Adobe Photoshop Elements 10: The Editor 3 Brush Tools and Selection Tools
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Foreground and Background Colors
Photoshop Elements keeps two colors at a time handy for painting and filling: The
Foreground color is the color painted by paint and type tools, and the Background color is
the color applied to the Background layer when you erase or delete something. The current
pair of colors is shown at the bottom of the Tools panel; the default foreground and
background colors are black and white respectively.
Red Eye Removal Tool
Project Bin
Edit Tab of Panel Bin
Tools Panel
Move Tool
Zoom Tool
Hand Tool
Eyedropper Tool
Lasso Tool
Magic Wand Tool
Quick Selection/ Selection Brush Tool
Horizontal Type Tool
Crop Tool
Cookie Cutter Tool
Straighten Tool
Spot Healing Brush Tool
Clone Stamp/Pattern Stamp Tool
Eraser Tool
Brush Tool
Paint Bucket Tool
Gradient Tool
Custom Shape Tool
Blur/Sharpen/Smudge Tool
Sponge/Dodge/Burn Tool
Color Picker
Effects panel
Layers panel
Options Bar: This area contains various settings for the active tool
Undo History panel:
Smart Brush Tool
Image Window
Marquee Tool
Adobe Photoshop Elements 10: The Editor 3 Brush Tools and Selection Tools
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Choosing Colors: The Eyedropper and the
Color Picker
Click the Foreground or Background color
square on the Tools panel to launch the Color
Picker. Choose a color by:
Typing numbers corresponding to a
specific color in either the H, S and B
boxes or the R, G and B boxes. (These are
two different systems for describing
specific colors.)
Clicking anywhere in the Color Slider (the
vertical “rainbow”) or sliding its sliders.
The color you choose appears in the large
square Color Field, where it is mixed with white, black and gray. Click anywhere in the Color Field to
select your shade.
Sometimes you want to match a particular color from a photo. The Eyedropper lets you capture
these colors. Place the eyedropper over the source photo with the tip on the color you want to capture,
then click. The Foreground Color will now match the pixel you clicked on.
Save a color as a Color Swatch
Open the Color Swatches panel by clicking
WindowColor Swatches, and set the color
you want to save as the Foreground Color.
Click the menu button ( ) in the corner of
the Color Swatches panel and choose New
Swatch.
On the Color Swatch Name dialog box, type
a name for the new color, then click OK. The
color now appears at the end of your set of
swatches.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 10: The Editor 3 Brush Tools and Selection Tools
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Brush Tools
Hint: You can change the brush size by clicking the left and right
bracket keys ([ and ])
Four tools are stacked together in the Tools panel:
Brush Tool: The basic brush tool paints smooth, anti-aliased
lines in the Foreground color. You can select various brush shapes, sizes and degrees of hardness (see
Brush Properties below).
Impressionist Brush: Distorts an existing image by adding “impressionist style” brush strokes to give the
illusion of hand-painting. Try using the Impressionist Brush on a duplicate layer, then changing the
opacity to control the effect’s intensity.
Color Replacement Tool: This tool replaces a particular color with another color. The results are similar
to other tools that may be easier to control.
Pencil tool: This tool works like the basic Brush Tool except that it draws only hard-edged lines.
Customizing the Brush Tip
The first control on the Options bar shows the shape of
currently selected brush tip. Click the drop down arrow to
choose a tip from the thumbnails shown below. (The brush
tip’s name is displayed when you
float the mouse pointer over a
thumbnail.)
Several sets of brush tips are
available. To choose a different set
click the dropdown arrow beside
the name of the current tip
collection, then choose the set you
want. Brush sets are named after the artistic effects they try to mimic.
Brush size can be changed from the brush size control just to the right of the
brush tip gallery. Type a pixel number directly in the box, or click the dropdown
arrow to use a slider control.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 10: The Editor 3 Brush Tools and Selection Tools
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Brush hardness: 0%, 50%, 100%
More Brush Options
The control on the right hand end of the Options bar opens a menu for setting various brush properties.
The preset brushes produce their effects using these settings, but
you can use them to create
your own custom brush effects.
Fade: To fade out a stroke as
you paint it, set the slider to
values between 1 and 999.
Lower numbers cause the brush
stroke to fade out faster.
Hue Jitter: This setting produces a paint stroke whose
colors randomly mix the Foreground and Background
colors. Lower settings favor the foreground color, only
mixing in a bit of the background color; higher settings
produce the full range of possible color combinations.
Scatter: Increasing the Scatter setting lets the brush place
marks farther away from the mouse stroke itself.
Spacing: Spacing settings range between 1% and 1000%. They
change the amount of overlap between any two adjacent color
spots painted by the brush. The smaller the spacing, the more the
painted stroke looks like a single line.
Hardness: This setting controls the crispness of the brush edge: when
hardness is set at zero, the brush stroke becomes very soft and fuzzy. When it
is set at 100%, the brush’s edge is sharp and distinct.
100% Hue Jitter, soft and hard brushes 100% Hue Jitter vs. 10% Hue Jitter
Fade set at 25, soft and hard brushes
Sample colors
Scatter (and Hue Jitter) at 50%
Spacing at 25%, 100%, 400%
Adobe Photoshop Elements 10: The Editor 3 Brush Tools and Selection Tools
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First selection Second selection
About Selections
Photoshop Elements gives you a wide variety of selection tools – the sheer number and variety of these
tools tells you how important selecting is. Selections are used to limit the area of a photo affected by
tools, or to pick out the part of a photo to copy and paste for a montage, etc.
Photoshop gives a lot more “weight” to selecting than most programs do. For example, making a
selection is considered to be an action, just as much as drawing a line or performing a copy/paste is.
Selecting steps show up in the Undo History panel, and selections can be saved as
a part of a .psd image file, and reloaded later to re-select the same area.
Selections can also be altered in a variety of precise ways.
One difference between Photoshop and Photoshop Elements is that in Elements,
the smallest unit you can select is a single pixel. The “full version” of Photoshop
allows users to select partial pixels, for perfectly smooth edges.
When you make a selection, the selected area will be outlined with “marching
ants”.
To remove a selection, type Ctrl+D, click SelectDeselect, or press the Escape key.
Simple Selections
Select All: To select the entire image, type Ctrl+A, or click SelectAll.
Marquee Tool: Right-click the Marquee Tool button and
choose the Rectangular or Elliptical Marquee Tool. Place the
mouse pointer over the image, press the mouse button and
drag your hand at an angle to select a section of the photo.
Hold the Shift key while dragging to select a perfect circle or square.
Modifying a Selection
The buttons on the selection tools’ Options bar control what happens when you have an area selected,
and you make another selection:
New Selection ( or ): If this button is active, the new selection will
replace the old one. Result: blue/purple circle. (Also, choose this tool to
move the selection by dragging inside its border.)
Add To Selection ( or ): When this is chosen, the new selection will
be added to the existing one. Result: Red, blue and purple areas.
Subtract From Selection ( or ): When this is chosen, the newly
selected pixels will be removed from the original selection. Result: Red area
only.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 10: The Editor 3 Brush Tools and Selection Tools
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Intersect with Selection ( ): Click to create a selection out of overlapping portions of two selections.
Result: purple area only.
Note: A selections doesn’t have to be made with a single tool. You can change tools at any time, then
add to or subtract from the selection.
Lasso Tools
These tools let you select various shapes using the mouse.
The Lasso selects any shape, freehand. It probably gives you the
most precise control over your selection.
The Polygon Lasso builds selections from multiple straight lines;
The Magnetic Lasso snaps to edges (lines of contrasting color) on
your image
For all the lasso tools, the tail end of the lasso is the focus-point which draws the line.
Magic Wand Tool
Select this tool and click on your photo. All pixels of a similar color will be
selected. The Options bar contains two important adjustments to this
tool:
The number in the Tolerance box specifies how
many shades the Wand will select when you click – the smaller the
number, the fewer shades get selected.
Checking the Contiguous box requires the pixels to
touch; unchecking it removes this requirement. For example, with
Contiguous unchecked, clicking a yellow flower in one corner of the
photo also selects the same color of yellow on a car in the other corner of the photo.
Quick Selection Tool
This tool is stacked with the Selection
Brush Tool (below). Select it, then drag on
the part of your image that you want to
select. The Quick Selection Tool logically attempts to find the edges of
whatever object is being chosen, and selects it. If it selects an area you
don’t want, click the Subtract from Selection button ( ) on the Options
bar and then click or paint on the part you want to exclude.
Business end
One pass with the Quick Selection Tool got the whole flower, despite
its jagged edges.
One click of the Magic Wand Tool selected the same shade of pink all
over the flower. Clicking other areas of the petals will add in more
shades.
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Selection Brush Tool
This tool has two modes, Selection and Mask. In
Selection mode, it automatically selects the area you
paint (drag) over, surrounding it with the usual
marching ants.
In Mask mode, Photoshop shades the part of the
image that is not selected with a red, translucent
overlay. Painting with the Selection brush removes
that part of the mask, thus selecting that part of the
image.
Refine Edge
After making a selection, you can modify it by clicking the Refine Edge
button on the Options bar (Lasso, Magic Wand, or Quick Selection
Tools) or by clicking SelectRefine Edge. The dialog box that appears
lets you smooth, feather and/or contract the selection.
Smoothing: Removes the jagged edges from your selection, replacing
them with a smooth curve.
Feathering: Softens/blurs the edges of
a selection. This is useful when copying
and pasting, because the feathered
edge blends gently into the new
background. (Usually 1-3 pixels is
enough.)
Contract/Expand: makes the selection larger or smaller by the selected number of pixels.
Masked (unselected) area, with red overlay
Area being selected with brush
Feathered, 4 pixels Before Feathering
Before Smoothing Smoothed, 15 pixels
Adobe Photoshop Elements 10: The Editor 3 Brush Tools and Selection Tools
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With Anti-Aliasing
Without Anti-Aliasing
More Selection Refinements
Anti-aliasing: This smoothing method is turned on by default for most
selection tools. Normally it is left on, unless you want a visually-hard
edge.
Modify: Click SelectModify to view the Modify commands. The only new command
here is Border: use it to deselect the inside of the selected area, leaving only a set
number of pixels around the edge selected.
Inverse: Click SelectInverse to deselect the selected parts and select the deselected parts in your
photo.
Transform Selection: Make a selection, then click SelectTransform
Selection. The selection will be surrounded by a bounding box with
handles at the corners and edges. Drag the handles to stretch or shrink
the selection. Click the green check-mark to finalize your transformation.
Save a Selection
Click SelectSave Selection, and give the selection a name. Saved
selections can be reloaded even after the file has been closed, by clicking
SelectLoad Selection.
Copy and Paste a Selection
Click EditCopy or type Ctrl+Copy to copy a selection. Click EditPaste or type Ctrl+V to paste the
selection. The pasted pixels will automatically appear on a new layer.
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