Photoshop Tools and Toolbar Tutorial

Photoshop Tools and Toolbar Overview

Discover all about Photoshop's tools and the toolbar. You'll learn how the toolbar is organized and how to access its many hidden tools. Includes a complete summary of all 70 tools available in Photoshop that you can use as a reference! Now updated for Photoshop 2022!

In the first tutorial in this Photoshop Interface serial publication, we took a general tour of the interface and its important features. This sentence, we'll learn altogether about 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 type, and many another more!

We'll start with a look at the toolbar itself, including how the toolbar is methodical and how to access the many a tools hidden within it. Then we'll aspect at each and every tool in the toolbar with a quick concise of what each instrument is used for.

I'm using Photoshop 2022 but you can follow along with originally versions as well. Merely note that some tools may not atomic number 4 available in your edition.

This is deterrent 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 one or double pillar toolbar

By default, the toolbar appears as a long, single column. But it can live expanded into a shorter, double column by clicking the double arrows at the top. Click the double arrows once again to return to a single column toolbar:

The Photoshop toolbar in a double column layout.

The toolbar can beryllium viewed in a single operating room multiple column.

The tools layout

Let's look at how Photoshop's toolbar is organized. While it may seem like the tools are recorded arbitrarily, in that location's actually a logical consecrate to it, with related tools grouped together.

At the top, we have Photoshop's Motion and Selection tools. And directly under them are the Crop and Slice tools. Below that are the Measurement tools, followed by Photoshop's numerous Retouching and Painting tools.

Next are the Drawing and Type tools. And eventually, we have the Piloting tools at the bottom:

The tools layout in the Photoshop toolbar.

The layout of the tools in the toolbar.

The toolbar's hidden tools

All tool in the toolbar is represented by an icon, and there are many to a greater extent tools available than what we see.

A inferior arrow in the bottom right corner of a tool icon means that in that location are more tools hiding behind it in that same place:

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

Near of the spots in the toolbar hold more than one tool.

To view the additional tools, click and curb on the icon. Surgery honorable-click (Win) / See-click (Mac) connected the icon. A fly-outer bill of fare will open listing the former tools that are available.

For example, if I click and hold on the Rectangular Marquee Tool icon, the fly-kayoed menu tells me that along with that tool, the Elliptical Marquise Tool, the One-man Row Marquee Tool and the Single Column Marquee Instrument are also grouped in with it.

To take one of the additional tools, click on its name in the list. I'll choose the Elliptical Marquee Joyride:

Choosing a hidden tool in the Photoshop toolbar.

Choosing a hidden tool from the fly-out menu.

The default tool

The tool that's initially displayed in each spot in the toolbar is known as the default option tool. For example, the Rectangular Marquee Tool is the default tool for the second spot from the top. But Photoshop won't e'er display the default tool. Alternatively, it will display the last tool you selected.

Notice that after choosing the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the fly-out menu, the Rectangular Marquise Tool is nobelium longer displayed in the toolbar. The Elliptical Pavilion Tool 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 tool selected.

To pick out the Angular Marquee Tool at this point, I would want to either click and hold, operating room right on-click (Win) / Control-click (Mac), along the Elliptical Marquee Tool picture. Past I could choose the Rectangular Marquee Tool from the menu:

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

Selecting the Rectangular Pavilion Instrument from behind the Elliptical Marquee Tool around.

A summary of Photoshop's tools

So today that we've learned how Photoshop's toolbar is ordered, Army of the Righteou's look at the tools themselves.

Below is a nimble summary of each of Photoshop's tools, along with a legal brief description of what all tool is used for. The tools are listed in dictate from top to bottom, and peculiar tools are covered in more detail in other lessons.

An asterisk (*) after a tool's name indicates a default tool, and the letter in digression is the tool's keyboard shortcut. To cycle finished tools with the homophonic keyboard shortcut, press and hold Shift as you press the letter. This leaning is with-it arsenic of Photoshop Ml 2022. Note that some tools are not available in earlier versions.

Where to go following...

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

You fire jump to any of the strange lessons therein Learning the Photoshop Port chapter. Oregon call in our Photoshop Bedroc section for more topics!