Are you eager to dive into the world of graphic design with Photoshop but feel overwhelmed by its many tools? Don’t worry! Understanding the basic tools is the perfect starting point to unleash your creativity. Photoshop is powerful software used extensively for photo editing and digital artwork. If you’re serious about graphic design, mastering Photoshop is a must. This guide will introduce you to essential Photoshop tools, with a special focus on the Polygonal Lasso Tool and how to use it effectively.
Exploring Essential Photoshop Tools
Before we zoom in on the Polygonal Lasso Tool, let’s get acquainted with some fundamental tools in Photoshop. Knowing these will give you a solid foundation for your design journey.
1. Move Tool
The Move Tool is straightforward: it allows you to move objects, layers, or selections within your canvas. Simply click and drag the element you want to reposition. The icon typically looks like a pointer with a cross, as shown above. You can quickly activate it by pressing V on your keyboard.
2. Marquee Tools
Marquee Tools are your go-to for making selections. Once you’ve selected an area, you can perform various actions like deleting, cutting, changing colors, or applying effects to just that selected portion.
There are four main types of Marquee Tools:
- Rectangular Marquee Tool: Selects in a rectangular or square shape.
- Elliptical Marquee Tool: Selects in an elliptical or circular shape.
- Single Row Marquee Tool: Creates a 1-pixel high horizontal selection.
- Single Column Marquee Tool: Creates a 1-pixel wide vertical selection.
3. Lasso Tools: Your Freehand Selection Powerhouse
Lasso Tools offer more free-form selection capabilities compared to Marquee Tools. You can draw selections by hand, giving you flexibility for irregular shapes. Within the Lasso Tool family, you’ll find:
- Lasso Tool (Freehand Lasso): Draw a freehand selection by dragging your mouse.
- Polygonal Lasso Tool: Create selections using straight lines and angles – perfect for objects with defined edges. This is our focus tool!
- Magnetic Lasso Tool: Automatically snaps to the edges of objects based on color and contrast, making selection faster for certain images.
The image below demonstrates the basic Lasso Tool in action, allowing for a freehand selection around a strawberry. This selection can then be moved or edited independently.
4. Quick Selection Tool & Magic Wand Tool: Selection Made Easy
These tools are fantastic for quick and efficient selections. The Quick Selection Tool rapidly selects areas based on edge detection, while the Magic Wand Tool selects areas based on similar colors.
Similar to Lasso Tools in application, these tools excel in speed. The example above shows how these tools can quickly select a strawberry, allowing for actions like deleting parts or changing colors, as demonstrated by the modified strawberry in the image.
5. Crop Tool & Slice Tool: Refining Your Canvas
If you’ve worked with photos, you’re likely familiar with the Crop Tool. It trims images to a rectangular or square shape with adjustable dimensions. The Perspective Crop Tool is a more advanced version, allowing you to crop images with perspective distortion, useful for straightening tilted photos.
Alongside cropping, the Slice Tool lets you divide an image into multiple sections for web design or exporting assets. The Slice Select Tool then helps you move and adjust these slices, which are often extracted as separate image files.
The example shows the Crop Tool in use, trimming the canvas area in a rectangular shape. You can predefine aspect ratios like 3×4 or 5×7, or crop freely to any size.
6. Eyedropper Tool: Color Sampling at Your Fingertips
The Eyedropper Tool is simple but crucial: it samples colors from your image and sets them as your foreground color. This sampled color then becomes readily available for use with other tools like the Brush Tool or Shape Tool.
Beyond the basic Eyedropper, you’ll find variations like the 3D Material Eyedropper Tool for 3D objects, and the Color Sampler Tool which gives you RGB and CMYK color readings. The Eyedropper Tool group also includes:
- Ruler Tool: Measures distances and angles on your canvas.
- Note Tool: Adds text notes directly to your Photoshop file.
- Count Tool: Numerically labels objects in your image.
The example shows the Eyedropper Tool sampling a red color from a strawberry, which then becomes the active foreground color in the color palette.
7. Brush Tool: Painting and Drawing in Photoshop
The Brush Tool is your digital paintbrush. It allows you to paint and draw directly on your image, applying color with varied brushstrokes.
Photoshop offers a vast library of brush shapes and styles, making it versatile for everything from subtle color adjustments to creating digital paintings. As shown, the options bar at the top of Photoshop changes when you select the Brush Tool, allowing you to choose different brush tips.
Within the Brush Tool set, you’ll also find:
- Pencil Tool: Creates hard-edged lines, mimicking a pencil.
- Color Replacement Tool: Replaces a selected color with a foreground color while preserving texture and shading.
- Mixer Brush Tool: Simulates realistic paint mixing and blending directly on the canvas.
8. Spot Healing Brush Tool: Blemish Removal and Content-Aware Fill
The Spot Healing Brush Tool is often used for photo retouching, like removing blemishes. It cleverly blends unwanted spots into their surroundings by sampling and matching textures and colors.
The Spot Healing Brush is effective for subtle corrections, as demonstrated in the example where it smooths out imperfections on a strawberry’s surface. This tool group also contains:
- Healing Brush Tool: Similar to the Spot Healing Brush, but allows you to manually select a source area (by holding Alt and clicking) to sample texture and color from, offering more control.
- Patch Tool: Replaces a selected area with pixels from another area you define. You select a region, then drag your selection to a source area to perform the patch.
- Content-Aware Move Tool: Lets you move and extend objects in your image while Photoshop intelligently fills the empty space left behind.
- Red Eye Tool: Specifically designed to remove red-eye caused by flash photography.
9. Eraser Tool: Removing Pixels
The Eraser Tool does exactly what you expect – it erases pixels. It can remove parts of layers, revealing transparency or the layers beneath.
Variations of the Eraser Tool include:
- Background Eraser Tool: Erases the background of an image, especially useful for isolating foreground objects.
- Magic Eraser Tool: Erases areas of similar colors with a single click, useful for quickly removing solid backgrounds.
As seen in the example, the Eraser Tool can be used to selectively remove parts of an object, allowing for creative effects or corrections.
10. Gradient Tool: Smooth Color Transitions
The Gradient Tool creates smooth transitions between two or more colors. It’s commonly used for backgrounds, layer styles, and adding depth to designs. The Gradient Tool offers various gradient styles in the options bar, including linear, radial (circular), diamond, angular, and reflected.
Within this tool group, you’ll also find the Paint Bucket Tool, which fills areas of similar color with a solid color or pattern, and the 3D Material Drop Tool for applying materials to 3D objects.
11. Shape Tools: Creating Vector Graphics
Shape Tools allow you to create vector-based shapes, which are scalable without losing quality. Photoshop offers a range of basic shapes:
- Rectangle Tool: Creates rectangles and squares.
- Rounded Rectangle Tool: Creates rectangles with rounded corners.
- Ellipse Tool: Creates ellipses and circles.
- Polygon Tool: Creates polygons with a specified number of sides.
- Line Tool: Draws straight lines.
- Custom Shape Tool: Provides access to a library of pre-made shapes, like arrows, symbols, and more.
The example shows various shapes created using the Shape Tools, demonstrating their versatility in adding graphic elements to your designs.
12. Pen Tool: Precision Path Creation
The Pen Tool is used to create precise paths and selections using anchor points and curves. It’s a powerful tool for detailed selections and creating vector graphics.
The Pen Tool family includes:
- Freeform Pen Tool: Draws freehand paths, similar to the Lasso Tool but creating vector paths.
- Add Anchor Point Tool: Adds anchor points to existing paths for further shaping.
- Delete Anchor Point Tool: Removes anchor points from paths.
- Convert Point Tool: Changes anchor points between smooth curves and sharp corners, allowing for path refinement.
The example shows a path created around a strawberry leaf using the Pen Tool, demonstrating its capability for intricate selections. Right-clicking on a path gives options to “Make Selection,” converting the path into a selection area, similar to Lasso Tool selections.
13. Direct Selection Tool: Path and Shape Editing
The Direct Selection Tool is used to directly manipulate anchor points and segments of paths and shapes. It allows you to fine-tune vector graphics and paths by adjusting individual points. The Path Selection Tool, on the other hand, is used to move entire paths or shapes as a whole.
The example shows the Direct Selection Tool being used to adjust the anchor points of a shape, in this case, an arrow. You can move, delete, or modify these points to reshape the vector object.
14. Blur Tool: Softening Images
The Blur Tool softens areas of an image, reducing sharpness and detail. It’s useful for creating depth of field effects or subtly softening edges. Related tools include the Sharpen Tool, which increases image sharpness, and the Smudge Tool, which simulates dragging paint across the image.
Using the Blur Tool is straightforward – select it and paint over the areas you want to blur. The example shows a portion of a strawberry blurred to create a shallow depth of field effect.
15. Type Tool: Adding Text to Your Designs
The Type Tool allows you to add text to your Photoshop documents. There are four main Type Tool variations:
- Horizontal Type Tool: Creates standard horizontal text.
- Vertical Type Tool: Creates text that reads from top to bottom.
- Horizontal Type Mask Tool: Creates a text-shaped selection outline in horizontal orientation.
- Vertical Type Mask Tool: Creates a text-shaped selection outline in vertical orientation.
The options bar at the top provides controls for font selection, style (bold, italic, etc.), size, and color. The example shows text added with the Type Tool, and also a text selection created with the Horizontal Type Mask Tool, indicated by the selection outline around the word “Type”.
Deep Dive: Mastering the Polygonal Lasso Tool
Now that we’ve touched on a range of Photoshop tools, let’s focus specifically on the Polygonal Lasso Tool. As mentioned, this tool is incredibly useful for making selections with straight edges. Whether you’re isolating objects with geometric shapes or need precise, angular selections, the Polygonal Lasso Tool is your ideal choice.
How to Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool: A Step-by-Step Guide
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Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool: Locate the Lasso Tool icon in your toolbar. It usually looks like a lasso. Click and hold on the Lasso Tool icon to reveal a flyout menu, and then select the Polygonal Lasso Tool. You can also activate it quickly by pressing Shift + L repeatedly until the Polygonal Lasso Tool is selected.
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Start Your Selection: Click on your image to set the starting point of your selection. This will be the first anchor point.
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Create Straight Segments: Move your cursor to where you want the next corner of your selection to be and click again. This creates a straight line segment between your starting point and the point you just clicked.
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Continue Adding Anchor Points: Keep clicking around the object you want to select, placing anchor points at each corner or change of direction. Straight lines will connect each point, progressively outlining your selection.
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Close the Selection: To complete your selection, you need to close the path. There are two ways to do this:
- Click on the Starting Point: Hover your cursor over the very first anchor point you placed. You’ll see a small circle appear next to your cursor icon. Click on the starting point to close the selection.
- Double-Click to Close: Alternatively, if you are far from your starting point and want to close the selection quickly, simply double-click anywhere on the canvas. Photoshop will automatically connect your last anchor point to the starting point with a straight line.
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Refine Your Selection (Optional): After closing the selection, you might want to refine it. Photoshop offers selection refinement options in the options bar at the top, like “Select and Mask,” which allows you to smooth edges, adjust feathering, and more.
Tips for Using the Polygonal Lasso Tool Effectively:
- Zoom In for Precision: For detailed selections, zoom in (Ctrl + + or Cmd + +) to get a closer view of the edges you are selecting. This allows for more accurate anchor point placement.
- Use Short Segments for Curves: While the Polygonal Lasso Tool is best for straight lines, you can approximate curves by using many short, straight segments. Place anchor points closer together along curves to create a more detailed outline.
- Practice Makes Perfect: Like any Photoshop tool, mastering the Polygonal Lasso Tool takes practice. Experiment with different images and selection types to improve your technique.
- Combine with Other Selection Tools: Don’t be afraid to combine the Polygonal Lasso Tool with other selection tools. For instance, you could use the Quick Selection Tool for the general area and then refine edges with the Polygonal Lasso Tool for straight sections.
Use Cases for the Polygonal Lasso Tool:
- Selecting Objects with Straight Edges: Perfect for selecting architecture, product shots with clean lines, and geometric shapes.
- Isolating Parts of Logos or Illustrations: Useful for isolating elements in logos or illustrations that have sharp, defined edges.
- Creating Masks for Specific Areas: You can turn Polygonal Lasso selections into layer masks for non-destructive editing, allowing you to apply adjustments or effects to precisely defined areas.
- Precise Object Removal or Replacement: When you need to remove or replace an object with straight edges in a photo, the Polygonal Lasso Tool ensures clean and accurate selections.
Conclusion: Unleash Your Creative Potential with Photoshop Tools
Mastering Photoshop tools is a continuous journey, but understanding these fundamental tools, especially the Polygonal Lasso Tool, is a significant step forward. The Polygonal Lasso Tool empowers you to make precise, straight-edged selections, opening up a world of possibilities for photo editing and graphic design.
Keep practicing and exploring the diverse tools Photoshop offers. For those looking to further enhance their graphic design skills, consider exploring resources like online tutorials and courses that delve deeper into Photoshop techniques. Continue to upgrade your skills and achieve your creative goals!
