Phoenix Basics
Smudge Tool—The Smudge Tool simulates dragging your finger through the image, smudging pixels in the direction you drag. This tool comes in handy when trying to distort elements to contour along warped paths. Also located in this toolset are the Blur and Sharpen Tools. What these tools basically do is apply a blurred or sharpened effect to the area in your image you click with the respective tool selected.
Liquify Tool—The Liquify Tool is similar to the Smudge Tool, in that the tool is used primarily by dragging from a starting point in your image to make the selected pixels conform to the path that you drag along. This tool especially comes in handy when trying to make subtle changes to elements in your image. For example, you could use the tool to enlarge or shrink facial features in a portrait. The Clone Stamp Tool enables you to duplicate a part of the existing image. Shift+click to establish an anchor point in the area to clone, and then drag to create the duplicate.
Text—The Text tool is just as it sounds. It allows you to insert text into your document. Select the tool and the desired settings (Font, Size, and so on), click the location where you want the text to appear, and type the text with your keyboard. You can select between any of the included fonts within the program itself, with the options of changing the text size, colors, bold, underline, and so on.
Selecting Colors—Below the tools in the bottom-left corner of your workspace, you’ll notice two boxes, each filled with a color. These indicate the current foreground and background colors. The box on top is the foreground color, and the bottom or back box is the background color. Clicking the arrow icon to the top-right of this figure quickly inverts the color choices, making your background color your new foreground color. In order to change your foreground and background colors, simply click on the corresponding box. In the Select Color dialog box, select a color using the large color box and/or slider bar, or by inputting the Hex or RGB value of the color of your choice itself, provided you have the information of the color you seek.
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