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Chapter 8. Working with Painting and Retouching Tools

In This Chapter

• Working in the Swatches panel

• Getting to know foreground and background colors

• Introducing painting and retouching tools

• Discovering blending modes

• Saving presets for tools

This chapter shows you how to use the painting and retouching tools in Photoshop. If you're unsure about how good the painting you're about to do will look, create a new layer and paint on that. (See Chapter 9 of this minibook to find out how to create and use layers.) That way, you can delete the layer by dragging it to the Trash Can (at the bottom of the Layers panel) if you decide that you don't like what you've done. Don't forget to make the Eraser tool your friend! You can also repair painting or retouching mistakes by Alt+dragging (Windows) or Option+dragging (Mac) with the Eraser tool selected to erase the last version saved or present history state.

Have fun and be creative! Because Photoshop is pixel-based, you can create incredible imagery with the painting tools. Smooth gradations from one color to the next, integrated with blending modes and transparency, can lead from super-artsy to super-realistic effects. In this chapter, you discover painting fundamentals, and we show you how to use retouching tools to eliminate wrinkles, blemishes, and scratches. Don't you wish you could do that in real life?

Using the Swatches Panel

Use the Swatches panel to store and retrieve frequently used colors. The Swatches panel allows you to quickly select ...