Photoshop Tools and Toolbar Tutorial

Photoshop Tools and Toolbar Overview

Learn whol about Photoshop's tools and the toolbar. You'll get a line how the toolbar is organized you bet to access its many secret tools. Includes a complete summary of all 70 tools available in Photoshop that you backside use as a reference! Now updated for Photoshop 2022!

In the first tutorial in this Photoshop User interface series, we took a general tour of the user interface and its main features. This time, we'll learn all active Photoshop's tools and the toolbar. The toolbar is where Photoshop holds the many tools we have to work with. There are tools for making selections, for cropping and retouching images, for adding shapes and typecast, and many more!

We'll start with a consider the toolbar itself, including how the toolbar is formed and how to entree the many tools concealed within it. Then we'll deal each and every creature in the toolbar with a quick sum-up of what each instrument is utilized for.

I'm using Photoshop 2022 but you can follow along with earliest versions as well. Just note that some tools may non be available in your version.

This is example 2 of 10 in my Learning the Photoshop Interface chapter.

Let's get started!

The Photoshop toolbar

Photoshop's toolbar is located along the left of the screen:

The Photoshop toolbar and tools

The toolbar.

Choosing a single or stunt man column toolbar

By default, the toolbar appears as a lank, respective column. But it can comprise expanded into a shorter, double editorial past clicking the double arrows at the go past. Click the double arrows again to return to a single column toolbar:

The Photoshop toolbar in a double column layout.

The toolbar pot be viewed in a single or double chromatography column.

The tools layout

Let's look at how Photoshop's toolbar is organized. While it may seem alike the tools are traded randomly, thither's actually a logical order to it, with related tools classified conjointly.

At the upper, we take in Photoshop's Move and Selection tools. And directly below them are the Crop and Slice tools. Below that are the Measurement tools, followed by Photoshop's many Retouching and Picture tools.

Future are the Drawing and Type tools. And finally, we have the Navigation tools at the bottom:

The tools layout in the Photoshop toolbar.

The layout of the tools in the toolbar.

The toolbar's hidden tools

Each tool in the toolbar is diagrammatic away an icon, and there are many more tools available than what we see.

A small pointer in the keister right-hand corner of a tool icon agency that there are more tools hiding behind it in that same spot:

The arrow in the toolbar indicating that other tools are available.

Most of the spots in the toolbar hold to a greater extent than one tool.

To view the additive tools, click and hold on the picture. Operating room redress-pawl (Win) / Control-click (Mac) on the icon. A fly-verboten menu will open listing the other tools that are available.

E.g., if I click and oblige on the Rectangular Marquee Tool around icon, the fly-outgoing carte du jour tells Pine Tree State that on therewith tool, the Egg-shaped Marquee Tool, the Single Row Pavilion Tool and the Single Column Marquee Tool are also grouped in with information technology.

To choose one of the additional tools, click along its mention in the list. I'll choose the Prolate Marquee Tool:

Choosing a hidden tool in the Photoshop toolbar.

Choosing a hidden tool from the fly-out computer menu.

The default tool

The tool that's initially displayed in all spot in the toolbar is known as the default tool. For example, the Rectangular Marquee Tool is the default tool for the second descry from the top. But Photoshop won't ever display the default tool. Instead, it will presentation the last tool around you designated.

Notice that after choosing the Elliptical Pavilion Tool from the fly-out menu, the Rectangular Marquee Tool is no longer displayed in the toolbar. The Prolate Marquee Puppet has taken its place:

The Elliptical Marquee Tool is now the visible tool in the toolbar.

Each spot in the toolbar displays either the default tool or the last puppet selected.

To select the Rectangular Pavilion Tool at this full stop, I would indigence to either click and give, OR right-click (Win) / Control-click (Macintosh), on the Elliptical Marquise Tool image. Then I could select the Perpendicular Marquee Tool from the menu:

Selecting the default tool from behind the previously selected tool in the Photoshop Toolbar.

Selecting the Rectangular Marquee Tool from behind the Oval Marquee Tool.

A sum-up of Photoshop's tools

And then now that we've learned how Photoshop's toolbar is organized, Lashkar-e-Taiba's look at the tools themselves.

Below is a quick summary of each of Photoshop's tools, along with a brief description of what each tool is utilised for. The tools are listed in club from top to bottom, and particularised tools are beaded in more detail in other lessons.

An asterisk (*) after a tool's distinguish indicates a default joyride, and the letter in parenthesis is the tool's keyboard shortcut. To cycle direct tools with the same keyboard shortcut, press and hold Shift as you press the letter. This heel is sprouted-to-date Eastern Samoa of Photoshop CC 2022. Bank bill that more or less tools are not obtainable in earlier versions.

Where to go next...

And there we give birth it! Now that we know more about Photoshop's toolbar and its many tools, the next lesson shows you how to reset Photoshop's toolbar back to its newfangled, nonpayment layout!

You can jump to any of the other lessons in this Encyclopaedism the Photoshop Interface chapter. Or travel to our Photoshop Basics section for more topics!