Get Acquainted With Tools

Photoshop Elements has lots of tools, and this is your chance to see how they’re set up. You’ll discover the hidden tools behind each tool icon, see the connection between the Tool Bar and Tool Options, and learn how to toggle through a set of tools using a keyboard shortcut.

Video 01-05: Get Acquainted With Tools (5:21)

Let's begin our exploration of the Expert mode by looking at the Toolbar on the left. The tools are arranged in groups of similar tools. In the coming lessons, you'll learn how to use many of these tools.

The View section has two tools that help you zoom and pan over your photos to see them better. The Select section has selection tools for selecting part of a photo or file, and also the Move tool to select things and move them. Enhance Tools make your photos look better. Draw contains a mixed set of tools with various functions to subtract something from your photo or add something including type. Modify has tools to modify a photo such as crop it or straighten it. And down at the bottom, you'll see the Color Chips, one of my most often used tools. Because of my small recording screen, you can't see all the way to the bottom of the Toolbar, but it's enough to access both Color Chips, and your screen probably won't be this small. The selected tool will be highlighted except for the Color Chips. Currently, the Rectangular Marquee Tool is highlighted.

Since I have Show Tooltips enabled in Preferences, I can hover over a tool with my mouse to get a pop up telling me the name of the tool and the keyboard shortcut for that tool. For the Rectangular Marquee, the keyboard shortcut is a letter M… M for marquee.

The Lasso tool has a shortcut L which makes sense... L for lasso. The Move tool has the letter V. Since M was already taken by the Marquee Tool, Adobe used the V in the middle of move so it's the Movvvvve tool. Again, you don't need to remember the keyboard shortcuts in the beginning. But as you grow in knowledge and ability, shortcuts come in very handy. I've provided a PDF of all the major keyboard shortcuts which you can print for a reference.

Now let's look at the bottom of the program in Expert mode. The bar at the bottom with icons is called the Taskbar. Two icons you'll use a lot are the Photo Bin and Tool Options. Currently, the Photo Bin is highlighted, which makes the Photo Bin visible, this area just above the Taskbar. The Photo Bin displays thumbnails of your open photos and files. It's empty now because we haven't opened photos yet. We'll be doing that shortly. To hide the Photo Bin, click on the Photo Bin icon. Sometimes it's nice to hide it when you want more desktop space. You can always access it again by clicking on it.

Click on Tool Options in the Taskbar to see options for the selected tool. Since the Rectangular Marquee Tool is currently selected, the options you see here relate to the Rectangular Marquee Tool. When I click on a different tool, such as the Zoom tool, the tool options change because the options are specific to each tool.

Many of the tools have additional related tools nested together in a set. For example, the Lasso tool has two additional tools called the Magnetic Lasso Tool, and the Polygonal Lasso Tool. Each one of these tools has its own set of options which appear when I click on its icon. Notice also that the icon in the Toolbar changes when I click on a different tool. Even though these are three separate tools, they share the same shortcut because their function is related. And they're grouped together in Tool Options. The shortcut for the Lasso tool is L. So if I press L repeatedly, Photoshop Elements toggles through the various tools in that set.

If you hover your mouse over a tool that isn't selected, like the Marquee Tool, a small corner icon appears on the tool in the upper right corner. This means the tool has additional related tools nested with it, which you can access in Tool Options. Sure enough, when I click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool, I can see the Elliptical Marquee tool as well. Clicking on the Elliptical Marquee icon selects that tool, or I can press the shortcut letter M to toggle between the two. To close Tool Options click on its icon in the Taskbar. Click again to reveal it.

I'm going to hide Tool Options again so I can show you an annoying a default setting you can change. The way Tool Options are currently set, anytime you click on a new tool, the Tool Options panel will pop up even if you just closed it. If you like that behavior, then do nothing, but if you don't want Tool Options to pop up continually without your permission, you can disable that default setting. Click on the Tool Options menu on the right and de-select Auto Show Tool Options. Now when you click on the Tool Options icon to close it, and then when you select another tool, Tool Options doesn't open automatically.

There are more icons in the taskbar, but we'll save them for other lessons. In our next lesson, we'll look at the panels over on the right.

Complete and Continue