Tools palette

Tools palette of Photoshop:-

Before moving to tricks part an overview of PHOTOSHOP is     necessary.

The Tools palette contains fifty-five separate tools and their icons give a clue as to

each tool’s function. The individual tool options are located in the Options bar (Window

> Show Options) and double-clicking any tool will automatically display the

Options bar if this happens to be hidden for some reason.

(1)Selection tools

The usual editing conventions apply in Photoshop: pixels can be cut, copied and

pasted just as you would do with text in a word processing document. Mistakes can

be undone with the Edit > Undo command or by selecting a previous history state in

the History palette. Selection tools are used to define a specific area of the image that

you wish to modify separately, float as a layer or copy and paste. The use of the

selection tools in Photoshop is therefore like highlighting text in a word processor

program.

The marquee options include rectangular, elliptical or single row/single column selection

tools. The lasso tool is used to draw freehand selection outlines and has two

other modes – the polygon lasso tool, which can draw both straight line and freehand

selections and the magnetic lasso tool. The magic wand tool selects pixels on the

basis of their luminosity values within the individual channels. If you have a picture

of a red London bus (there are still a few left in London) click on the bus with the

magic wand tool and ‘hey presto’ the red color is selected! That’s what most people

expect the magic wand tool to do; in reality it does not perform that reliable a job.

(a) Lasso: freehand/polygon/magnetic:-

The lasso tool behavior is more or less identical to that of the marquee selection tools –

the same modifier key rules apply. To use the standard lasso tool, just drag around the

area to be selected holding down the mouse as you draw. When you release the mouse,

the selection joins up from the last point drawn with the starting point.

In polygon mode, you can click to start the selection, release the mouse and position

the cursor to draw a straight line, click to draw another line and so on. To revert

temporarily to freehand operation, hold down the Option/Alt key and drag with the

mouse. Release the Option/Alt key and the tool reverts to polygon mode. To complete

the polygon lasso tool selection position the cursor directly above the starting

point (a small circle icon appears next to the cursor) and click.

The magnetic lasso and the magnetic pen tool both use the same code and they are

therefore basically the same in operation, except one draws a selection and the other

a pen path. The magnetic lasso has a sensing area (set in the Options bar). When you

brush along an image edge, where an outline is detectable, the magnetic lasso intelligently

prepares to create a selection edge. You continue to brush along the edges

until the outline is complete and then you close the selection.

(b)Move tool:-

The move tool can now be more accurately described as a move/transform/alignment

tool. The transform mode is apparent whenever the Show Bounding Box is checked

(initially a dotted bounding box appears around the object). When you mouse down on

the bounding box handles, the Options bar display will change to reveal the numeric

transform controls (no longer a menu item). This transform feature is only active when

the move tool itself is selected and not when you use the Command/Ctrl key shortcut.

When several layers are linked together, you can click on the align and distribute

buttons in the Options bar as an alternative to navigating via the Layer > Align Linked

and Distribute Linked menus.

You can use the move tool to:

• Drag and drop layers and selections from one image window to another.

• Move selections or whole images from Photoshop to another application.

• Move selection contents or layer contents within a layer.

• Copy and move a selection (hold down Option/Alt key).

• Apply a Transform to a layer.

• Align and/or distribute layers.