The Basics of Photoshop: The Tool Bar (Shape Tools)

Although many people tend to use Photoshop for its great picture enhancing features, not all graphic designs may use a photo. As a graphic designer, there will be times when you may be required to create your own designs from scratch. If you’re looking to do this — whether it be for a logo, design, or just an added touch — then the shape and pen tool are just for you.

The Shape Tool

For basic shapes and symbols, the shape tool will allow you to create quite a few variations by simply choosing your preferred shape or tool and dragging your cursor across your work area. Not only will you be able to create your own shapes, but also have the option to create a solid shape or an outline.

Rectangle Tool

As the name implies, choosing this tool will allow for a simple rectangular shape to form. You can even create a square shape by holding down shift and dragging your tool across the canvas.

Rounded Rectangle Tool

Similar to the rectangle tool, the Rounded Rectangular Tool will from a rectangular or square shape with rounded corners.

Ellipse Tool

Another choice among the shape tools, this Ellipse Tool will allow for a nice elliptical or circular shape.

Polygon Tool

Allows the user to create just about any polygon shape such as a hexagon, octagon, triangle, etc. You can change the number of sides by using the Options Bar.

Custom Shape Tool

A much more versatile tool that provides a much larger selection of shapes and symbols. You can access these shapes by using the Options Bar and selecting your shape. You may also switch each set of shapes by clicking on the gear icon on the top right corner of the panel.

The Line Tool

This tool creates straight, rasterized lines. You may also straight your lines horizontally or vertically by holding down shift as you drag your cursor across your work area.

The Pen Tool

This handy tool allows you to create your own original shapes or lines by simply clicking throughout your work area to create paths. You may also bend your paths by holding and dragging the end point of your path and moving it to your desired shape. To change the stroke, you may go to the Brush Tool and use the Options bar slider to change the thickness.

Add Anchor Point

A simple tool that allow you to create a new anchor point to an existing one.

Delete Anchor Point

Opposite of the Add Anchor Point Tool, this tool deletes any extra anchor points to an existing path.

Convert Point

Allows you to select an anchor point by clicking and holding to change the curvature of the path.

The Freeform Pen Tool

As the final feature within the Pen Tool, the Freeform Pen Tool allows you to create organic, free-hand shapes. What makes this shape different from the original Pen Tool is that your shapes will be hand-drawn entirely by you without the help of Photoshop. You can use this tool by clicking and holding your cursor while moving it across your work space in order to draw your own shapes.

This concludes the shape building tools. Next week we will discuss the Brush Tool, Eraser Tool, as well as the Gradient and Paint Bucket Tool!

The Basics of Photoshop: The Tool Bar (Selection Tools)

The Tool Bar — Photoshop’s most handy bag of goodies. With the effective use of each tool, one can almost fully manipulate any photo or design to their heart’s desire. Let’s begin with the selection tools.

The Move Tool

Just as the name implies, this tool allows you to move or position your selected work. You may find yourself going back to this tool a majority of the time, so you’ll definitely want to keep this one on standby.

The Marquee Tool

With this tool, you will have the ability to select either your complete design or even a mere portion to perform any task you may need. Whether you need to cut out a piece of your design or change its color, the marquee tool is fairly simple to use. As an added bonus, it also comes with several different ways to make your selection needs a bit more convenient. You can access these extras by simply clicking and holding down the marquee tool icon.

Rectangular Marquee Tool

This tool will allow a “rectangular” selection to any portion of your design. You may also hold shift while expanding your selection, if you wish to keep it proportioned.

Elliptical Marquee Tool

This will select any portion of your design in an “elliptical” shape. By holding shift, you can achieve a true circular selection.

Single Row Marquee Tool

This will select any number of rows of pixels within your image.

Single Column Marquee Tool

This will select any number of columns of pixels within your image.

Lasso Tool

This is yet another (more efficient) selection tool. With this, you may select any organic shapes within your image. For example, say you would like to select the outline of your body. However, you find that your marquee tool seems to only select basic shapes (squares, circles, etc.) and you desperately need to make an outline of yourself. What do you do? You use the Lasso Tool.

Using it like a pencil, you will make your selection by holding down your left mouse key and outline your desired image. Although, if you find that you don’t have a steady hand, you can find other options that may suit you.

Magnetic Lasso Tool

This is similar to the original Lasso Tool, only a bit easier. Instead of worrying about whether or not you followed the outline of your image, it will draw a selection that magnetizes to the nearest outline.

Polygonal Lasso Tool

Essentially the same as the original Lasso Tool, except instead of holding down your left mouse key, it only requires a few clicks around your image to obtain nice straight edges.

The Magic Wand Tool

As one of my favorite selection tools, it is among the easiest to use. By clicking on any part of your image, it will select the entirety of the area. However, the Magic Wand Tool isn’t always the most accurate. If you find that your selection hasn’t been completed, holding shift and clicking on the rest of your desired selection may fix that problem.

The Quick Selection Tool

This is by far my absolute favorite selection tool to use. With the Quick Selection Tool, you can select any basic or organic shape within your image by simply holding down your left mouse key and dragging your tool around your desired image to make your selection. However, you want to be sure you’re under the proper settings. As a feature of the Quick Selection Tool, you’ll find several modes on your Options Bar. They are the New Selection mode, Add to Selection mode, and Subtract from Selection mode.

New Selection Mode

This is your basic mode to create a selection.

Add to Selection Mode

This will be your default when choosing the Quick Selection Tool. This feature will allow you to add any area to your selection as you drag across your image.

Subtract from Selection Mode

This feature will remove or subtract any of your selection from an image. The same rules apply—drag over your image if you would like to remove some of your selection.

This concludes our Photoshop lesson on selection tools. Next week we’ll be discussing Shape Tools and the Pen Tool. See ya then!

The Basics of Photoshop: Part One

Ah, Photoshop — just about every graphic designers best friend. Photoshop is one of the most helpful softwares out there. It is used by many graphic designers, photographers, as well as many other professionals within the business of processed imaging. It’s a great tool for touching up a photo or even creating your own business logo.

Now, let’s begin with the layout.

As you can, you have quite a bit of work space along with many interesting tools and features surrounding it. Let's now break it down starting from the top (literally).

Like all programs, Photoshop uses a menu bar with your basic file menu along with many other tabs such as edit, image, layer, type, select, filter, etc. These will not only allow you to save your work, but they also provide you with quite a few features to discover.

The options bar is quite a handy tool that allows you to change your settings for each tool you use. As a default, it also provides you with options to zoom in or out of your work area.

This will be your holy grail for all of your designs. Here, you will utilize these tools in order to create your designs or touch up your photos. I will be going through these tools in the next post to come.

Consisting of various windows, the palettes act as an extension for several tools as well as allow you to create layers and channels to divide your work into an organized fashion.

Last but not least is your work area. This is where all the magic happens. This is your canvas to create whatever you wish.

As I've said before, this is the basic breakdown of Photoshop to allow you to get familiar with your work space if you decided to use this program. If you would like to try your hand at using Photoshop, you may purchase it or download a trial version from Adobe. Next week, I’ll explain just about everything you need to know about your tool bar. See you soon!