Photoshop Tools and Toolbar Tutorial

Photoshop Tools and Toolbar Overview

Larn all almost Photoshop'south tools and the toolbar. You'll acquire how the toolbar is organized and how to admission its many hidden tools. Includes a complete summary of the nearly 70 tools available in Photoshop that yous can use as a reference! Now updated for Photoshop 2022!

Download PDF: Photoshop Tools And Toolbar Overview

In the first tutorial in this Photoshop Interface series, we took a general tour of the interface and its main features. This fourth dimension, nosotros'll learn all about Photoshop'south tools and the toolbar. The toolbar is where Photoshop holds the many tools nosotros accept to work with. In that location are tools for making selections, for cropping and retouching images, for calculation shapes and type, and many more than!

We'll start with a look at the toolbar itself, including how the toolbar is organized and how to access the many tools hidden within information technology. Then we'll look at each and every tool in the toolbar with a quick summary of what each tool is used for.

I'm using Photoshop 2022 simply yous tin can follow forth with earlier versions too. Only note that some tools may not be available in your version.

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

Allow'southward 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 double column toolbar

By default, the toolbar appears as a long, unmarried cavalcade. But it tin be expanded into a shorter, double cavalcade by clicking the double arrows at the top. Click the double arrows again to return to a single cavalcade toolbar:

The Photoshop toolbar in a double column layout.

The toolbar tin be viewed in a single or double column.

The tools layout

Let's await at how Photoshop'southward toolbar is organized. While information technology may seem like the tools are listed randomly, in that location's actually a logical guild to it, with related tools grouped together.

At the summit, we accept Photoshop's Motility and Selection tools. And directly beneath them are the Ingather and Piece tools. Beneath that are the Measurement tools, followed by Photoshop'due south many Retouching and Painting tools.

Next 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 represented past an icon, and there are many more tools bachelor than what nosotros see.

A minor pointer in the bottom right corner of a tool icon means that in that location 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 more one tool.

To view the boosted tools, click and hold on the icon. Or correct-click (Win) / Control-click (Mac) on the icon. A fly-out menu volition open list the other tools that are available.

For example, if I click and hold on the Rectangular Marquee Tool icon, the fly-out card tells me that along with that tool, the Elliptical Marquee Tool, the Unmarried Row Marquee Tool and the Single Column Marquee Tool are also grouped in with it.

To choose i of the boosted tools, click on its name in the listing. I'll choose the Elliptical Marquee Tool:

Choosing a hidden tool in the Photoshop toolbar.

Choosing a hidden tool from the wing-out menu.

The default tool

The tool that'south initially displayed in each spot in the toolbar is known as the default tool. For example, the Rectangular Marquee Tool is the default tool for the 2nd spot from the peak. But Photoshop won't e'er display the default tool. Instead, it will brandish the last tool you selected.

Observe that after choosing the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the fly-out menu, the Rectangular Marquee Tool is no longer displayed in the toolbar. The Elliptical Marquee 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 concluding tool selected.

To select the Rectangular Marquee Tool at this point, I would need to either click and hold, or correct-click (Win) / Control-click (Mac), on the Elliptical Marquee Tool icon. Then I could select the Rectangular Marquee Tool from the bill of fare:

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

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

A summary of Photoshop's tools

So now that we've learned how Photoshop's toolbar is organized, let's expect at the tools themselves.

Below is a quick summary of each of Photoshop'due south tools, along with a brief description of what each tool is used for. The tools are listed in order from pinnacle to lesser, and specific tools are covered in more than particular in other lessons.

An asterisk (*) after a tool'southward name indicates a default tool, and the letter in parenthesis is the tool's keyboard shortcut. To bike through tools with the aforementioned keyboard shortcut, press and hold Shift every bit y'all printing the alphabetic character. This list is up-to-date as of Photoshop 2022. Annotation that some tools are not available in earlier versions.

Where to go next...

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

Yous can jump to any of the other lessons in this Learning the Photoshop Interface chapter. Or visit our Photoshop Basics section for more topics!