By Dr. Pelham Mead

From a Adobe Photoshop curriculum written by Dr. Pelham Mead for the College of Mount Saint Vincent Communications Department 2002.

Toolbar Tips for Adobe Photoshop 

By Dr. Mead

There are 28 or so buttons on the Photoshop 7.0 toolbar. Functions are defined. You should know how to use all of these tools at the end of the course.

Marquee Used for making rectangular, elliptical, or single row selections.

Lasso Tools. Used for choosing the polygonal, magnetic or regular lasso tool.

Crop Tool Used for cropping image borders. Can be moved to rotate crop.

*Airbrush (moved) Used for painting; imitates commercial airbrush. Moved to Horizontal toolbar below Menu.

Clone stamp Used for painting with copied image data; includes pattern stamp: used for painting with patterns.

Eraser Used for removing portions of images; act like a paintbrush in reverse. Includes background eraser: erases the color on which you first click, while leaving other colors untouched; and magic eraser: erases to transparency on the active layer. Memory eraser added after version 6.0.

Blur Used for retouching; hardens or softens the edges of an image; sharpen tool: increases contrast of an image; smudge tool: does the opposite.

Path component selection Will select any path component, including one that is part of several other components.

Pen Used for creating, and editing paths; includes freeform pen: used for drawing vector lines and shapes; and magnetic pen: tracing tool, which snaps to distinct edges, as you drag along the outline of an existing object.

Notes Used for attaching text, and audio notes to files; works like post-it notes. 

Hand Moves the image around like a scroll bar, or paging up or down, but it works in any direction.

Foreground color Chooses foreground and background colors.

Default colors Restores foreground and background to black and white.

Standard/Quick Mask Converts a selection into a mask that can be edited with any of the painting tools.

Screen mode Used for selecting screen mode.

Jump to Jumps to ImageReady and back to PhotoShop.

Move Moves contents of selections or layers.

Magic Wand Selects all pixels that are the same color as the one you click on.

Slice Divides images into independent areas; includes slice select: cuts images into rectangular sections.

Paintbrush Used for painting foreground, background and lines; includes pencil: used to draw hard-edged lines, as oppose to the softer line of the paintbrush.

History brush Paints from an earlier, or different image onto the current version of the image; includes art history brush: copies data from the version you select in the history palette. 

Gradient Add or edit color blends; includes Paint bucket: ads or changes fill colors. 

Dodge Tool-Used to lighten tones; includes burn tool: darkens; sponge: changes image saturation.

Type or Text tool Adds type to images.

Rectangle shape Creates paths in geometric shapes: rounded rectangle; ellipse; polygon; line; and custom shape. Hold down control key for circle or square.

Eyedropper Used to find color values and choose colors.

Zoom Changes the magnification of an image.

Switch colors Changes foreground and background colors.