Top 10 Tools that You Need to be Master of Adobe Photoshop

In today’s world, Adobe Photoshop is the most popular software for image or photo editing. It can be used for both individual and commercial practices. It allows us to restore the glorious personal photos, charm retouching, enrichment of images, deletion of background, and so on. One can reduce the imperfection of regular photographs too by using this software. It has brought a revolution in the era of image manipulation. Photoshop has brought a complete change in digital image editing after it has been popularized.

It provides a lot of multi-tasking tools and options that allow making simple images outstanding that’s why Photoshop has been popular among the gathering of image editing software to the designers. There are commanding tools and commands in this photo editing software which makes you proficient to achieve any kind of editing. You must have a good knowledge of useful tools of it if you want to be. And to get such skills you need the hard-core photo editing training in Rohini.

Some of the most useful tools in Adobe Photoshop are:

  • Selection Tools
  • Masking Tools
  • Brush Tools
  • Adjustment Layers
  • Clone Stamp Tool
  • Layer Tool
  • Blend Modes
  • Transformation Tool
  • Liquify Tool
  • Crop Tool

In this article, we have taken an advantage to discuss the widely used tools & options of this mega software.

1. Selection Tool

selection tools

It’s the first step for every beginner who just started learning Adobe Photoshop courses. A selection means the selection of some specific pixels. Or we can say selection sorts and picks the set of pixels. You can do many things by using a selection of pixels like moving the pixels, changing colors of them, resize the pixels and so on.

It provides two tools for selection namely Path Selection and Direct Selection Tool. Different tasks can be done by these tools. For instance, you can easily move any path with the help of Path selection tool.
To choose the anchor point or path for modification, you can use Direct Selection Tool. You can understand it clearly from the following image.

pen selection tool

2. Masking Tool

It is important to understand the concept of masking before doing it because Many experts believe that image masking is very important. Masking means the show or hides pixels in Photoshop. You can hide the pixels behind the mask by placing black onto a mask. To shows the pixel we place the white on the masks. Alpha Channel Masking, Layer masking, etc. are some instances of unlike kinds of masking.

Types of Masking

Various types of masking are there. You can make a lot of changes in graphics by using masking skill. Some instances are given here:

a) Simple Masking

This is a stage which consists the addition of new background by the simple masking methods. For this purpose, open the image on which you want to add a background.

masking tool use

Now, click on the mask, select the brush tool from the toolbar, and drag on the background. It will make visible the background erasing the top background. See the below image and continue dragging.

masking with background

This is a way of alteration of the background. The below image is the result of our experiment. If you work patiently, you must get the highest result.

complete image with masking

b) Layer Mask

It is another important tool that will capable you creating a high-quality image. You can use the tool for various tasks, here we are going to show you to remove and to replace image background.
For using a layer mask, let’s open an image in Photoshop and unlock the layer by double-clicking on the lock icon.

layer mask

Select the Pen tool to create a path around the image. To do that properly, firstly zoom the image and you should create path 1 or 2 pixels inside from the edge. Here, we have selected a spinner image for our experiment and going to create a path.
Here, firstly we create a path around the present spinner, then inside the three round holes where white background is available.

pen tool

We press Ctrl+Enter to make the path selection and hit the Delete button to remove the backdrops. For the three holes, only we make the path selected and hit the delete, but to select the main background, we press Ctrl+Shift+I to inverse and press the Delete button.

inverse

Then, what we have got is shown by the below image. We get a background free image. Now, we want to replace a new background.

background replace image

For this reason, we take a new layer, place it under the main image layer, select the foreground color, and finally apply by the paint bucket. In this stage, we have achieved an image that we wanted earlier.

colorfull background

c) Alpha Channel Masking

It is another masking technique which is used for many important photo editing services, but it is mostly applied for removing the background from the soft edge image such as hair, thin cloths, fur, and many more.
To work with Alpha channel masking, firstly open your image in Photoshop and unlock it. Duplicate the layer from the layer palette.

alpha cheanel masking

Go to the channel, select the most contrast image with the background and make invisible other channels. Duplicate the channel.

chanel option
chanels

Ensure the duplicated channel visible when others are invisible.

color combination

Press Ctrl+I from a keyboard to invert the channel. See and match if your image looks like the below one.

fully black background

Now, press Ctrl+L to get level, move the slide to make the background fully black removing the white glare.

levels option

Then take Pen tool or Lasso tool and create a path around the flesh or body & face area. Ensure white color in both the foreground and the background. Next, press Ctrl+Enter to make selection and Ctrl+Delete to fill the selected portion with white color.

delete the selected area

Pressing Ctrl+D to deselect the selection and select Dodge tool, select Highlight from the top. See the image below.

highlight option

Drag on the area that Pen tool cannot select. Then go to the channel, click on the RGB to select first four channels and keep un-selected the last one. See the image below.

capture

Now, go to Select from the top bar, click on the Load selection, select Blue Copy from the drop-down and press OK as shown in the image. This process will make your image selected.

select option
capture 1

Then, come back to the Layer tab, select the first layer and click on Add a Mask from the bottom of the Layer Palette.

layer copy

At last, click on the eye icon of the first layer/Layer 0, and you will get a background removed image. Now, you can change the background as you want.

change background
blue background

3. Brush Tools

brush tools

Hearing about brushes, the first thing that occurs in the mind of common people is painting. Though Photoshop is not conventionally related to that, it can be termed as an amazing digital painting application. For several types of image manipulations, brush tool works wonderful. For masking and adjustment layers, brush tool has been one of the most useful things.

There are several types of Brush tools for different works such as Healing Spot Brush, Brush tool, History Brush, and many more. Besides, you can load your own brush under these tools that will enable you to work with more outstanding brushes.

a) Healing Brush Tool

Let’s see working with Healing Brush To work with this tool, select an image which has spots like the below image.

spot hill tool

Press Alt and click on the fresh skin so that it can copy the fresh area. Then, click on the spot. In this way, you can remove spots from an image using the brush tool.

remove spot

b) History Brush Tool

The name of this tool itself says what it works. This tool is used to bring back the spots that you have removed from any image. Sometimes, it may happen that you have used brush tool in an inappropriate place, or used too much, then you can use History Brush tool to undo like Ctrl+Z.

history brush tool

4. Adjustment Layers

An adjustment layer is a vital tool of Photoshop program that is used for various purposes. To make changes to pixel’s color, tone, brightness or contrasts. Even to convert the image black and white adjustment layers work nicely. In a word, Adjustment layer helps the designers to add any effect in various layers at a time. See the work process-

adjustment layer

How to do Adjustment Layer in Photoshop?

For using this tool, firstly, you have to open some images in different layers on the same canvas as the below image is showing.

cars option

Now, select the top layer. Here the top layer is layer number 4. Click on the Adjustment Layer and you can see a lot of options here. Choose one that you like to apply to your images. We are taking Hue/Saturation option and doing work with that.

saturation
hue option

While clicking on the Adjustment layer, we get a Hue/Saturation panel and an Adjustment layer just above the layer number 4 because we selected this layer.

hue saturation

As we want to apply the same effect on each and every layer together, we select the top layer, but if you want to apply the same effect on layer number 1 and 2, then select the layer 2 and take adjustment layer here. It means the adjustment layer works on the layers under it.
However, working with the adjustment layer, we have changed the color of the cars. We just have moved the Hue/Saturation slides and the color got change altogether in all layers.

car color change

There is another advantage of Adjustment layer and that is if we want to get back the earlier color or raw image, we can just invisible the layer or delete the Adjustment layer.

adjust layer

Again, if you want to apply the created effect, leaving one or two layers, you can just move the Adjustment layer dragging under those layers because this tool works layers below it. Follow the below image. The cars of layer 3 and 4 are unchanged because the Adjustment layer is of these two layers.

capture 2

5. Clone Stamp

clone stamp

For editing or retouching photos, clone tool is something that comes with the first priority. Its main and basic job is to allow the designers sampling pixels from one part of an image and paint those pixels onto another part of the same or different image. One can use this tool to remove spots and blemishes from a photo or even to delete objects from a photo altogether.

How Clone Stamp Tool Work?

There are a bunch of works that we can do using Clone Stamp Tool. Here, we are going to show two works- spot removing and object removing.
For spot removing, using Clone Tool in Photoshop is pretty much easy. Just, open your image in Photoshop and duplicate the layer so that if one is destroyed, you can use another.

Then, select the clone tool from the toolbar and click just beside the spot pressing Alt from your keyboard so that it can copy that area. Now, click on the spot and notice, nicely it has gone away. Beware of copying the same looking area or beside the spot area and pressing second brackets from the keypad to increase or decrease the circle created by the tool same as the spot.

clean spot

In this way, we have worked on every spot and got the below image entail.

spot clear

In our second experiment, we will remove objects from an image using Clone Stamp tool.
Again, open an image where there are unnecessary objects. Here, we will work on the below image. The method we applied to remove the spots with this tool before, the same technique will also be applied to remove the object. See the before-after image below.

object remove

6. Layers

The most organizational tools of Photoshop are the layers. Due to layers, designers enjoy the freedom of non-destructive image editing. These are like sheets or pages of a book stacked one after another. Adjustment Layers designers use to organize all of the PSD files in such a way that makes sense to anyone watching it. Layers are so important in making any creative photo compositing.
See the below screenshot where we have created layers, one onto another. Layer 1 is the transparent layer which has now background. You can see through the layer anything behind it. Layer 2 has a fill color background white background. The rest 2 layers are of two images which are stacked. You can resize, reduce opacity, apply shadows, etc. Everything you can do as required for your project.

layers

7. Blend Modes

Blend modes have great uses for the Photoshop experts. By using this feature, one can easily blend multiple layers together in an interesting way. This option has the benefit of applying different behaviors to the layers. By setting the blending mode, the color, tone, and contrast can be changed to the ordered way.
Let’s have a look at a small, but funny work of blend mode.
For this experiment purpose, we have taken the below two images.

bland mode

We open these images in Photoshop into two different layers for blending two layers. Drag the texture below the main image that means what you like to keep in the background, drag it under the main subject.

drag texture

Now, it is time to apply the blend mode. Keep selected your main subject. For this composition, we have selected the girl image and kept it on top.

select girl image

We click on the blend mode option and got a dropdown. We select Hard Light for this image composite. You can apply all blend modes from the drop-down and then select one result that suit you best.

dropdown menu

After applying what result we have got is the below. There are also many ways to use blending modes for getting best quality photos. Here is the simple one to make you sense. You can use layer masking to show this effect on the desired portion of the image also.

image with texture

8. Transformation Tools

There are some tools that make the work of photo editing simply wonderful. These powerful tools help to resize, distort, transform, and warp the images. These transformation tools, in fact, push pixels around and move them into place.
This tool will help you to resize or reorganize all the layers that you are using for photo editing or creative image compositing. Look at the image below you can find many points. Just press Shift key or Ctrl key and drag the clicking on the pointer. Your layers will get transformed into different sizes.

transform tool

By using this transformation tool, you can rotate your layers. It will also enable you to make your layers polygonal shapes. To rotate, go to corner pointer. You will find a curved shape sign and drag it up & down to see the rotation. And also, to have your layers in uneven shapes, press Ctrl and drag holding any pointer and see the changes.

transfer image

9. Liquify

liquify

​Many retouch experts highly depend on liquify tool. By this tool, the pixels are pushed around on a screen. It is very common to make some drastic edits to a photo using it. The importance of liquefy lies in its utility in the model photography and some other cases where the shape verifies with the expectation.

​10. Crop Tool

crop tool

Cropping image is probably the most popular work in Photoshop. In this feature, the edges of a photo are trimmed. It is done in both ways- keeping the ratio constant and with a changed ratio. Here, the thing that actually happens is that some unnecessary pixels of the photo are omitted to make the main subject in a closer focus.

Some important tools are mentioned above which are must if you want to master the Adobe Photoshop. It is really an amazing software. Many scopes are there for your career in Digital image editing. So to get an opportunity you should learn Adobe Photoshop courses from the best institute which offers advanced photo editing classes.

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