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Have an object with edges you want to isolate? This is one way to use the Background Eraser tool.

The Magic Eraser is often used to blast large areas that contain unwanted pixels. It certainly can be effective if you want to get fast results, but it is less than subtle. This works well when you want to eliminate big areas of color that you don’t need. It is not always as useful when you are working with areas that are more intricate.

This is one of the reasons that Photoshop is so great. This program provides the user with lots of selection tool choices. Each tool has its own options that can be
customized.

Now, there are some kinds of selection jobs that work better with the Background Eraser than with the actual Magic Eraser.

The Background Eraser is more versatile and gives you greater control over some of the more difficult tasks. For instance, if you are selecting intricately shaped objects, the Background Eraser may be the tool for the job.

Let’s say you want to isolate your image in your picture by removing the sky. The sky consists of edges that may prove difficult to work with. Remove the sky along with the detailed edges using the Background Eraser tool.

Some selection tools would not be able to handle the job because of the position of the crenulations and the arches of the towers. This makes it very tricky when you want to try to remove the sky that is hidden among all of that other stuff.

Here is the way that you can work with the Background Eraser tool to accomplish the above task. You can cut out the complex shapes easily using the Background Eraser. Now you may need to spend a little time fiddling with the options to get the most use of the tool when you are working on a complex project such as this one.

Begin by selecting the tool from the toolbox and in the options bar you will want to set the Sampling option to Once. Sample a section of the blue sky by clicking and the
background swatch icon will change color.

This lets you know the pixels that are headed for deletion. If you hold the mouse button down and spray the eraser’s brush around the image you will be able to get rid of all the pixels of the same color.

Pixels of other colors will not be removed as you spray around the edge of the building. If you want the best results you can tweak the Tolerance setting.

Welcome to the cadillac of photo-enhancers: Photoshop CS!

Retouching in Photoshop can be a breeze… but not until you learn how. The Photoshop CS program is such a powerful application you could spend years just mastering the basics.

Most of us, however, don’t really need a Masters in Photoshop. What most of us want is the flexibility, integrity and vast array of choices that Photoshop provides.

Let’s look briefly at some of the most basic photo corrections in Photoshop CD, the ones you’ll really need. Here are the first steps recommended by the experts, and they represent the process they apply to every photograph:

1- First and foremost, duplicate your original and work only on the copy.

That way, if something goes wrong, you’ll always have the original. This is a great habit to get into.

2- Next, assure the correct resolution. There are two basic categories of “resolution” in computer graphics: the monitor resolution and the image resolution.

Image resolution varies from low (about 72 pixels per inch, or “ppi”) to high (anything 300 ppi or larger). Of course, the higher the resolution, the bigger the file.

To change the resolution of your photo, click “Image,” then “Image Size.” On the bottom left of the box that comes up, type in the ppi you want, for example, 300 ppi. (You will probably want to change the size at this point. That’s fine, you will still retain the ppi you chose.)

3- Use your Crop tool ( ) from the toolbox to shape your picture the way you want it.

Many people don’t notice the width and height options underneath the top menu, but it’s a very handy feature.

At times you have an exact measurement you need to fill; rather than fiddling with the numbers after you crop, the proper way is to insert the width and height immediately after clicking the Crop tool, and then making the crop, dragging down diagonally with your mouse. You will notice the exact measurements appear without a struggle.

4- Experiment with your automatically adjusting features. Click on “Image” in your top menu, then “Adjustments.” You will see options for automatic levels, contrast and color. After you’ve tried them, you can go ahead and hone in to polish, if you like.

You can also try Image> Adjustments> Shadow/Highlight (or “Variations”). You’ll be astonished at the variety of preset options there.

As you gan imagine, there are endless variations on the themes represented by these basic steps and the choices made therein.

But Photoshop expands past them and out into the great beyond, offering an unlimited palette and a universe of options.

Your only problem will be how to tear yourself away.

Adobe has its own Photoshop tutorials that run the gamut of instruction.

You can find Photoshop tutorials on the Adobe site on abstracts, automation, animation, the basics of using Photoshop, buttons and brushes, using color effectively, digital art, drawing, creating desired effects with drawing or photos, retouching photos, photography in general, scripting, textual effects, Photoshop patterns and textures, graphics for the Web, and layouts for the Web.

One of the most basic of Photoshop tutorials is a complete explanation of all you’ll find on the Photoshop toolbar.
You’ll learn lessons that include the use of the marquee tools. There are several: the elliptical, the single row, the single column and the rectangular.

The rectangular and elliptical marquee tools lets you expand or reduce an area that is shaped as the tools indicate. You can use a tool to size one row or one column with the appropriate marquee tool.

These basic will be taught in this Photoshop tutorial, along with the use of the move tool which lets you create movement of a layer, the lasso tool which lets you capture a specific area, and the magnetic lasso tools, which lets you change the location of images with varying colors.

The polygonal lasso tool, in contrast, will go from point to point in a straight line or lines. You’ll even learn how to use a magic want with Adobe Photoshop tutorials. This magic want tool lets you click inside a one color area and move only that area.

The Photoshop crop tool, part of this tutorial, lets you delete parts of a photo.

Wit h this Photoshop tutorial you’ll learn other basic tools such as the spot healing tool, the healing brush tool, the red eye tool, the patch tool, the brush tool, the pencil tool, and the color replacement tool.

With the clone stamp tool, you’ll learn how to use Photoshop to copy only parts of a particular image, while the pattern stamp tool will teach you how to take an image and brush a pattern on to it.

The Photoshop tutorial will teach you the mechanics of history brush tool use, how it is used to undo what you’ve created by simply brushing over the image you’ve altered and taking it back to the image it was before.

It has an even more advance use, though, in that, you can actually undo the image change in only the specific parts from which you wish to remove your latest alteration.

The art history brush, another tool taught in Photoshop tutorials, is much the same as the history brush except that it also lets you style at the same time.

Photoshop tutorials teach three eraser tools – the standard eraser, the background eraser and the magic eraser tool. With the first you can do just as its name suggests – erase part of the image you’ve created with Photoshop.

With the background version you can erase only the image background, while the magic eraser which lets you make even more varied choices of what to eliminate from the image.