Photoshop Tool Guide

Here's a quick little guide on the different tools in Photoshop (CS2 used in examples).

Moving and Cropping

1. The Marquee/Marching Ants Tool [Top Left] is basically for selecting regions of an image. Right clicking on this icon will also allow you to pick different shapes including Circle and Line.
2. The Move Tool [Top Right] is for moving parts or the whole image.
3. The Lasso Tool [Middle Left] is for selecting specific parts of an image. Basically a free-hand Marquee Tool.
4. The Magic Wand [Middle Right] is for selecting entire areas. It is colour-specific, which means that it will only select areas of the same colour.
5. The Crop Tool [Bottom Left] is used for cropping out an area of an image. (This deletes the un-selected part of the image).
6. The Slice Tool [Bottom Right] is used to slice up the image into specific sized squares.

Brushes, Erasers and Effects

1. The Healing Brush Tool [Top Left] is used for copying a section of your image and brushing it onto another part (Also known as 'cloning'). It can be right clicked to also select the Patch and Red Eye tools.
2. The Brush Tool [Top Right] this is used for all your brushes. It can be right clicked to also select the Pencil tool.
3. The Stamp Tool [Upper-Middle Left] similar to the Healing Brush tool, the Stamp tool copies another location of your image or a pattern. But it has a fading effect.
4. The History Brush Tool [Upper-Middle Right] selects the last-used brush
5. The Magic Eraser Tool [Lower-Middle Left] the Magic eraser, clears an entire region of the same colour. Beware though, as it can destroy image outlines and borders if you're not careful. Right clicking will also select a regular eraser.
6. The Paint Bucket Tool [Lower-Middle Right] used to fill an entire area with a specified colour.
7. The Blur Tool [Bottom Left] blurs an image. Can right click for Sharpen and Smudge tools.
8. The Dodge Tool [Bottom Right] increases/decreases the amount of colours in an image. Right click for Sponge (increases/decreases saturation) or the Burn Tool (Darkens/Lightens).

Lines, Text and Shapes

1. The Path Selection Tool [Top Left] used to manipulate the lines drawn with the Pen Tool.
2. The Text Tool [Top Right] used to write text.
3. The Pen Tool [Bottom Left] used to draw lines, curves, circles etc.
4. The Shape Tool [Bottom Right] used to draw shapes. Right click for more including; circles, rounded rectangles, lines, polygons, ellipse' and custom shapes.

Notes, Eyedropper and Zoom

1. The Note Tool [Top Left] You'll never use this in your life, but these are just little sticky notes you can put on your image.
2. The Eye-Dropper Tool [Top Right] very useful tool used to select the exact colour of a selected part of the image.
3. The Hand Tool [Bottom Left] used for... not much. xD
4. The Zoom Tool [Bottom Right] Not as useful as the zoom scale on the other side of the screen, but basically this tool zooms in on your image.

Colour Selection

1. Foreground Colour [Front Black Square] This is your foreground colour, this means this is the main colour you'll be using if you use a brush, pencil etc.
2. Background Colour [Back White Square] This is your background colour, this means this is the main colour that will replace an image if you delete something.
3. Switcher [Arrows] This is just a little switch tool that switches the foreground colour with the background.
4. Default [Small Black/White boxes] This tool is used to reset your colour to default (Black and White).

Edit Modes

1. Standard Mode [Left] this is what you'll mainly be using. This is just the standard editing mode.
2. Quick Mask Mode [Right] this is used to quickly edit an image in mask mode.

View Modes

1. Standard Screen Mode [Left] The regular mode of viewing an image.
2. Full Screen Mode [Middle] Displays an image using the whole screen. This menu bars are still displayed.
3. Full Screen Mode 2 [Right] Displays an image using the whole screen. The menu bars are not displayed.

Jump To Imageready

1. Jump To Imageready: This button sends the current image to Imageready (a separate program).