Tools palette more.

(2)Crop tool:-
The crop tool uses color shading to mask the outer crop area. This provides a useful
visual clue when making a crop.This color can easily be changed
by clicking on the color swatch in the Options bar and choosing a new color from the
picker. The standard color and opacity will enable you to preview the crop with most
images quite adequately. Only if the images you are working on have very dark
background will you benefit from changing the color to something like a ‘ruby lith’
red or another lighter color. You can also hide/show the crop outline using the View
menu > Hide Extras command. The Delete button in the Options bar will delete layered
image data outside of the crop boundary. The Hide button will crop the image, but
only hide the layer data that is outside the crop boundary (also referred to as big data).
The hidden layer data will be preserved, but only on non-background layers. When one
or more layer’s contents extend beyond the canvas boundary, the Image > Reveal All
command can be used to enlarge the canvas size to show the hidden ‘big data’.
You can use the Enter key to OK the crop and the Escape (esc) key to cancel and exit
from a crop.

(3)Slicing tools:-
Slices are a web designer’s tool that is used to divide an image into rectangular
sections. These are then used in Photoshop or ImageReady, for example, to specify
how each individual slice will be optimized, what file format a slice area will be saved in
and what compression shall be utilized. You use the slice tool to manually define a
user-slice. As you create user-slices, Photoshop automatically generates auto-slices
to divide up the other area. You can use the slice select tool
(toggle with the Command/Ctrl key) to go back and edit the size of each slice afterwards.
If you are looking for the Show Slice Numbers checkbox, this is now contained in
the Guides, Grid and Slices preferences. In Photoshop 7.0 you can now auto-create
slices from the Photoshop guides, by clicking on the Slices From Guides button in
the Options bar.

(4)Healing brush/Patch tool
These two tools are the main star attraction of Photoshop 7.0. The healing tools will
enable you to perform complex retouching tasks with an incredible level of finesse
and in a fraction of the time that it took previously.

(5)Brush
The brush tool can be used with a range of brush sizes from a single hard edged pixel up
to the largest soft edged brush (2500 pixels). The airbrush mode makes the brush tool
mimic the effect of an airbrush, producing a spray of paint. As you click with the
mouse or press down with the stylus, just as in real life, if you stop moving the
cursor, the airbrush paint will continue to spread out until the opacity level you set is
reached. The Flow control determines how ‘fast’ the brush tool applies paint to the
image. You can open the Brushes palette by clicking on the palette icon at the far right.
The Wet Edge painting mode (now in the Brushes palette options) builds extra density
around the edges of the brush stroke. This imitates a natural water color effect.

(6)Pencil
The pencil produces hard edged, anti-aliased, pencil-like drawing lines. The pencil tool is
a fast response sketching tool. The ‘Auto Erase’ option converts the tool from painting
with the foreground to the background color. The Auto Erase feature can also be accessed
by holding down the Option/Alt key when painting with the pencil.

(7)Clone stamp/Pattern stamp
An essential tool for retouching work such as spotting (discussed later in Chapter
Ten) and general image repairing. The clone stamp tool is used to sample pixels from
one part of the image to paint in another. Keep the Aligned box checked, hold down
the Option/Alt key and click where you want to sample from. Release the key and
click in the area you want to clone to. This action defines a relationship between
sample and painting positions. Once set, any subsequent clicking or dragging will
allow you to apply the clone stamp, always using the same coordinates relationship
until a new source and destination are defined. The sample point can also be from a
separate image. This is useful for combining elements or textures from other pictures.
The clone stamp normally samples from a single layer only.

(8)History brush
Before History made its first appearance in Photoshop 5.0, there were few ways you
could restore a previous image state. The History amalgamates some of the old workarounds
into a single Photoshop feature. It augments the use of the Snapshot and
very cleverly makes use of the image tiling to limit any unnecessary drain on memory
usage. One can look at the History as a multiple undo feature in which you can
reverse through up to 1000 image states, but in actual fact History is a far more
sophisticated and powerful tool than just that. Painting from History saves you from
tedious work-arounds like having to duplicate a portion of the image to another layer,
retouching this layer and merging back down to the underlying layer again.
The History palette displays the sequence of Photoshop states as you progress through
a Photoshop session

(9)Art history brush
 The most essential Photoshop tool that was ever invented and am at a loss to know
how a photographer like myself might wish to use it. Nevertheless, with art history
you use the art history brush to sample from a history state, but the brush strokes
have some unusual and abstract characteristics which smudge the pixels with sampling
from the selected history state. The brush characteristics are defined in the Art
History Options bar. Fidelity determines how close in color the paint strokes are to
the original color. The larger the Area setting, the larger the area covered by and
more numerous the paint strokes.

(10)Eraser/background eraser/magic eraser
The eraser removes pixels from an image, replacing them with the current background
color. There are three brush modes: brush, pencil and block. If you check the
Erase to History box, the eraser behaves like the history brush. Holding down Option/Alt
as you paint also erases to the currently selected History. The brush flow option is
only available when erasing in brush mode. Note that some graphic tablet devices
like the Wacom™ series operate in eraser mode when you flip the stylus upside
down. This is recognized in Photoshop without having to select the eraser tool.

(11)Gradients
The gradient tool can be used to draw linear, radial, angular reflected or diamond
gradients. Go to the Options bar and click on the gradient ramp (top left) to select a
gradient option such as Foreground to Background color, or click on the small arrow
to the right to open the gradient list. When you drag with the gradient tool inside the
image window, a gradient fill is created between those two points. Hold down the
Shift key to constrain the gradient angle to a horizontal/vertical or 45 degree angle.
Check the Reverse box to reverse the gradient fill colors before you drag. The Dither
checkbox should be kept on – this will add a subtle noise, ensuring there is less risk
of any banding appearing in the gradient fill. When the Transparency box is checked,
the transparency masks in gradients are recognized. A number of preset gradients are
readily available when you first open the gradient list from the Options bar. You can
also easily edit and create your own gradient pattern and any alterations you make to
an existing preset gradient will not overwrite that preset.

(12)Paint bucket
In some ways this tool is in effect nothing more than ‘make a magic wand selection
based on the sampled color and Tolerance setting in the Options bar and fill the
selection with the current foreground color or predefined pattern’. In this mode of
operation, there is none of the flexibility associated with making a magic wand or
Color Range selection and modifying it before filling. You can use the paint bucket
to quickly fill the inside areas of a mask or quickmask outline. The Contiguous option is
also available for the paint bucket (see the magic wand description) and the All
Layers option neatly allows you to fill using a pixel color sample based on all layers.
The paint bucket can also be used for filling with a pattern as well as with a solid
color.

 ....contd.