Adobe Photoshop CS6 The Tool Bar & Essential Shortcuts

Hi everyone, Michael Brown again, welcome back to educator.com's Adobe Photoshop CS6 course.0000

In this lesson, we're going to discuss the Toolbar and Primary Tools that you'll be using, and shortcuts...single and double key shortcuts that you will use quite frequently.0006

The quicker that you learn and apply these shortcuts will really improve how well you work in Photoshop.0020

If you save half a second on a shortcut, multiply that by 100 or 200 times that you use it, you have saved 5/10 minutes.0026

These are not 3/4/5 key complex shortcuts, just single and double key, so let's get started right off the bat.0037

The first thing I want to do is bring up this particular image here, and these are essential two key commands in Photoshop--what I mean by two key is on a Mac it's the Command key plus a letter, on the PC it's the Control key plus a single letter, that's all these are, so they're very easy to remember and you've seen a lot of them; Command+A, Select all or Control A, Command/Control+C to copy, Command/Control+D to deselect--pretty much universal, plus all the specific ones to Photoshop.0044

If you can learn these as time goes on, it's worth your while.0081

I suggest stop the video, screenshot this page, print it out, keep it for reference and try to, as we move along, work them into your workflow.0086

OK, I'm going to go back to the Tools...here's another one for you...(zoom this up just a hair so it's as big as possible) these are all the Tools in the Toolbox, the name and basically what they do.0096

Again, if you'll screenshot this, print it out and use it for reference--it'll help you quickly learn the specific tools.0114

Alright, I'm going to move on to the next one (and I've got to find my demo...here we are...one more here) and here are the individual tools, and this is the CS6 Toolbox, here are the Tool names, and the single key shortcut for the specific Tools--these especially would really, really, really help you to learn them.0122

Again, take a screenshot here, print it out, use it for reference as we go along.0152

Alright, let's start and work our way through the Toolbox (I'm going to close up the layers and the history panel) and we're going to start at the top of the Toolbox, and a few of them I'll talk about, most of them will be real quick.0158

The top Tool, the Move Tool, the shortcut is V...what that Tool does is moves layers, highlighted layers--this image has two layers, highlighted layer; moves layers only.0172

The Hand Tool on the other hand, which is way down the Toolbox, the shortcut is H...that Tool moves the entire image...all layers at one time, so the Move Tool moves layers, and the Hand Tool moves the entire image.0185

Below the Move Tool are the three basic selection Tools; Marquee Tools, Rectangular and Elliptical--you're not going to use a single row, Rectangle makes rectangular selections, obviously the Elliptical makes oval selections.0207

A Lasso Tool and the Planar Lasso Tool are freehand Tools, and the Magnetic Lasso Tool, don't bother, it causes more problems than it fixes, trust me on this--Lasso Tool, freehand selections.0224

The Polygon Lasso Tool does click, click, click, makes selection of straight edged objects.0238

The quick selection as a Tool...below that the quick selection or Magic Wand Tool, quick selection makes selections based on color and contrast--Magic Wand by color only.0247

Quick selection Tool is probably the one you're going to use the most, for example on this layer right here...we just click and drag in this area--you notice it went thinner blue, and if we went across the flower very quickly, you can see it found the edges pretty easily of that flower.0263

Below this is the Crop Tool, we're going to talk about this for a minute because some of the things are new here, a lot of it, on Photoshop CS6 (let me pull up this image...and I want to make sure I've got it back to open curves here, OK) when you highlight the basic Crop Tool now in this version, you already get the Crop box...it's unconstrained, or original ratio--if I leave it in original ratio and grab a corner, no matter what I do, it's cropping either horizontally or vertically in that aspect ratio.0282

You can set specifics (a half by 11 and so on and so forth) or you can type in your own aspect ratio--this rotates the image for you, it rather rotates the Crop box...this is a straight Tool which allows you to crop and straighten an edge for arisen...very simple (get back and out of that one, OK).0317

The view, rule of thirds grids, other options in there are overlays so when you click, you get in this case the rule of thirds for photographic composition, allows you to help you with the composition, you can also turn it off by never showing an overlay.0350

OK, we'll just leave it with the rule of thirds.0367

Now next to that is Classic Mode which usually, in the past, moves the Crop box and added a crop shield--I'd just leave that alone, this is the new one here, but I want to show you how this thing works now in Photoshop CS6.0370

If we're cropping...and we set our crop and I want to move it, in past versions you move the Crop box...in this CS6 version you're now moving the image and the box stays constant...and then of course when you click you've got the crop (we'll un-crop it, and let's bring it down a little bit for crop here, just show you something...come up at the bottom, OK we've got it).0390

If you uncheck...if you have the delete crop pixels checked, when you do your crop all these extraneous pixels will be permanently deleted, but if you uncheck it, it will crop, and if you come back at a later time to crop again and you went "you know I really wish I had a little more of that back", as soon as you click on it, look...they're still there, and you can go back and retrieve anything that you wanted to that was previously there--really, really cool idea.0422

Alright, now underneath the Crop is the Perspective Crop Tool.0452

This is pretty cool--in this case I have an image here that...I tilted the camera up so it has a perspective to it which looks nice, but if you wanted to straighten it like an architectural shot, pull the Crop box, you get a grid...grab a corner and just line it up with the distorted edges, and click Return and there it is...there is before, there is after.0458

That's how that one works, and under that you have the Slice Tool which is good for making web pages.0485

Alright, below that we have the color sampler, Eyedropper which selects foreground and background colors (let me just go back quickly) you click and as you see, as I move the color at the top of the color picker showing what the new color is, notice if I wanted a blue, now we have a blue foreground color--Option or Alt will do this for the background color, and there you have that.0491

Which brings us down to these two swatches...in their default for (notice D for default) they are black and white--the overlapping one on top is the foreground color, which is your basic painting colors...the under one is background--if you want to flip the two colors you can use this little arrow, or the shortcut X as we had over here, flipping back and forth.0517

If you have foreground and background set and colors, and you want to go back to black and white...D for default or click the two little boxes--that's your foreground and background colors.0543

Below the color dropper, or Eyedropper, is the spot healing brush (healing brush patch) these are retouch tools--really, really cool.0557

We'll talk about this as we move along in future lessons.0567

The paintbrush, pencil, color replacement and brush tools for art and painting are under that tool.0571

Rubber stamp tool is like a pantograph...it clones, in other words if you wanted to clone yellow flowers over the red flower, now you have cloned from one spot to another--you can also do it with patterns.0579

This tool...history brush backs up history stuff by painting art history, paints in artistic...different art type of painting modes, like van Gogh, other stuff like that.0595

The Eraser tool erases too transparent background or the Magic Eraser, I forget what it does.0610

Gradient...grids, gradients that you can apply to masks or your image.0619

This tool...Blur, Sharpener, Smudge...Smudge is very much like when you're at school, see that, like smearing finger paints.0625

Dodge, Burn, Photographic Brightening, Darkening...Sponge tool is a desaturation tool...see when I paint across an area, it de-saturates.0634

The Pen tool is a vector selection tool--very, very powerful, we'll be going over that in this course.0646

The Text tool is just what it says, it's a type tool, and if you just click (see if we can do that properly) click and type...you're typing letter and various stuff.0653

This tool...Patch, Path and Direct selection go with the Pen tool.0667

This one is Shape tool...we can make custom shapes, like if we have a (let's set our foreground at red) and if we click with a custom Shape tool and drag, you've now made a filled vector layer checkmark.0672

You can also make arrows and lines with the Line tool...you click under the gear--there is an arrowhead at the start--adjust the width and length, and that, the weight and you've now made arrows.0689

Hand tool, as you saw before...underneath that is the Rotate View tool--if you're painting, and I'm left handed, I don't like going this way...very simply highlight the Rotate View tool, turn the thing over, paint to the reset view, and you're back without hurting any pixels.0701

Zoom tool...click to zoom, Option or Alt+Click to un-zoom.0720

Scrubby Zoom...you can also click and go to the right or left for large zoom--you can go up and down for fine tuning the zoom as well.0726

You don't need to use the Zoom tool ever by directly selecting it--however, this is a huge time saver shortcut...any tool, any time, Command or Control key...the plus sign zooms up, Command or Control key on a PC--minus sign zooms down...Command or Control, the number zero fits to the image...plus up, minus down, zero, two keys: Command or Control.0736

These are in the essentials...actually they're not, but that's it...Command and Control plus, Command and Control minus, Command and Control zero.0762

And in any tool, any time, Command or Control spacebar...you've got your Zoom tool--you can click or you can scrubby zoom, you never actually need to Zoom tool itself.0772

Below the foreground/background color...this is the letter Q, or click, it is what is called "Quickmask"...if you have a selection, it shows you the selected area of the mask and you can adjust the mask--we'll talk about that in future lessons.0785

At the very bottom are the three screen modes...shortcut is the letter F (I forgot to put that over here) remember F as in Frank, you're in the standard screen mode now, the screen mode without the frame and now all black--and if you ever lose the Toolbar, panels and Option menu bar, simply hit your Tab key and they cycle on and off in any screen mode.0801

We're back to the basic screen mode.0832

So there you have the Tools, the basic functions of the Tools, single shortcuts--I recommend learning these as you go.0835

You also have the primary Command or Control plus letter two key commands, and the definition for the Tools.0843

That sums up the Toolbar and shortcuts...single key and two key.0852

Now I'll see you in the next lesson.0859