All of the tools have keyboard equivalents — keys that, when pressed, will activate the tool. Holding the Shift key while pressing the keyboard equivalent cycles between the various forms of a tool.

Learn these shortcuts and your work will go much faster. Your mouse belongs on your artwork, not the tool palette!

Clicking the feather takes you to Adobe's website in your default web browser.

Use the selection tools to mark areas of your image to be copied or moved, or to limit painting or other image-manipulation operations to a particular area.

To learn more, see Selecting in Photoshop.

Use the painting tools to change the pixels of your image. Operations that directly affect pixels are called bitmap operations.

Use the drawing tools to create vector shapes on your image. Unlike bitmaps, vector shapes can be edited and re-edited.

Use the examination tools to get information about your document and to zoom in and move around.

The foreground color is the color that will be used by the various painting and drawing tools. The background color (behind and to the right) will be used when enlarging the canvas or erasing the background layer.

Press the D key to return to the default (black/white) colors.

Press the X key to swap the foreground and background colors.

The quick mask mode buttons allow you to edit the selection (edit whether a pixel is selected, that is) using the paintbrush and other painting tools.

Use this to quickly make minor adjustments to the selection before applying other operations.

To learn more, see Selecting in Photoshop.

The window mode buttons allow you to switch between multi-window, full-screen with menu, and full screen mode. You can also cycle through the modes by pressing the F key.

It is important to work in full-screen mode when you are doing color-corrections.

Clicking the Edit in ImageReady button opens the active document in Adobe ImageReady so that you can use it to generate a web page.

The marquee tools are used to create geometry-based selections.

Hold the Shift key to add to the current selection, the Option/Alternate key to remove from the current selection, and both keys to intersect the current selection.

To learn more, see Selecting in Photoshop.

Use the move tool to move the selected pixels of the active layer to a different part of the image. Hold down the Option key (Alternate on Windows) to make a copy.

Press the Command key (Control on Windows) when any selection tool is active to temporarily shift to the move tool.

Turn on auto-select layers to have the move tool automatically activate the layer that contains the object that you clicked on before beginning to move.

The lasso tool is used to make selections with irregular shapes.

Hold the Shift key to add to the current selection, the Option/Alternate key to remove from the current selection, and both keys to intersect the current selection.

To learn more, see Selecting in Photoshop.

Use the magic wand to automatically select all pixels that are similar to pixel you click on. How similar? That depends on the amount you enter in the tolerance field.

Hold down the Shift key to add to the current selection and the Option key (Alternate on Windows) to remove from the current selection.

To learn more, see Selecting in Photoshop.

The crop tool is used to trim your image to a smaller size. The crop area must be rectangular, but the rectangle can be rotated if you wish.

Slice your image into pieces, and then use Adobe ImageReady to create a web pages where every slice has a different "mouse rollover" effect.

The healing brush tools are used to correct imperfections (dust, scratches, red-eye due to flash) in the image. If these can't do the job you may want to try the stamp tools.

Use the brush and pencil tools to draw using the foreground color. Use the color replacement tool to change the color of objects in your picture while leaving the saturation and brightness alone.

The stamp tools are used to copy one part of the image to another. Behaves similarly to the healing brush tools.

Use the history tools to paint 'back in time', restoring parts of your image to previous states from the history window.

The eraser tools are used to erase part of the active layer.

Drag with the gradient tool to fill the selected area with a blend of colors between the foreground and background colors.

Click with the paint bucket to fill an area with the foreground color.

You can press Option-Delete (Alternate-Delete on Windows) at any time to fill the selected area with the foreground color.Apple-Delete (or Control-Delete) fills with the background color.

The blur tools are used to blur or sharpen the image.

Dodge a picture to make it lighter, burn it to make it darker, or sponge it to make the colors less vivid (i.e., to wash off some paint).

Hold down the Option (Alternate on Windows) key while sponging to make the colors more vivid.

The selection tools are used to select all or part of a vector-based drawing object.

The path selection tool selects entire objects, while the direct selection tool selects individual points on a path.

Use the type tool to create and edit text.

The pen tools are used to create and edit path-based drawing objects.

The shape tools are used to create various shapes. These shapes can either be filled immediately with the foreground color or kept as vector graphics.

The annotation tools are used to make notes for yourself or other designers.

Click with the eyedropper to use the sampled color as the new foreground (or background if you hold the Option/Alternate key) color.

Click with the color sampler to add the sampled location to the list of aread monitored by the Info window.

Drag with the measure tool to find out distances and angles. Note that if you choose Image >Rotate Canvas > Arbitrarythe field will automatically contain the angle that rotates your most recently-measured line to vertical or horizontal.

Press Option (Alternate on Windows) when any painting tool is active to temporarily switch to the eyedropper.

The hand tool is used to move the viewport around the document (i.e., to scroll the window).

You can activate the hand at any time by pressing the space bar — even if you are in a dialog box at the time.

Double-click on the hand to zoom the image to be as large as possible on your computer screen.

Click on the document to zoom in and option-click (alternate-click on Windows) to zoom out. Drag a rectangle to zoom that rectangle to fill the screen.

Press the spacebar and Apple (Control on Windows) keys to temporarily switch into zoom mode at any time.

Create tool presets to speed your work.

You can create presets for any Photoshop tool so that you can quickly access frequently-used configurations. Simply set up the tool options the way you want them, and then choose New Tool Preset. In the future when you want to retrieve the options you simply choose the appropriate preset from the pulldown list.

The four marquee tools are used to create geometry-based selections.

You can create a new selection or add to, remove from, or intersect with the existing selection. Holding down the Shift, Alt, or Shift+Alt keys before you begin to drag provide a keyboard shortcut for these options. Holding the keys after you begin to drag constrains the marquee to a square shape and centers it on the mouse-down location.

Feathering the selection softens its edges by the requested amount.

You can specify a fixed aspect ratio or fixed size for the selection, and can easily swap the width & height.

Use the move tool to reposition the selected pixels of the active layer(s).

You can auto-select layers to have the move tool automatically activate the layer that contains whatever you clicked on before beginning to move (i.e., the click 'falls through' transparency and hits the first opaque pixel under the mouse).

You can auto-select groups to automatically select the group that contains the auto-selected layer (a group is a folder in the Layers Window).

If you show the transform controls you can easily resize or rotate the active layer (if you do not show the transform controls, you must first press Apple-T/Control-T to enter free transform mode before resizing or rotating).

If you select multiple layers (by Shift-Clicking in the Layers Window) you can use the alignment buttons to quickly reposition the layers to line up their centers or their top, bottom, left, or right edges. Note that you must have at least two layers activated to enable the first set of alignment buttons, and at least three layers activated to enable the second set.

You can temporarily activate the move tool at (almost) any time by pressing the Command key (Control on Windows).

The lasso tools are used to make selections with irregular shapes.

You can create a new selection or add to, remove from, or intersect with the existing selection. Holding down the Shift, Alt, or Shift+Alt keys provide a keyboard shortcut for these options.

Feathering the selection softens its edges by the requested amount.

For the magnetic lasso you can specify the width of the tool — how close you must be to an edge for the magnet to take effect, and how much contrast is required to define an edge. You can also specify how frequently points are added to the path, and whether or not to use the pressure of the pen (if you are using a graphics tablet) to control how close you must be to an edge.

Use the magic wand to select all pixels that are similar to pixel you click on.

You can use the selection mode buttons to determine whether the wand will create a new selection, or if it will add to, remove from, or intersect with the existing selection. You can also change modes by holding the Shift and/or Alt keys — watch the cursor when you press the keys to see what mode you have activated.

The tolerance of the wand controls how closely pixels must match the clicked pixel before they are selected. A tolerance of zero requires an exact match, and higher tolerances allow increasingly 'loose' matches. A tolerance of 32 or 64 usually gives good results.

If you anti-alias the wand, pixels on the edge of the selection will be 'partially selected' to create a smoother effect when you cut, copy, or paste.

If the wand is contiguous only pixels that are touching the selected pixel will be included.

If you sample all layers, the selection will be based on the pixels of all visible layers; otherwise only the active layer will be used.

The crop tool is used to trim your image to a smaller size.

You can specify the width, height, and/or resolution of the final image size and the image will be resampled as well as being cropped.

As a convenience, you can grab the width, height, and resolution of the front image, and use it when cropping subsequent images.

Once you have dragged out the initial cropping rectangle, you can resize and rotate it.

If you check the perspective checkbox, you can drag the four corners of the crop to the four corners of a "should be rectangular, but is distorted by perspective" area of the picture (i.e., the building's awning), and then drag the sides of the crop out to include the entire image. When you click the checkbox (or press Return) the image will be distorted to force the shape to a rectangle.

Use the Slice tool to cut your image into pieces, which you can then optimize and export using Save for Web, or which you can use to create mouse-over effects in Adobe ImageReady.

The slice tool can be normal, or can have a fixed size or fixed aspect ratio. If you have created guides in your picture (by dragging them out from the ruler margins) you can quickly create slices from the guides.

Slices that you create are called user slices. Slices that Photoshop makes (to fill in the spaces you left behind) are called auto slices. The slice select tool can be used to move and change the stacking order of previously-created slices, and to promote auto slices to user slices.

You can divide an existing slice into two or more new slices, and can use the alignment buttons to line up the selected slices' centers or top, bottom, left, or right edges.

Pressing the Apple key (Control key on Windows) temporarily toggles between the slice and slice select tools.

The spot healing brush, healing brush, patch, and red-eye reduction tools are used to correct imperfections (dust, scratches, red-eye due to flash) in the image.

As with any brush-based tool, you can choose the brush from the pulldown list, from the Brushes Window, or by pressing the [ and ] keys. You can also choose the mode in which the replacement pixels are applied — and normal is almost always the correct choice.

The spot healing brush does not require that you specify a sample source. Instead, you choose whether the replacement pixels should be taken directly from a nearby part of the image, or whether a texture should be created that closely matches the destination.

The healing brush can either work from a specified sampling source (that you specify by Alt-Clicking the image) or using a pre-selected pattern.

The patch allows you to lasso a region and either export it to other parts of the image, or import other parts of the image to the selected region — or you can patch using a pattern. If you choose to make the patch transparent, it will be less obvious.

You use the red-eye reduction tool to draw a box around people's eyes, and it automatically darkens any red pixels to black. You can control how large the pupil is in relation to box that you draw, and how much the pupil should be darkened. As with any marquee-based tool, you can hold the Shift and Option keys to constrain the rectangle to be square and centered on the first click.

The stamp tools are used to copy one part of the image to another.

As with any brush-based tool, you can choose the brush from the pulldown list, from the Brushes Window, or by pressing the [ and ] keys. You can also choose the mode in which the replacement pixels are applied — and normal, color, and luminosity often produce the best results. The transparency of the brush affects how it combines with the existing images, and setting a low flow (around 10%) allows you to apply the effect more gradually (like spraying ink with an airbrush) to get even finer control over the results.

While you are applying the stamp, the source point 'follows' the mouse. Unless you align the stamp, the source will reset when you release the mouse button.

The stamp can sample all layers, or just the active layer. Note that you will not get the results you are expecting if you are sampling all layers and there is an adjustment layer in effect over the active layer.

The pattern stamp uses a pattern rather than sampling the original image. If you choose an impressionistic effect, the pattern is softened and blurred as it is applied.

Use the brush and pencil tools to draw on your image.

The brush has an anti-aliased edge and can be made softer or harder (a soft brush is opaque in the center and gets transparent toward the edges). You can make the brush/pencil larger or smaller by pressing the [ and ] keys.

The opacity of the brush/pencil determines how much color it lays down, and the flow determines how quickly the color is laid down. Setting a low flow (10% gives good results) lets you more precisely control the effect by applying color more slowly — and as long as you keep the mouse button pressed the total output will never exceed your chosen opacity.

The pencil has a pixilated edge and is always 100% hardness. If it is set to auto-erase,then clicking on a pixel that is already the foreground color will draw in the background color instead.

The color replacement brush paints the foreground color over the pixels that match the pixel you first click on (i.e., if the foreground color is red and you click on a banana, the banana will turn red but the adjacent apricot will remain orange). Use the three sample mode buttons to control whether the affected color is chosen continuously, only when you first press the mouse button, or is fixed to the background color. Like the magic wand, the color replacement brush has a tolerance and can be contiguous.

Use the history tools to paint 'back in time', restoring parts of your image to their previous states.

Before using this tool, you need to show the History Window and click in the left column next to the point in time that you want to go back to. When you paint with the history brush the image from the selected historic state will replace the current pixels.

The art history brush works like the history brush, but allows you to choose various styles of application, giving results that look like an oil painting.

For a description of the brush types, mode, opacity, and flow, see the brush tools.

The eraser tools are used to erase part of the active layer.

You can set the size of the eraser, and whether it is shaped as a brush, pencil, or rectangular block. You can also set the opacity and flow (see the brush tool for details). If you check erase to history, the eraser acts like the history brush.

The background eraser is used to erase background colours. The 'background' can be defined by continuous sampling (in which case you must keep the center of the brush on the background), by sampling once (in which case your initial mouse-down must be on a background colour), or by using the background colour selected in the Tool Window (in which case you can click & wherever you want). You can require that the erased background be contiguous (connected — the inside of an 'A' would not be erased') or discontiguous, and can set the tolerance (how closely a pixel must match the 'ideal background' colour before it is erased). If there are picture elements that you particularly don't want erased, you can sample their colors (by Alt-clicking) and choose to protect the foreground color from being erased.

The magic eraser operates like the magic wand — you click on the picture and all pixels that are a similar color get erased. See the magic wand for a description of the options.

Use the gradient and paint bucket tools to fill the picture with color.

Drag with the gradient tool to fill the selected area with a blend of colors between the foreground and background colors.

Use the various gradient style buttons to determine choose between linear, radial, and other styles of gradient fill. Usually the foreground color is used where you press the mouse and the background color is used where you release, but you can reverse this if you like.

You can set the mode and opacity of the fill, just a you can with the brush tools.

Filling a large area with a gradient can create visible 'bands' when the image is printed. Choosing to dither the gradient randomizes the pixels somewhat and reduces this effect. You should always use dither unless you find that it is causing problems.

Use the paint bucket to fill an area with the foreground color. The color 'spills out' from the point you click until it hits a different-colored boundary. See the magic wand tool for a description of the tolerance and other paint bucket options.

You can press Option-Delete (Alt-Delete on Windows) at any time to fill the picture with the foreground color. Apple-Delete (or Control-Delete) fills with the background color. As with all other tools, if you have used the marquee or magic wand to create a selection, only the selected pixels will be filled.

The blur, sharpen, and smudge tools are used to alter the image.

For all three tools, you can choose the size and strength of the brush, and the blur mode. Normal mode works for most situations, and darken and lighten are useful for cleaning up dust and scratches on a negative or print. Blurring the colour is a good way to make digital grain less noticeable.

If you sample all layers, the new pixels will be drawn on the active layer, but the source pixels will be drawn from all visible layers. This is very useful if you want to preserve your original layer — just create a new (fully-transparent) layer and blur, sharpen, or smudge to your hearts content. If you want to return to the original pixels, just erase the layer.

If you smudge with finger painting enabled, the current foreground color is also mixed in with the smudge (as though you had that colour of paint on your finger).

Use the dodge, burn, and sponge tools as though you were in a photographic darkroom.

Dodge a picture to make it lighter, burn it to make it darker, or sponge it to make the colors less vivid (i.e., to wash off some paint).

Control the size of the tool by choosing a brush from the list (or by pressing the [ and ] keys).

While dodging and burning, you can choose whether you are affecting the shadows, midtones, or highlghts of the image, and you set the exposure to control how quickly the image changes.

The sponge tool can either desaturate ('remove paint from') or saturate ('remove dirt from') the image. The flow controls how quickly the tool works ('how hard you are washing'). Hold down the Option (Alt on Windows) key while sponging to toggle between saturation and desaturation.

The selection tools are used to select all or part of a vector-based drawing path (you create the paths using the pen and shape tools).

The path selection tool selects entire objects, while the direct selection tool selects individual points on a path. If you show the bounding box you can immediately resize or rotate the path without first having to choose Edit > Transform > Free Transform.

You use the four combination mode buttons to choose how to treat overlapping paths when you fill the path, or you can combine the selected paths to create a single path.

You can also use the various alignment buttons to rearrange the paths in various ways.

Use the type tool to create and edit text.

You can choose whether to create horizontal or vertical text, and whether to create a text layer or create a text mask (a selection in the shape of the text). Note that when you choose vertical text the individual letters are still upright — if you want to rotate the letters, create horizontal text and then rotate the layer using Edit > Transform > Rotate.

You can set the font, style, size, and crispness of the text, as well as its alignment and color. You can also warp the text (curve it up or down, shrink the begining and/or end, etc.) and open the Character Window to get precise control over kerning and letter spacing.

Note that when you create a text mask you will not be able to edit the text in the future — it is rasterized immediately when you finish typing. It is often better to create an editable text layer in your image and hide it by clicking the 'eye' icon in the left column of the Layers Window. When you want a selection in the shape of the text, simply Apple-click the text layer (Control-click in Windows).

The pen tools are used to create and edit path-based drawing objects.

You can use the pen to create a shape layer or a simple path (the option to immediately fill the surrounded pixels is only available for the various shape tools).

Simply clicking on the image will create a 'sharp corner' control point. Pressing and dragging will create a 'curved corner' control point that heads in the direction of your drag. If you select auto add/delete, then clicking on an existing control point will delete it.

The freefrom pen tool allows you to draw arbitrary shapes by dragging the mouse — control points will be automatically added to create the curve. If you activate the magnetic option, the curve will 'cling' to the strong contrast boundaries in the underlying image.

You use the convert point tool to convert 'curved corner' control points into 'sharp corner' points and vice versa.

The shape tools are used to create various shapes.

Use the shape mode buttons to choose whether you want to create a shape layer, a path, or immediately fill the shape with the foreground color.

You can set the corner radius, number of sides, and weight (thickness) of the rounded rectangle, polygon, and line shapes. For the custom shape tool you can choose from a number of pre-existing shapes (arrows, light bulbs, etc.).

Use the fill mode buttons to choose how different shapes combine (see the path selection tool for details).

The annotation tools are used to make notes for yourself or other designers.

You can create either a typewritten or audio note, and double-clicking an existing note will display (or play) the annotation. You can also assign an author and color to a note to help other designers know how important the annotation is.

Pressing Apple-H (Control-H on Windows) will show and hide the annotation icons.

Use the eyedropper, sampler, and measure tools get information about the picture.

Use the eyedropper to pick a new color for the foreground (or background if you hold the Option/Alt key) color. Setting a larger sample size is useful for high-resolution images — the sampled color is an average of several nearby pixels.

Click with the color sampler to add the sampled location to the list of aread monitored in the Info Window.

Drag with the measure tool to find out distances and angles. Note that if you choose Image >Rotate Canvas > Arbitrarythe angle field will automatically contain the angle that rotates your most recently-measured line to vertical or horizontal.

Press Option (Alt on Windows) when using any painting tool to temporarily switch to the eyedropper and pick a new foreground color. If you want to pick a new background color, press X (to swap foreground & background), Option-click to choose a color, and press X again (to swap back).

The hand tool is used to move the viewport around the document (i.e., to scroll the window).

If you scroll all windows, then dragging in one window will move the viewport of all open documents. This is useful when you are examining several almost-identical photographs.

You can also zoom the window to show actual pixels (100% magnification), to fit the screen (at whatever magnification is required to accomplish this), or to show how large the image will be when printed (based on the dots per inch of the image resolution).

You can temporarily activate the hand tool at any time by pressing the space bar — even if you are in a dialog box at the time.

Double-clicking on the hand tool zooms the image to show the entire picture (just like clicking the fit screen button).

Use the zoom tool to enlarge or shrink your view of the picture.

You can choose to zoom in or zoom out, and can hold the Option key (Alt key on Windows) to temporarily switch modes.

Normally zooming does not change the size of your document window, but if you like you can resize the windows to fit the new image size. This resizing normally stops at the edge of the palette windows, but if you ignore palette windows the document window will extend right to the edge of the screen.

If you zoom all windows then all documents will be zoomed in or out when you click in any document. This can be useful when you have several nearly-identical images open. Note that you cannot both resize windows to fit and zoom all windows — the reason for zooming all windows is to see multiple points of view, and resizing your windows defeats this purpose.

The three resize buttons described under the hand tool also appear in the zoom tool options. Double-clicking the zoom tool zooms the document to 100% — it is equivalent to clicking the actual pixels button.

You can hold the spacebar and Apple (Control on Windows) keys to temporarily switch into zoom mode at any time — even while a dialog box is open. Also hold the Option key (Alt key on Windows) to toggle between zooming in and zooming out.