Drawing

Photoshop includes a few versions of the pen tool. The pen tool creates precise paths that can be manipulated using anchor points.^[25] The freeform pen tool allows the user to draw paths freehand, and with the magnetic pen tool, the drawn path attaches closely to outlines of objects in an image, which is useful for isolating them from a background.^[29]

Measuring and Navigation

The eyedropper tool selects a color from an area of the image that is clicked, and samples it for future use.^[25] The hand tool navigates an image by moving it in any direction, and the zoom tool enlarges the part of an image that is clicked on, allowing for a closer view.^[25]

Selection

The marquee tool can make selections that are single row, single column, rectangular and elliptical.^[25] Once an area of an image is highlighted, the move tool can be used to manually relocate the selected piece to anywhere on the canvas.^[25] The lasso tool is similar to the marquee tool, however, the user can make a custom selection by drawing it freehand. In addition, the lasso tool can make magnetic and polygonal selections.^[25]

Typing

Photoshop also provides tools for adding and editing text. The type tools create an area where text can be entered, and the type mask tools create a selection area that has the shape of text.^[25] The type tool creates vector-based text, so symbols, letters and numbers in various fonts and colors can be re-sized while maintaining the same resolution.^[30]

Retouching

There are several tools that are used for retouching, manipulating and adjusting photos, such as the clone stamp, eraser, burn, dodge, smudge and blur tools.^[25] The clone stamp tool samples a selected portion of an image, and duplicates it over another area using a brush that can be adjusted in size, flow and opacity.^[25] The smudge tool, when dragged across part of an image, stretches and smudges pixels as if they are real paint, and the blur tool softens portions of an image by lowering the amount of detail within the adjusted area.^[31] The eraser tool removes pixels from an image, and the magic eraser tool selects areas of solid color and erases them.^[25] The burn and dodge tools, which are derived from traditional methods of adjusting the exposure on printed photos, have opposite effects; the burn tool darkens selected areas, and the dodge tool lightens them.^[31]

Content-aware

Content-awareness is a useful aspect of Photoshop where image editing is done automatically and intelligently. It comes in two forms, content-aware scaling, and content-aware filling, in which elements in a background automatically recompose according to the areas a user of the program decides to fill or scale. More specifically, content-aware scaling works by rescaling an image and causing its content to adapt to the new dimensions and preserving important areas of it. Content-aware filling functions by matching tone, color, and noise of an area of the image that contained an object or detail in which the user decides to remove.^[32]

Healing Tools

With improvement retouching tools like the Clone Stamp tool and Healing Brush tool, imperfections of an image can easily be removed. These tools essentially function by locating a source point (or multiple source points) that can be scaled or rotated in order to cover an imperfection or unwanted detail in a specific area of an image.^[32]

Puppet Warp

Similar to the content-aware tool, the puppet warp tool reveals Photoshop’s intelligence by allowing a user to reposition an object in an image such as a flower or arm. This is done by using points that outline the structure of an object and easily repositioning in the wanted orientation.^[32]

Video Editing

In Adobe CS5 Extended edition, video editing is comprehensive and efficient with a broad compatibility of video file formats such as MOV, AVI, FLC, MPEG-4, and FLV formats and easy workflow. Using simple combination of keys video layers can easily be modified, with other features such as adding text and the creation of animations using single images.^[33]

3D

With the Extended version of Photoshop CS5, 2D elements of an artwork can easily become three-dimensional with the click of a button. Extrusions of texts, an available library of materials for three-dimensional, and even wrapping two-dimensional images around 3D geometry are all possible with this version of Photoshop. Realism can also be added to an image using the 3D features of Photoshop such as animating image-based lights and depth of field.^[33]

Mobile Integration

Third-party plugins have also been added to the most recent version of Photoshop where technologies such as the iPad have integrated the software with different types of applications. Applications like the Adobe Eazel painting app allows the user to easily create paintings with their fingertips and use an array of different paint from dry to wet in order to create rich color blending.^[32]

Camera Raw

With the Camera Raw plug-in, RAW images can be processed without the use of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, along with other image file formats such as JPEGs, TIFFs, or PNGs. The plug-in allows users to remove noise without the side-effect of over-sharpening, add grain, and even perform post-crop vignetting.^[33]