How to Use Basic Tools in Photoshop

If you're new to Photoshop, you may need a crash course to start using the basic tools. The fact is that you could have a program like Photoshop and never know all of the tools at your disposal. Don't be intimidated to use basic tools in Photoshop, because trying things out is the best way to learn a new program.

Instructions

1. Use the tool bar to the left of your monitor screen. It comes with a navigator window which allows you to zoom in and out of the image you are viewing. It also has history buttons, action buttons, various layers and channel paths to explore.

2. Start with the rectangular marquee tool which makes various rectangular shapes and an elliptical marquee tool to make elliptical selections. The lasso tool allows you to draw designs on shapes and selections, the magic wand moves selections and images and the selection brush tool lets you draw using a variety of brushes.

3. Create professional effects using your crop tool to take away the edges of an image, an eraser tool to erase part of your image, the blur tool to blur sections of your image or the smudge tool to smudge part of an image. Many of these tools are similar to photography tools.

4. Choose different colors using the eyedropper tool. You can even change the background and foreground color.

5. Write with the notation tool, which is a basic tool available so you can make notes on your Photoshop file for yourself or someone else.