Lessons

Lesson Info

Tools Panel in Adobe Photoshop

1 So far we've talked about only a few of Photoshop's tools. 2 We got into some selection tools and the move tool, 3 but now let's take a little deeper look 4 and peruse some of the more essential tools 5 that are found on the left side of your screen in Photoshop. 6 And let's start right here with the crop tool. 7 When you choose the crop tool, 8 you should find a cropping rectangle all the way 9 around the bounds of your picture. 10 And then if you would like to crop it, 11 you simply grab these edges 12 and pull them in however you'd like. 13 But sometimes you need to have a specific shape, 14 like you're gonna crop this into a square 15 or something like that. 16 So up here on the options bar, you have some choices. 17 And when this menu is set to ratio, 18 then here I can type in a ratio 19 between the width and the height. 20 And if I type any number in the first field 21 and then type in the exact same number in the second, 22 we're gonna get a square. 23 And it doesn't matter...

what the numbers are 24 because it's only looking at the proportion 25 between those two. 26 And since they're identical, it means a square. 27 So here and we have our square, 28 I can just click within the area 29 to position my image in there 30 and grab the edges to pull it out 31 and get it to be however I'd like. 32 Then if I want to finish, 33 then all I need to do is press return or enter. 34 But the very first time I push it, 35 it might not finish the crop. 36 And that is if I've typed in a number, 37 then it thinks pressing return or enter is just entering 38 or finishing that number the first time you press it, 39 and then the second time will commit your crop. 40 And pressing return is the same as clicking this checkbox. 41 You could do that as well. So I'll do that. 42 Now when we do that, you got to be careful 43 because up here in the options bar, 44 there is a setting right here called delete cropped pixels. 45 And if that's turned on, which it was for me, 46 that means we no longer have the information 47 that was discarded outside of that cropping rectangle. 48 So I can't really uncrop the image, 49 especially if I were to save the image and close it 50 so that I'd have to reopen it fresh 51 to do any more work on it. 52 But right now, since I haven't closed the image yet, 53 I could always type command Z, control+Z and Windows 54 to undo the crop. 55 Then I could turn that checkbox off. 56 And now if I come in here 57 and crop this image again, 58 well first off, 59 you'll notice there's no cropping rectangle around it, 60 even though I'm in the crop tool. 61 Well, if you just switch away from the tool and back, 62 it would automatically put it in or just click 63 and drag within your image 64 and you can choose the area you would like to crop. 65 Now this time because I have 66 "delete cropped pixels" turned off, 67 when I press return or enter, 68 all the information that was out there 69 that I cropped out still is there. 70 And if I were just click the crop tool again 71 and one of its little handles, 72 I would start to see that, 73 that information is still out there. 74 Well, with the crop tool, 75 the other thing you can do is add space to your document. 76 So if I wanted to add some text up here above 77 and maybe something else to the right, 78 I could pull this out like this. 79 And if I pull it out beyond the edge of the original image, 80 then up here in the options bar, 81 there's a choice called fill. 82 And this wants to know what to do 83 with this extra space I've added. 84 When it's set to transparent, it's gonna leave it empty, 85 and empty looks like a checkerboard. 86 If I change it though, I could tell it to try 87 to use artificial intelligence to generate new information. 88 We'll talk about the artificial intelligence generative fill 89 kind of thing in a separate lesson, 90 just on that topic. 91 For now, I'm gonna choose generative expand. 92 And if I press return or enter, 93 that area that looks like a checkerboard should change 94 and it wants me to know if I would like 95 to type in something specific to tell it to put in there. 96 If I leave this empty, 97 it will do it based on the original contents of the image 98 and it'll just try to figure out what is gonna use. 99 Now the very first time you use this, 100 you're gonna get this dialogue that comes up, 101 and that's because you need to agree to Adobe's guidelines 102 for using their AI technology. 103 And if you click this link, 104 it would tell you the limitations of using this. 105 For instance, you're not supposed 106 to use it on blatant nude photos, that kind of stuff. 107 They have certain limitations 108 and so you might as well read it just so you have an idea 109 why on occasion it might not work on certain images 110 that it deems to not align with its user guidelines. 111 But I'm gonna choose agree. 112 And once I do, it's going to come in here 113 and try to fill in that area. 114 And it did a pretty darn nice job except for right here, 115 the puddle, the little... 116 What would you call it? 117 Rings don't quite line up. 118 But on the right side of my screen, 119 anytime you do a generative kind of a fill, 120 you're gonna get three variations over here on the right. 121 And so I could click on the second one 122 to see if I like it better 123 and click on the third one to see if that one's better. 124 And whichever one I want 125 to use is just what I'm gonna leave it on. 126 And if you look in my layers panel, when I use that, 127 the original image is down here 128 and you can still see 129 that empty area surrounding it on the top and on the right. 130 And then here's a separate layer that's causing that fill. 131 If I hide the eyeball here by turning that off, 132 you're gonna see that the layer 133 underneath doesn't go all the way out to the edge 134 and this new layer was created. 135 Well, I'm gonna choose undo a few times as if I never used 136 that tool and as if I never cropped this image yet. 137 Let's take a look at the other options 138 that are found up here in the options bar. 139 Well, there's this popup menu 140 and if we set this to ratio, that's what we've been using 141 where you type in a width to height ratio. 142 So I could say I want the width to be twice as much 143 as the height, that kind of thing. 144 And if you did something like that, two to one, 145 that's gonna give me a horizontal. 146 But I wanted a vertical image. 147 That's what the double arrows are for. 148 It just swaps what's in those two different fields. 149 Or I can come in here and we have other choices. 150 Down here we have some presets of common sizes, 151 and if you commonly need to crop things 152 to this exact specific size, 153 once you dial in what you want in the options bar above, 154 you can come down here and choose new crop preset 155 and give it a name and then it would appear in here 156 And therefore, you could crop to the same ratio 157 all the time. 158 And you also have a choice up here called WH and resolution. 159 That means width, height, and resolution. 160 So now these are no longer a ratio. 161 Instead it's a specific measurement system 162 that is being used. 163 So let's say I put eight in the first one 164 and then I can hit tab to go 165 to the next field or just click on it. 166 And when I do, you're gonna find a measurement system 167 show up and this says PX, which stands for pixels. 168 What's used there is usually based on 169 what your rulers are currently set to. 170 So if I were to go to the view menu 171 and choose rulers, my guess is that my rulers are set 172 to be in percentages, or not percentages, pixels. 173 You can change what the ruler set to by right clicking 174 and then changing it to something else. 175 It just doesn't want to do it 176 when I'm in the middle of cropping. 177 So I could hit the escape key to get out of the crop 178 and then come up here and change this. 179 So if I wanted it to be in inches, 180 I could choose this and so on. 181 And this determines the measurement system 182 on a lot of things in Photoshop. 183 So you might wanna set it to whatever you personally prefer, 184 but I'm gonna hide my rulers. 185 You can do that from the view menu 186 and there's a keyboard shortcut that's easy to remember. 187 It's command R, Control+R and Windows for rulers. 188 But you don't have to set the rulers 189 to the measurement system you'd like to use. 190 I could type in eight and then IN for inches 191 or mm for millimeters. 192 Then I can go to the next field 193 and let's say I want 10 IN, so I know it's in inches 194 and therefore ,I can bypass what those rulers are set to. 195 Then over here it wants to know the resolution. 196 Resolution is usually measured in pixels per inch. 197 Let's say I want a resolution at 240. 198 So now it's all set up. 199 So when I move this cropping rectangle around 200 and I dial in the exact area that I would like 201 to include in my crop, 202 it's going to crop the image and it's going to size it 203 so it's exactly eight inches in the width 204 with a resolution of 240. 205 And all it's gonna do is the math. 206 It's gonna multiply eight by 240 to figure out 207 how many pixels wide that should be. 208 When I press return or enter, 209 it will do that work 210 and now it's scaled for exactly that. 211 So if I come up here and choose image size, 212 it should tell me 213 that I have an eight by 10 inch image 214 at 240 for the resolution. 215 So that's what you can do if you need a very specific size. 216 Otherwise you can come in here and just set this to ratio 217 and there's a clear button on the right. 218 Just click clear 219 and now you can make this any shape you want. 220 You can make it square, rectangle, whatever. 221 The numbers up here are no longer limiting things. 222 We then here have an option called straighten. 223 And there this is supposed to look like a bubble level 224 and if you click on it, you can move on top of your image, 225 and if you had a prominent horizon line, 226 you could click and drag on it to get it to straighten. 227 I don't in this particular image, 228 but let's say I chose this line right here, 229 even though it's not really a horizon, 230 but you can just see if I make a line parallel to it, 231 when I let go, it's gonna make sure 232 that's perfectly horizontal. 233 It doesn't just work with horizontal items though. 234 It actually looks if it's closer to being vertical 235 or closer to being horizontal. 236 So I'm assuming if I go across this area here 237 with that straightened tool, 238 it might make that perfectly vertical, 239 although I'm not sure if it'll do what I want. 240 Yep, it just looks at am I closer to being vertical 241 or am I closer to being horizontal? 242 And that's what determines what it's gonna end up at. 243 But that's what you can use for straightening your picture. 244 If you'd rather not use that, 245 then you can when you have a crop move outside 246 of the cropping rectangle. 247 And if you do, you're gonna see your mouse changes into 248 a little curve, and then if you click and drag, 249 you're gonna be rotating this 250 and that's another way of rotating when you're cropping. 251 I'm gonna hit escape though 252 'cause I didn't really want to rotate this. 253 I thought it looked fine to begin with. 254 We have a few other options 255 that are up here in the options bar. 256 This little guy looks like a grid 257 and this tells me what kind of grid am I gonna see 258 and when am I gonna see it. 259 If this is set a rule of thirds, 260 which is its current choice, 261 the moment I grab one of these side handles 262 and start to move it, that's when I see the overlay. 263 And you can see that it's divided the image up into thirds 264 vertically and horizontally. 265 But you can change that. 266 If you come up here, 267 you could instead have a finer grid 268 or you can have other choices. 269 Let's get a finer grid, 270 and now when I'm moving this, you can see that grid. 271 If you don't wanna see it 272 when you're not grabbing those edges, 273 then come in here, 274 and right now it says always show overlay. 275 But if I choose auto, 276 then it's only gonna show when I grab those handles 277 and when I let go it'll disappear. 278 And that's kind of what I like. 279 Or if you simply never like that overlay, 280 you could choose never. 281 Then next to that, we have a little gear icon 282 and if I click on it, we have a few options. 283 I don't necessarily want to go over the mall 284 because they're not necessarily important, 285 but if you wanna know, show cropped area, 286 well, if I turn it off, we can't see the area outside 287 of the cropping rectangle. 288 So I can't tell if there's actually more image out there 289 that I can add back. 290 Over here, enable crop shield, 291 that means the area outside the cropping rectangle, 292 what should it look like. 293 If I turn it off, 294 it looks just like the normal image 295 and I could control what color is covering it up 296 and how much can you see through it, that type of thing. 297 But I think that's enough about the crop tool. 298 If you wanted a specific size, 299 dial in what you want up here 300 and when you're done, hit the little check box that's here 301 or press the return or enter key. 302 The one other thing I could say is if you had delete crop 303 pixels turned off so that when you crop, 304 it's still retaining this information beyond the edge, 305 you're just not seeing it. 306 If you ever want to then uncrop the image 307 to get all those areas back, 308 you can always go to the image menu. 309 And in there is a choice called reveal all. 310 What reveal all does is it says let's make it... 311 So anything that is beyond the bounds of this document, 312 I can suddenly see by making the document larger 313 so that it includes all that stuff in the visible area. 314 So when I choose reveal all, I get that stuff back. 315 Or another way of thinking of it, 316 let's say I create a brand new layer 317 and on that brand new layer 318 I paint and then I use the move tool 319 and I move that paint so it extends up there. 320 Well, now if I choose image reveal all, 321 the document will get bigger until 322 I can see all that paint. 323 I see everything that goes all the way out like that. 324 There is one other command that's very similar to that. 325 Let me just throw away the image itself. 326 So we just have this little squiggle. 327 What if I wanted to crop this 328 and I wanted to crop it down to only the areas 329 that actually contain information 330 and have it ignore all this empty stuff? 331 Well, if you go to the image menu, 332 there is a choice called trim, 333 and when you choose it, 334 you can tell it what to look for in here. 335 If I choose transparent pixels, 336 then it looks for this checkerboard and it's gonna crop in 337 until it gets rid of all the checkerboard 338 that it could without discarding anything else. 339 Or sometimes you'll have a different situation 340 where this area won't be a checkerboard. 341 Instead it'll be white, black, or some other color, 342 and then you could tell it should it look at whatever pixel 343 is sitting up here in the absolute corner 344 of the image up here or in the bottom right corner 345 and crop in to get rid of all of it. 346 And finally, which sides should it crop? 347 But I'm just gonna leave it at default settings 348 and click okay. 349 And that's what made it kind of snug in 350 right up against particular object to get rid 351 of all the transparent areas. 352 But then let's choose undo to get back 353 before I ever crop this image. 354 I'll throw away that layer 355 and let's move on to different tools. 356 Well, I just painted. 357 So let's talk about the paintbrush tool. 358 I would have to say the time I use the paintbrush tool 359 the most is when I'm working on a layer mask, 360 and we have a separate lesson on layer mask 361 so you can look at what's there. 362 But let's look at the settings for this tool 363 and a few tips and tricks about using it. 364 So first off, before I paint on this image, 365 I don't want to change the image permanently, 366 so I'm gonna create a brand new empty layer. 367 Then I need to choose my foreground color 368 because my foreground color is going 369 to be the color that I paint with. 370 Right now it's white. 371 So if I paint, I get white. 372 I'll choose undo. 373 What if I want to paint from a color 374 that's in this photograph? 375 We have a tool designed specifically for that. 376 It's two slots above the paintbrush. It's right here. 377 It looks like a Turkey baster. 378 It's known as the eyedropper tool. 379 And only thing that tool does is when you move your mouse on 380 top of your image and you click, watch my foreground color, 381 it will change to the color I click on. 382 I can click over here and it will change to that and so on. 383 If I'd like to compare the color that I currently have 384 as my foreground color to what I'm currently clicking on, 385 then just click and hold down. 386 And do you see that ring that's there? 387 Well, the bottom half of the ring is showing you 388 the color you used to have, 389 and the top half is showing you 390 the color you're choosing right now. 391 And I could move around like this 392 to change which area I'm looking at, 393 and the whole time I could be comparing it 394 to the color we used to have, which is the bottom half. 395 The gray part around the ring just makes it easier 396 to see so it doesn't blend right in with your image, 397 but that can be useful to compare 398 what it is you had a moment ago with 399 what you're about to choose. 400 Then up here in the options bar we have some choices. 401 First there's show sampling ring 402 and that's exactly what I was talking about a second ago. 403 If you turn that off and then you click on your image, 404 it just changes your foregone color 405 without giving you any visual overlay. 406 Turn on sampling ring 407 and you see that ring I was talking about. 408 Then over here it says sample 409 and should it sample all the layers 410 or should it sample only the current layer you're working on 411 or you got a few other choices. 412 You just got to decide. 413 Do you want it to only look at the layer 414 you're currently working on? 415 If so, use this. 416 Or do you want to look at the document as a whole regardless 417 of how many layers it's made out of? 418 Which is what I'm using most of the time, 419 and that's all layers. 420 Then over here, we have sample size. 421 Well, if I were to zoom up on part of this image 422 and let's say I was working up in here, 423 if I click in this area, 424 can you see kind of the net that's in here? 425 And that net is very, very thin. 426 So if I go in here to click, I might click on the net 427 or I might click on the colored water that's around it. 428 Well, this tells it how large of an area 429 should it actually look at when it determines 430 what color it should end up with. 431 If I set it to point sample, 432 then I could easily get this reddish color 433 that is in this transition between the dark area here 434 and the brighter area out here, 435 and I can get any single pixel that is in there. 436 But the problem with that is your image is noisy 437 or you have stuff like this or is that net in there, 438 you might wanna set this to something else. 439 Let's say I set it to 11 by 11. 440 Now when I click, 441 it's gonna make a square area centered on where I click. 442 That is 11 pixels wide, 11 pixels tall,,, 443 and it's going to average 444 everything that's inside that square. 445 And therefore if I click here, 446 it's gonna kind of blend the look of the net 447 into the surroundings, 448 and I'm gonna get a consistent color 449 when I click around here. 450 Even if I click on the dark part where the net is 451 or the light part where the water was, 452 the results will be about the same 453 because it's using an area and averaging it. 454 That's also gonna make it impossible for me 455 to get this exact color right here 456 because an 11 by 11 square would overlap this stuff 457 that's darker and this stuff which is a different color. 458 So when I click, 459 the result's not gonna be really what was right there. 460 So you just got to decide. 461 Most of the time 462 I either have this to point sample if I need 463 to be very precise with what I'm choosing. 464 Or even more commonly than that, 465 I have it set to about five by five average 466 because images in general will contain 467 a little bit of noise. 468 And if there's one little speck of noise 469 and I happen to click right on it, 470 I don't usually want it to pick that up. 471 I wanted the general shade that was in that area 472 so I can choose it. 473 Then when you're using this tool, 474 if you hold down the option key, which is alt and Windows, 475 you're gonna be changing your background color 476 instead of your foreground color. 477 And so I can get them to look about the same 478 or I can get the background color, 479 it's right over here, to look darker. 480 So that's the other thing about using this tool. 481 But I rarely go to this tool to change colors 482 because most of the time when I'm choosing a color, 483 I'm using something like the paintbrush tool 484 and it's zoom out here and I'm about to paint. 485 Well, there is a shortcut 486 and that is when you're in a painting tool, 487 if you hold down the option key for the amount 488 of time you have it held down, which is alt and Windows, 489 you're gonna temporarily get that eyedropper tool. 490 And therefore, you can very quickly choose a color 491 from within your image and then paint with it 492 and then just option click again and then paint with that 493 and then option click again and paint with it. 494 And it's very easy to pick colors while you're painting. 495 So let's talk more about our paint brush tool. 496 With your paintbrush tool, 497 up here you choose the brush you want to use, 498 and most of the time, I don't even click on this 499 if I want a round brush 500 because the two settings are up here, 501 size and hardness, 502 I can change with my keyboard 503 and I need to change them so often 504 that I don't like moving up here to do it. 505 So if you wanna change it with your keyboard, 506 look down at your keyboard right above the return 507 or inner key, you'll find the square bracket keys. 508 They look like half squares. 509 If I press the right bracket key, 510 I get a larger brush, 511 left bracket key, I get a smaller brush. 512 And if I want to change how soft the edge of the brush is, 513 which I won't be able to see over here 514 with this little brush cursor, I need to look right here 515 and just stare at that preview. 516 To change it, you use the same bracket keys 517 and you just add shift. 518 So right now I have shift held down, 519 I'll do right bracket key, that makes it a harder edge, 520 I'll do left bracket key and that makes it a softer edge. 521 And you can go between settings 522 of 0, 25, 50, 75, and 100. 523 And all it's doing is changing this setting here 524 that's called hardness. 525 You're not limited to using a round brush. 526 Instead you can have ones that have really wild shapes. 527 If you expand this out and you go 528 and start looking at what's in here, 529 you're gonna find ones 530 that have all sorts of different looks. 531 You should just be aware that these previews 532 that are right here, 533 it's assuming you have a pressure sensitive graphics tablet 534 and it's showing you what would it look like 535 if you press lightly and if you press more heavily. 536 Whereas if you don't have a graphics tablet, 537 you just have a mouse, 538 it's not gonna vary like you see there. 539 But that is beyond what we're gonna cover right now. 540 For now we're just looking at round brushes. 541 You also have this little icon here which will bring up 542 an entire panel where you can fine tune the settings 543 for a brush and you have the same general presets in here 544 and then over here are settings for them. 545 And when you look at these, 546 don't think these are just single settings 547 that you can turn on and off. 548 These are entire categories of settings. 549 So I could click on the word scattering 550 and then I'm gonna see all the settings related to 551 that particular feature. 552 I can then come down here to color dynamics 553 and see a whole nother set of stuff. 554 But clicking on it also enables whatever's in there. 555 As long as the sliders are at zero though, 556 it's not gonna do anything. 557 But I'm gonna turn those off 558 just because I didn't wanna mess with them. 559 I just wanted to show you what it looked like. 560 So that I got to by clicking on this icon up here 561 in our options bar. 562 But you can also get to it by going to the Window menu 563 and there you'll find brush settings 564 and another panel called brushes. 565 This is the blending mode menu 566 and we'll have an entire lesson devoted 567 just to what this menu does. 568 You'll find it not just with the paintbrush tool, 569 but with layers and other things. 570 So for now we're gonna ignore it. 571 Here we have opacity. 572 Opacity means how much can we see 573 through the color we're painting with. 574 So if I were to come in here and choose, 575 let's say this color out here and just paint, 576 it's completely opaque, 577 which means that I can completely cover up 578 whatever's under it. 579 If on the other hand I lower opacity 580 and I'll just click on the word, 581 the name of it and drag, 582 I bring it down here to 50% or nearby. 583 Now I'm gonna be able to see through about 50% 584 to what was underneath. 585 There is another setting up here called flow, 586 and flow at first looks like 587 it does the same thing as opacity. 588 If I brought it down to around 50% 589 and I painted, it would look the same in general, 590 but there is a difference. 591 Flow is mainly useful with soft edge brushes. 592 So let me get a soft edge brush and then I'll paint 593 and it just looks like you can see through it. 594 But let's look at the difference. 595 I'll bring flow up 596 and bring opacity down so we can see the difference. 597 I'm gonna paint. Remember this is low opacity. 598 I do this and I'm gonna paint back a second paint stroke 599 in a third and a fourth and a fifth and a sixth. 600 And notice it will not build up. 601 In order to get it to build up, 602 I'd have to let go of the mouse button, 603 which I just did, and click again. 604 Now we're putting in a second coat. 605 And in order to get it to build up more, 606 I'd have to let go yet again and click, 607 and we can build up more. 608 Let me choose undo a few times 609 and now instead of using opacity, 610 let's use flow. 611 Flow's a little bit different. 612 The very first time I paint it looks the same as opacity, 613 but the difference is I don't have 614 to let go of the mouse button. 615 If I go back and forth and back and forth, 616 it's just gonna build up automatically. 617 Choose undo. 618 So you just need to think, 619 do you want whatever it is you're doing to build up 620 as you paint back and forth, back and forth? 621 If so, flow is what you want to use. 622 Or do you want a consistent amount 623 and only let going of the mouse 624 and clicking again would build up more? 625 If that's the case, use opacity. 626 You can even use them together. 627 You could say 50% opacity and 20% flow. 628 What the heck would that mean? 629 Well, that would mean, 630 first, 50% is the maximum amount 631 I would be able to get without letting go 632 of my mouse button and 20% would be how much 633 of that maximum am I gonna get 634 on the very first paint stroke. 635 Then I could paint back and forth and back and forth 636 and back and forth, 637 and each time I did, I'd be adding 20% more of this amount. 638 And once I painted across enough times 639 where I built it all the way up, 640 it would max out right there at 50%. 641 You'd be able to only see it through it 50% of the way. 642 So this would be the max without letting go of the mouse. 643 And this is how much of that maximum 644 do you want on the first 645 and subsequent paint strokes 646 if you pass over the area more than once? 647 Okay, if you wanna change those using your keyboard, 648 you can without clicking on them, 649 just use the number keys in your keyboard. 650 Nine would be 9, three will be 30, 651 eight will be 80. 652 If you type two numbers quickly, 653 like three five, you get 35. 654 And if you want to get it all the way up to 100, type zero. 655 To change flow, just hold down shift 656 and do the exact same thing. 657 So five for 50 658 or six seven for 67%, zero for 100. 659 And that should get you started with the brush tool. 660 There's another fancy stuff in here like this thing here 661 if you want it to automatically reflect your paint stroke 662 so you have it looking like it's reflected in a mirror 663 right next to it, you can mess with that, 664 but that's beyond what we need to do right now. 665 So let's move down a few slots 666 and look at this tool. 667 That is the eraser tool. 668 And so with the eraser tool, 669 you have a brush just like when you had the paintbrush tool 670 and that brush can have a soft 671 or hard edge just like with the normal paintbrush tool. 672 And with that, we also have opacity and flow, 673 but in this case, instead of putting paint down, 674 we're gonna be removing whatever it is we paint over. 675 And this is saying how much of it do you wanna remove? 676 A 100% of it at once or not? 677 And flow means how much do I want 678 on the first paint stroke I go across? 679 So if this information is sitting on a layer 680 and if you look at my layers panel, 681 you'll see those little paint strokes are there. 682 I can come over here and just erase this 683 and I'll reveal what's on the layer that's underneath. 684 Or if I choose undo, I could lower my opacity. 685 Let's see, I type five to get it at 50. 686 And now when I paint, 687 I'm gonna remove 50% of whatever is on the layer 688 that is currently active, 689 and therefore, I'll reveal what's underneath. 690 But I'll still be able to see through it 691 'cause I didn't remove all of it. 692 Choose undo. 693 And I can bring my opacity back up by typing zero. 694 If I hide this layer 695 and I work on the layer that's underneath 696 and I just use the eraser tool, 697 then I'm gonna make that layer disappear in that area 698 and you're just gonna see a checkerboard 699 because there's nothing underneath it to reveal. 700 I would rarely do that. 701 I would instead use a layer mask, 702 and a layer mask would allow me to do the same thing 703 but it wouldn't be permanent, 704 and therefore, it'd be more flexible. 705 So I'd rarely do that. 706 And then one other thing about using the eraser tool, 707 if the layer you're currently working on happens 708 to be called the background, 709 which let me see if I can make that turn into one, 710 then when you use the eraser tool, 711 the background layer cannot have a hole in it. 712 So when you attempt to erase now, 713 you're gonna instead have it paint 714 with your background color. 715 And it's just a weird thing 716 where the background layer acts differently 717 because you can't have areas transparent within it. 718 But the eraser tool's pretty simple. 719 Below that is the gradient tool. 720 The gradient tool allows you to make a smooth transition 721 between two or more colors. 722 And a lot of the times it will end up using your foreground 723 and background colors as the source, but it doesn't have to. 724 Up here in the options bar, 725 you have a few options right here 726 being a preview of your gradient. 727 And if you click on this little down pointing arrow, 728 here you have presets 729 and you can have them in different categories in here. 730 And if you don't find as many as I have, 731 you can go to this little side menu here and import them 732 or append the defaults if they're not there right now. 733 You can download things like these 734 from the internet as well. 735 And all you'd have to do is click on one of these 736 and then that's what you'd be working with. 737 And anyone where you see a checkerboard 738 means it's going from one color 739 and it'll fade out to nothing. 740 It'll fade out to whatever's already in your picture. 741 This one here, the very first one goes from your foreground 742 color to your background color. 743 This one is foreground to transparent, 744 this is black to white, 745 and then these are some preset colors. 746 Then you can click and drag on your picture. 747 So I'll click here, I'll drag there, 748 and I've made my gradient. 749 We can change where these are 750 by just grabbing these little dots at the ends 751 and repositioning them. 752 And then there's a diamond in the middle that's known 753 as the midpoint. 754 That is showing you the color that's halfway 755 between these two and I can click on it 756 and reposition that to control how it fades out 757 to make it weighted towards one side or the other. 758 You'll find a similar thing over here on the right side in 759 the properties panel, 760 there's the diamond in the middle and so on. 761 If you want to change the colors here, you see the colors, 762 they're known as color stops. 763 You could double click on it 764 and it would bring up a color picker 765 and you could choose any color you want. 766 You can even come in here 767 and if you go just below this little bar, 768 you'll see a little plus sign up here 769 and you could click to add an additional color 770 and then that can go over here and click 771 and add yet another color. 772 Whenever you have a color, 773 you can double click on it to change what it is. 774 And these little diamonds are the mid points 775 between the two colors that are surrounding that diamond. 776 You can move these things around 777 and adjust the mid points to make as interesting 778 of a gradient as you'd like or make one as ugly as this. 779 Then up here at the top, either here or in the options bar, 780 'cause most of these settings are reflected 781 up in the options bar, 782 we can change what type of gradient we have. 783 So far we've been using one that's known 784 as a linear gradient. 785 If I switch to the next one, we get a radial one, 786 and that's where the color starts in the middle of a circle 787 and radiates out to the edge. 788 And we could fine tune where that is, grab the middle, 789 and move it if we'd like. 790 And again, we have those mid points. 791 If we grab this, 792 we could pull this in 793 and make it so it's not a perfect circle, 794 or I'll choose undo because I liked it when it was a circle. 795 We also have another one up here. 796 This will make it go around kind of like the sweep 797 of a radar where it starts at one color here 798 and it sweeps around. 799 I really like using that one when I use the preset 800 that has the whole rainbow of colors, 801 'cause if you look at that preset, 802 it starts with red up here and it ends with red, 803 and therefore there is no seam like you see here. 804 So therefore I can create what you might call a color wheel, 805 but that sweeps around like a radar 806 and it's known as an angle gradient. 807 The next one is just like the first one 808 except for it applies it twice so it's reflected. 809 So therefore it's applying the red to red. 810 And then again, and we have one other one 811 which makes it like a diamond. 812 So you can choose between those 813 and you can modify this 814 by dragging everything around if you'd like. 815 And you can also double click on these colors 816 that appear on the image itself. 817 They're just copies of what you see over here. 818 Then if you look over here in the properties, 819 you also have something called opacity controls. 820 If you would like part of your gradient to be see-through, 821 you could click just below this bar. 822 And when you do, you're going to control 823 with this opacity setting exactly how much you can see 824 through that area. 825 If I bring the opacity down to zero, 826 now we're seeing through that middle portion 827 and then these little diamonds here control the fade out 828 between that transparent area 829 and whatever it is on the edge there. 830 It looks pretty weird with this gradient. 831 If I were to slide up here 832 and choose a more normal gradient here, 833 I'll just go from black to white. 834 Then I could come down here 835 and put in some transparent areas. 836 Let's make it so it's not a diamond. 837 Instead, let's make it radiate out from middle. 838 And maybe what I want is it radiates out from black, 839 and instead of making it out here to white, 840 it actually fades out and shows up nothing out there. 841 So I can come over here and click on this end that's here, 842 and when I click once on it, I can dial in the opacity, 843 that's the outer opacity. 844 And then if I want it to be opaque all the way up 845 just until then, I'd need to add an additional one. 846 Just click here, dial it up to what you want, 847 and then move it out there near the end. 848 So it takes a little while to get used 849 to these settings, but just know you can experiment. 850 There are more settings in here 851 than anybody would ever need, 852 but in general, click and drag to make your gradient, 853 adjust the position of these handles. 854 And then if you would like 855 to add additional colors across it, 856 then you can either go just below this little line 857 and you get a little plus sign 858 or you can go over here in the properties 859 and do the same thing in here. 860 And this one down here controls opacity. 861 Well, let's get rid of that. Enough about the gradient tool. 862 In fact, let's close this document 863 and let's open an image I worked on in a previous lesson. 864 There's one other tool that I use frequently, 865 but I won't use it for the exact purpose I show you here. 866 I instead use this on layer masks, 867 but you should know what the tool does. 868 Below the gradient tool is a tool 869 that looks like a drop of water. 870 And what that does is it blurs images. 871 So if I were to go on top of this image 872 and click on this area and just drag, 873 the more I paint across it, 874 the blurrier it's gonna become. 875 There are other tools in the same slot. 876 There's a sharpen tool, 877 which I have to say I never use. 878 It's just there are better ways of sharpening. 879 But if you were to paint with it, you'd sharpen an area. 880 And also in there, there's one called the Smudge tool, 881 and you might notice that more if I go up here 882 to this top area. 883 And if I click here, I can just move pixels, 884 just kind of smudge them as if it's made out of Play-Doh 885 or Silly Putty or something and move them around. 886 Not very often I need that, 887 but you might find you like it 888 for certain creative purposes. 889 What I mainly use the blur tool for 890 is when I have a layer mask. 891 If I have a layer mask 892 and I notice that it has two crisp of an edge on it 893 and it just looks like it needs to be the slightest bit more 894 of a soft transition, I'll end up using the blur tool 895 and I'll just paint across the edge of the mask 896 similarly to painting across this edge like this. 897 And it will suddenly have a softer edge. 898 If you want it to be more aggressive, 899 there's a strength setting up here at the top. 900 Just set it to a higher number here. 901 If it's too aggressive, put it at a lower number. 902 Well, I think that's enough about the basic tools 903 to just get you started, 904 get a feeling for some of them that are there. 905 We'll use some of the others that we haven't talked about 906 yet in other lessons as we progress on.