Photoshop is vital to your digital photography

The Lasso tool. This tool allows you to highlight an image that you have made in an image or an image you have opened in Adobe Photoshop. This marquee tool likes to have smooth hard edges to follow. If you a photograph that doesn't have a easy to follow edge around objects you will find it hard to use this tool. You have probably seen this when people cut their heads out of a picture and paste it onto somebody else's body. It is a very funny feature and this is the tool that does it! The lasso tool has three different variations. The second version is the Polygonal Lasso tool. This tool can make different shapes and curves when tracing around or cutting out a piece of an image. The third variation is the Magnetic Lasso tool that only works on images that have defined edges. The tool will clamp onto an edge and give it anchor points to shape the corners. This is good when you don't have that steady hand you used to have back in high school. I use this myself because I am not the man I used to be!

The next feature is the three types of Eraser tools. The most basic is the Eraser tool itself. You can change the size of the area that the eraser returns to the original background. The Background Eraser Tool does exactly what it states. It is able to erase the background without any use of changing layers. Once you have done this you can add in colors to make a new background at will. The Magic Eraser tool acts like the Magic Wand tool. It will erase an area based how it is clicked and verified.

Oddly enough, three more features that were previously hidden to the human eye are now available for you to view on the left menu. This time though the names have almost nothing to do with what they do. First up is the Dodge tool. This tool lightens an area on the image. The Burn tool darkens an area on the image and the Sponge tool changes the level of saturation on an area in the image. These all have their special purposes that you will come to find out about. Burn and Dodge are usually used for making shadows or erasing shadows.

The Path Selection tool and the Direct Selection tool are both used for paths. The Path Selection tool will allow you to select a path component even if it is surrounded by many different paths. The Direct Selection tool will only select a segment of a path. This is a way to reshape a segment to a different path after it has been created and saved.

The tools described below are a set of useful features that you may find useful in addition to some of the other options. I believe some of these tools are used in conjunction with the other tools. However, this makes it a little simpler if you want to do it the old fashioned way. First is the Eyedropper tool that helps sample color from an area. The Eyedropper tool is pretty basic though. The Color Sampler tool has a few more features that allow you to gather the color data from any layer without calling that layer. You can see levels of gradient or replace colors and shapes back to an image. The Ruler tool helps you measure things inside of an image if you are trying to be precise about how you do things. This helps if you are a web developer and you are trying to make every symmetrical and in order. I personally try to do this sometimes and have to slap myself. I like to be organized myself, but I don't want my websites to look so fine tuned that they would be passed up as not being original. The Count tool helps you count.

Have you always wanted to learn how to use Adobe Photoshop but you think that it's not possible? Think again. There are easy to use step by step guides on how to use every feature on Photoshop so you can start making pictures and design graphics that look like they've come right out of a magazine. You can get started by learning the basics like removing red eyes, creating 3D effects logo techniques (text swoosh) etc. Learning Photoshop in a couple hours is definitely a possibility. It won't take you that much time to view the tutorials and apply them, but as with everything practice makes perfect and this is no different. Once you learn how to use Photoshop it will only be a matter of time before you become an expert.