Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

The Sponge Tool

Hiding in with the Dodge and Burn tools is the Sponge tool. It works as if you have a sponge full of bleach, allowing you to paint across your image and soak up the color. Or you can do the opposite and intensify the colors—it's all determined by what you choose from the Mode menu in the options bar.

If you choose Desaturate, the Sponge tool will tone down the colors in the area you are painting. The more you paint across an area, the closer it will become to being grayscale. This can be useful when you'd like to make a product stand out from an otherwise distracting background (Figure 16.91). I also use it (with a very low Pressure setting) to minimize the yellow/orange colorcast that usually shows up in the teeth of people who ...