.
Clicking on the little white-black button will set the fore- and background color to default.

Normal/Quick Mask Mode
Use these buttons to switch between normal and Quick Mask mode.

Screen Modes
Use these buttons to select your screen modes (standard/fullscreen with menu bar/full screen.)

Edit in Imageready
Click this button to switch from Photoshop to Imageready and edit your image there.

Photoshop Shortcuts!

Modes

Q - Quick mask mode toggle = view selection as rubylith overlay, accepts paint tools.
F -  Cycles through Normal and 2 full-screen modes — very useful for previewing without clutter.
Tab - Removes all palettes.
Ctrl+; - Show/Hide Guides.  (it is control plus semicolon (;))
Ctrl+' -  Show/Hide Grid.        (it is control plus comma (,))
Ctrl+R - Show/Hide Rulers.

Layer

Ctrl+E - Merge Down
Ctrl+J - New Layer from selection by Copy
Ctrl+Shift+J - New Layer from selection by Cut
Ctrl+G - Clipping Group with previous layer

Tools

V - Move
M - Marquee (Shift+M, circular Marquee)
C - Crop
W - Wand
B - Brush
E - Eraser
S - Cloning Stamp
N - LiNe
T - Type
K - Fill bucKet
I -   Ldropper (eyedropper)
G - Gradient fill
P -  Pen
O -  Dodge / Burn / Saturate (Shift cycles through)
R -  BluR / shaRpen / smeaR (Shift cycles through)
H -  Hand
Z -  Zoom

Color

D - Default colours (Foreground/Background to B/W)
X - Xchange (Swap) foreground/background colours)

Image tweaks

Ctrl+M - Gamma Curves
Ctrl+L - Levels
Ctrl+U - hUe / saturation / lightness
Ctrl+B - colour Balance

Random

Alt+Backspace - Fill with foreground colour
Alt+Shift+Backspace - Fill with foreground colour, preserving transparency
Shift+F5 - Fill dialog box
[ ] - [Square brackets] Brush size up/down
ctrl+z - Undo
ctrl+alt+z - Undo further
Control + K - Removes the grey/blue box in the top left of your canvas.
Control + Q - Closes the open document.

Photoshop Tools Reloaded (An overview)!

NOTE: To access tools that are in same icon group as Main tool selected just click and hold to reveal menu with other tools inside.

Marquee tool
It's commonly used for selecting some part of opened image, that you want to cut-out, move resize or apply some filter on it.
There are few types of Marquee tools:
         -Rectangular
         -Elliptical
         -Single Row
         -Single Column
Rectangular and elliptical are pretty simple to use. Single-row and Single-column will select only 1 pixel wide row/column.

Lasso tool
Lasso tool is used for selecting the part of image, but by freehand curve.
Lasso tool has under its group:
         -Polygonal lasso
         -Magnetic lasso
Polygonal lasso will let you select with point-click method, one polygon can have minimum of 3 points, so you start with clicks and drag straight lines to cutout an polygon shape.
Magnetic lasso is form of "lasso tool" where you by freehand curve drag the tool across the image, and the tool itself snap on borders of image where the cut should happen.

Crop tool
Crop tool let's you crop the image to any size you want. You can adjust the rotation of crop, as you, can also resize the crop box, when you are satisfied with chosen crop, press "enter" to apply the crop.

Spot Healing brush
This tool contain also:
         - Healing brush tool
         - Patch tool
         - Red Eye tool
With Spot healing brush tool you can select some part of image and the tool will clean that part, and replace the selected part with surrounding pixels. This is good tool for cleaning human skin on pictures.
Healing brush tool let's you retouch damaged areas of image similar to spot healing, you can use pattern also for retouching. Red Eye tool gives you the tool for removing human red eyes from images with 1-click.

Clone Stamp tool
Clone stamp tool is similar to Healing tools, but before using it you must right-click on some area of image that you wish to use as source of copying, and then with left-click you copy the source to new destination while you hold and drag.
                         Pattern Stamp tool under clone stamp, is used for applying defined pattern instead of selecting a source on image.

Eraser tool
This simple tool gives you erasing possibilities. You can choose type of brush for erasing. Eraser tools have with it also: Background eraser, Magic eraser.

Blur tool
When you need to blur just some parts of image, and you can't do that with Blur filters from Filters menu you can use this simple blur tool. Works when you select desired brush and "paint" the blur on image.
NOTE: higher brush size equals slower render/"paint" time.
Blur tool under its icon has also:
         - Sharpen tool
         - Smudge tool
Sharpen tool will sharpen any part of image that you click on; you can choose type of brush for it.
Smudge tool will blur/smudge any part of image, like blur tool, but more motion-blurred…

Path selection
Is used for selecting/moving/transforming/resizing and deleting drawn paths on image. To view paths on image go to Layers palette and choose Paths tab, and select path under it, if there is some.
Direct selection tool is for selection of one path in group of more than 1 path.

Pen tools
Pen tools are used for drawing freeform paths around the image. You can draw the path, Bezier lines, curves, and add our delete point's on them.

Notes tool
Notes tool is used when you want to leave a note on particular part of image, for future editors/artists. There is also an Audio note where you can record a note so: Art director reviews the work, and records what to do/change on the image.

Hand tool
Hand tool is used when you need to navigate on image, especially when you zoom in into image, and you need to move to another location of image. It's much faster to use this tool than to navigate via the rulers of window.
NOTE: this tool is most often used tool in Photoshop. It's very good to use shortcut for hand tool: just press space + left click and drag to navigate.

Select tool
Select tool is used to select layers on image (while holding CTRL), to transform selections or layers (press CTRL+T), or just to move or nudge by keyboards arrows selection or layer. Also it's used to rotate, skew and mirror layers/selection.

Magic wand tool
Is used to select areas on image or picture that share the same tone/color range. If you wish to select all gray areas of image, just set tolerance of the tool and click on image, the tool will do the rest.

Slice tools
Slice tool is used to crop the flattened image on smaller parts and later on to export that smaller parts into tables for using them in webpage. To slice an image, you select the tool, drag rectangles of desired size across the image, and when you are finished, press File -> Save for web. You will get a window where you can choose type of compression for images, and some more export options. The result will be html file, with folder, where sliced images are contained.

Brush & Pencil tool
Brush is the tool for painting on image. You can choose various brushes, which come with Photoshop. You can also import your own brushes, and create new brushes yourself.
Pencil tool is mainly for drawing pixel art. But anyway can be used when you want to draw sharp, pixel accurate lines.
Color replacement tools are used for correcting color ranges. With this tool you can select one part of image, and then transfer color range of that part on some another part. Result is coloring with sources colors.

History brush tools
With history brush you can undo all effects of stuff you previously did, but only on brushed areas, the more you click and drag the brush, the tool goes back in history and undoes on brushed parts.
Art history brush does the same but in more artistic way.

Gradient & Paint bucket tool
Gradient is tool for drawing gradients across the canvas. You can define your own gradients or choose among default ones.
Paint bucked tool paints the whole layer (if empty) or just the tolerated part of image with foreground color.

Dodge, Burn, Sponge tools
Dodge tool will lighten up (by specified exposure) the brushed part of image; it's really releasing more exposure to image.
Burn tool will darken up the image (by specified exposure) brushed part of image, it's really lowering the exposure.
Sponge tool will desaturate or saturate brushed parts of image: converting it to more gray or to more colorfully.

Type tools
Type tool get you the text input function. You can choose font, size, color and other typographic options.
Type tool consist of:
         - Horizontal type tool
         - Vertical type tool
         - Horizontal mask type tool
         - Vertical mask type tool
Horizontal and Vertical mask type tool will give you marquee mask instead of regular colored font type.

Vector Shapes
This tool consists of: Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Line and Custom shape tools.
When you select one of these tools you draw paths with it, for later uses. Later you can fill that paths with color, gradient, or use them to convert to marquee selection, cutout the image…
Custom shape let's you choose some predefined shape paths, or append some new ones.

Eyedropper, Color Sampler, Measure
Eyedropper tool sets foreground color from clicked pixel on image.
Color Sampler reads RGB and CMYK values of image, where you place the mouse cursor. You can click, and memorize 4 color samples to Info palette, for later reference.
Measure tool will measure the distance between 2 points, their height and width and angle of line drawn. Usages are simple, click for 1st point, then drag the line, and click for 2nd point.

Zoom Tool
Zoom tool is used to zoom-in or zoom-out in image.
NOTE: this is also one of most commonly used tools in Photoshop. It's very good to use it's shortcut for faster usage. Press Ctrl+Space+leftclick to zoom in or Ctrl+Space+AltGr+leftclick to zoom out.

Foreground & Background color
This is default foreground and background color. To change them, click on them, and choose from opened color picker.
Two arrow icon replaces foreground and background colors when clicked.
Small black on white rectangle sets the default colors (black and white) when clicked.
NOTE: it's important to choose foreground and background colors to use some filters, such as Clouds filter (under Filter -> Render -> Clouds).
 
Edit mode (standard or quick mask)
Edit in standard mode is default editing mode. It shows marquee selections as dotted lines that "travel" around.
Edit in quick mask mode, when clicked, will show marquee selections as inverted red color mask, so everything that is colored red is not selected.

Screen modes
There are three screen modes in Photoshop: Standard, Fullscreen with menu and just Fullscreen.
Standard is default mode.
Fullscreen with menu will go to full screen where picture is using all free areas of screen to show, File menu is also there.
Fullscreen will leave only default Photoshop palettes without File menu to give you more space to work.

Edit in ImageReady
This button will send to editing currently opened image to ImageReady, Adobe's software for editing animated gifs and making web ready images.