Christopher Smith - Adobe Creative Cloud All-in-One For Dummies

Photoshop can open a multitude of file formats, even if the image was created in another application, such as Illustrator or another image-editing program. However, you have to open the image in Photoshop by choosing File ⇒ Open or, using Adobe Bridge, by selecting an image and dragging it to the Photoshop icon on the taskbar (Windows) or Dock (Mac). If you double-click an image file (one that wasn’t originally created in Photoshop, or from different versions) in a folder, the image may open only in a preview application.

If you’re opening a folder of images that you want to investigate first, choose File ⇒ Browse in Bridge to open Adobe Bridge, the control center for Adobe Creative Cloud. You can use Adobe Bridge to organize, browse, and locate the assets you need to create your content. Adobe Bridge keeps available, for easy access, native AI, INDD, PSD, and Adobe PDF files as well as other Adobe and non-Adobe application files. Adobe Bridge does not install by default with Adobe Photoshop. If you do not have it loaded you can read through the directions and highlights of using Adobe Bridge in Book 2, “ Adobe Bridge.”

You use tools to create, select, and manipulate objects in Photoshop CC. When you have Photoshop open, the Tools panel appears along the left side of the workspace (see Figure 1-3), and panels appear on the right side of the screen. (We discuss panels in the later section “ Navigating the Work Area.”)

FIGURE 1-3:The Photoshop CC workspace includes the Tools panel.

In the Tools panel, look for a tooltip when you hover the cursor over any one of the tools. Following the tool name is a letter in parentheses, which is the keyboard shortcut you can use to access that tool. Simply press the Shift key along with the key command you see to access any hidden tools. In other words, pressing P activates the Pen tool, and pressing Shift+P rotates through the hidden tools under the Pen tool. When you see a small triangle in the lower-right corner of the tool icon, you know that the tool contains hidden tools.

Table 1-1lists the Photoshop tools, describes what each one is used for, and specifies in which chapter you can find more information about each one.

TABLE 1-1Photoshop CC Tools

Button	Tool	What You Can Do with It	See This Chapter in Book 3
	Move (V)	Move selections or layers	3
	Marquee (M)	Select the image area	3
	Lasso (L)	Make freehand selections	3
	Object Selection (W)	Auto selects objects	3
	Crop (C)	Crop an image	1
	Frame (K)	Creates placeholder frames for images	1
	Eyedropper (I)	Eyedropper	7
	Spot Healing Brush (J)	Retouch flaws	7
	Brush (B)	Paint the foreground color	7
	Clone Stamp (S)	Copy pixel data	7
	History Brush (Y)	Paint from the selected state	7
	Eraser (E)	Erase pixels	7
	Gradient (G)	Create a gradient	7
	Blur	Blur pixels	7
	Toning (O)	Dodge, burn, saturate	N/A
	Pen (P)	Create paths	4
	Type (T)	Create text	8
	Path Selection (A)	Select paths	4
	Hidden Direct Selection (A)	Select individual anchor points on paths	4
	Vector Shape (U)	Create vector shapes	8
	Hand (H)	Navigate page	8
	Zoom (Z)	Increase or decrease the view	1

Looking for the Magic Wand tool, shown in Figure 1-4? Click and hold the Quick Selection tool in the Tools panel to access it.