When
you look at the toolbox, notice how
some of the buttons have a tiny arrow
in the lower right corner. This arrow
indicates that other tools are hidden
under that tool. To access the other
tools, click and hold down on a button
and the other tools will pop out.Try
this now by clicking on the rectangle
marquee tool and changing to the elliptical
marquee tool. The hidden marquee tools
are shown.
Now hold your cursor over one of the
buttons and you should see a tooltip
appear that tells you the name of the
tool and its keyboard shortcut. All
the marquee tools have a shortcut of
M. An easier way to switch between the
different hidden tools is to use the
keyboard shortcut along with the Shift
key modifier. For the marquee tools,
the Shift-M combination toggles between
the rectangular and elliptical marquee
tools. The single row marquee tools
are less often used and must be selected
from the toolbox flyout. Another shortcut
for cycling through the hidden tools
is to Alt/Option click on the toolbox
button.
Take a few moments now to familiarize
yourself with the tool names using the
tooltips. Use the shortcuts you've just
learned to explore all the hidden tools.
As you select each tool, note the hints
provided in the status bar area for
each tool. Don't worry about using each
tool for now; we'll get to that soon
enough. For now, you should just get
to know the tool locations and their
icons.
Moving down in the toolbox, we come
to the color swatches. This is where
the foreground and background colors
are displayed. The tiny arrow to the
top right allows you to swap foreground
and background colors. The tiny black
and white swatch symbol to the lower
left allows you to reset the colors
to the default of black foreground and
white background. Hold your cursor over
those two areas to learn the keyboard
shortcuts. To change a color, simply
click on either the foreground or background
color swatch and select a new color
in the color picker. Experiment by changing
the foreground and background colors
and then resetting them back to defaults.
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