Camera Labs

I have heard that a good photographer is a good “photoshopper” so I spent most of my weekend in front of the screen trying to learn a bit about the new Photoshop CS3. So far the only change in the repertoire of tools I frequently use in older versions of Photoshop is the Quick Selection Tool. So I came to think about what your favorite tools in Photoshop are.

Personally I use the Magic Wand and now the Quick Selection tools a lot with various cutting and filtering. I use Spot Healing, Gaussian Blur and Smart Sharpen a lot, and I really dig the Lens Correction filter which I think is _the_ tool. I am just learning the full use of Lens Blur to simulate bokeh, but for now I use selection tools and Gaussian Blur to create this effect when needed.

So what are your favorites?

Hi Rune, great question!

I currently use Photoshop CS2, but apart from Lens Correction, the most common tools I use are quite old ones!

Essentials include the Magic Wand, Clone tool, Levels and Curves. I'm also slightly embarressed to admit, I still use the clone tool when the newer healing brush would probably be much better!

And thanks to Cameralabs, I spend far more time than is healthy using the Image resizing and Save to Web dialogue boxes!

Gordon

I know its odd that this is my first reply but I love photoshop so I couldn't help it

I have been using photoshop since version 7, and I am only 18 myself, and am currently using CS3 suite, and I have found the most versatile tool to be the ability to apply image adjustments in the form of a layer, aka Adjustment layers,

I do allot of client work and Adjustment layers allow me to show them the difference between certain things quickly and easily,

Also I love the pen tool, the ability to make any shape imaginable and retain some vector attributes in a heavily raster program