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27 Apr 2011

Hand Tool

Hand Tool [H]The Hand Tool is used to navigate to another area of an image when all of the pixels won't fit on the screen. You select the hand tool (press h) and click on the image and drag to the location in the image that you want to be. You can press the space bar to activate the hand while any tool other than a type tool is activated. You can acheive the same affect using the scrollbars located at the right and bottom of the image. However, the scrollbars only move in one dimension and the hand tool can move in two dimensions at the same time. 

The Hand Toolbar

When the hand tool is selected, the hand toolbar shows three buttons. The first button is used to view the image in actual pixel size. The next button fits the image to the size of your screen. The third button will show you the image at the size it would be if it were to be printed.
All three of these options are available using the View menu, but using them as buttons on the toolbar makes it easier. 


TIP: You can really make short work of your job with the Hand Tool. It’s for moving your entire image within a window. So if you’re zoomed in and your image area is larger than the window, you can use the Hand Tool to navigate around your image. Just click and drag. You can get to this tool at any time when using any other tool by pressing and holding the [Spacebar].

Eye Dropper Tool


The Eyedropper tool (the icon Eyedropper Tool in the Toolbar) is used to sample a color from an image to use this color further. It's practical as it facilitates color selection, for example, an appropriate color for the skin or the sky.

 When you pick a color with the Eyedropper tool, it appears as the foreground color in the Toolbar.
If you want to pick a color for the background hold the Alt-key while selecting the color with the Eyedropper tool. Below you see the foreground/background palette of the Toolbar.
Background/foreground
 To make the color selection more precise, press CapsLock on the keyboard and the Eyedropper  will turn into a target  so that you can collect one exact pixel of a picture.
 It is possible to pick up a color not only from the image opened in the Photoshop's workspace but from other applications too.
Look at the picture below. We reduced the size of the Photoshop window. We want to pick up the color of the sky from a photo on a web-page (Internet Explorer).
Activate the Eyedropper tool, put the cursor to the image of the house, press the left mouse button and drag the cursor outside the Photoshop workspace to sample the color of the sky.
Sample a color outside Photoshop's workspace