The painting and retouching tools allow you to hide or retouch image flaws, add colour to selected regions, add blurring effects to images, and even clone (exactly reproduce) parts of an image.

 

The healing brush tool can be used to repair a flawed part of an image by painting over the flaw with pixels selected from another area of the image.

 

This tool has three variants:

 

 

The patch tool can be used to make a selection that can be patched over with a cloned selection from another area in the image.

 

The colour replacement tool (new in Photoshop CS) can be used to replace unwanted colour with a new colour, while leaving the underlying textures of the image intact.

 

The clone stamp tool is used to replace areas of an image by applying a cloned portion of another area to the area that needs to be replaced. There is another variant to the clone stamp tool called the pattern stamp tool. The pattern stamp tool is used to replace parts of an image with a preset pattern, or a pattern selected from another area of the image. 

 

The Eraser tool can be used to completely remove parts of an image. Select the eraser tool by clicking on it, and then move your mouse pointer over the area on the image that you want removed. The areas that you paint over with the eraser will be removed.

 

The sharpen tool also has three variants:

 

Remember, when you select a tool from the toolbox, options for modifying and using the tool will appear on the options bar at the top of the Photoshop screen. The blur, sharpen, and smudge tools all present options for adjusting the strength of the effect, and the brush size (width) of the tool.

 

 

Above you can see the dune image modified with the smudge tool.

 

The brush tool is used to apply colour by dragging your mouse. When you have a brush tool selected, the strokes you make with your mouse pointer over the image will resemble those made with a paint brush. There is a multitude of paint brush options provided in Photoshop. These options are available in the brush tool options bar. You can choose an air brush, a paint brush, or red spray paint effect, and then refine the qualities of how the brush tool delivers colour by making selections from the menus available on the options bar.

 

A variant of the brush tool (available by clicking and holding the brush tool button) is the pencil tool. The pencil tool is used when you need a more distinct or harder edged line, rather than a brush stroke. As with the brush tool, there are several modifications to the pencil tool available from the options bar.

 

The history brush tool can be used to artistically select elements from the history of an image. In Photoshop, a history is kept of the changes and effects applied to an image. This history is accessible in the Photoshop history palette. When you select the history brush, and then select a history level from the history palette, you can make brush strokes on your image that reveal the underlying image state at the point in history that you specified.

 

If you click and hold the history brush button, you will see a variant called the art history brush. You can use this tool to paint a past state in the images history (like the history brush) one stroke at a time. However, unlike the standard history brush, the art history tool allows you to apply stylistic effects to the brush strokes you make.

 

Once again, options for modifying these brush tools will be available in the options bar after you select the tool from the toolbox.

 

 

The image above shows just a few of the many brush and pencil strokes available in Photoshop.

The gradient tool is used when you want to apply a colour fill that gradually transitions between two or more colours. The following image depicts a radial gradient from red to yellow.

 

 

 

When you select the gradient tool from the tool box, there will be five gradient types available in the options bar.

 

Linear gradient	Creates a gradient along a line you draw with your mouse. The gradient can be diagonal, vertical, or horizontal depending on how you draw your line.
Radial gradient	Creates a circular gradient based on a center and radius that you specify by drawing a line with your mouse.
Angle gradient	Sweeps out a colour gradient around a center point that you specify with your mouse.
Reflected gradient	Similar to the linear gradient, except that the gradient on one side of the line you draw is a mirror image of the gradient on the other side
Diamond gradient	A lot like the radial gradient, but it results in a diamond shape rather than a circular shape.

 

If you click and hold the gradient tool button you will see an option for a paint bucket tool. The paint bucket tool can be used to fill areas of an image or canvas with colour. You can specify tolerances for the paint bucket tool in the options bar that will effect what areas of the image are filled. A low tolerance number will make the paint bucket tool more sensitive to changes in the image, and it will fill less. A high tolerance number will enable the paint bucket to ignore image changes and fill large areas.

 

The dodge tool can be used to lighten parts of an image. The tool variants you can access by clicking and holding the dodge tool are, the burn tool, and the sponge tool. The burn tool will darken areas of an image, and the sponge tool will increase the colour saturation (increase the intensity or brightness of a colour) in specific areas of an image. These tools also have many modification options available in the options bar (i.e. ability to change brush size).