7 Smudge Tool
Used for retouching
Found at #7 in the Toolbar diagram at left
The sharpen, smudge, and
blur tools are grouped together in the toolbox. If the one you want
is not visible, click and hold on the one that is and a pop-up menu will
appear.
This tool is supposed to simulate finger painting. Color is displaced, or ‘smudged’ from the place where the pointer is clicked. It is moved in the direction the cursor is dragged. How far the initial color is moved depends on the setting in the Pressure box in the tool’s options bar.
If you choose Edit > Fade immediately after using this tool, you can change the opacity of the strokes you have just applied.
To use the smudge tool, select it in the toolbox, choose your settings [see below], choose a brush from the pop-up palette in the options bar, and drag in the image. Unlike the sharpen, and blur tools, the smudge tool has no additional effect after clicking in the image, until the cursor is dragged.
A shortcut for changing brush sizes while using this tool is to press the left bracket [ to decrease brush size, and the right bracket ] to choose a larger brush. Shift-right-clicking on your document while using this tool will open its (blend) Mode menu next to your cursor.
The keyboard shortcut for the smudge tool is the letter R. You can cycle through the blur, sharpen, and smudge tools by holding down the Shift key while pressing the shortcut letter.
The illustration below is the smudge tool’s options palette. To find any tool presets that have been made for this tool, click on the tool’s thumbnail at the left end of the options bar. To reset the tool to its default settings, right-click on the tool’s thumbnail and choose Reset Tool from the menu that appears.
To choose a brush size and type, click on the brush thumbnail. A pop-up
palette of available brushes will appear. Press Enter or click on your
document’s blue title bar to close the palette after you’ve
chosen a new brush. If you want to access the full brushes palette with
its many options, click the brushes palette button at the far right end
of the options bar.
You can also right-click on your document to open the brushes pop-up palette next to the cursor. For more information on brushes, please see the Brushes in 7 tutorial. If you are still using Photoshop 6, find information on the your brushes palette on the old brushes page.
The box titled Mode, and showing Normal is a drop down menu of
the blend modes you can choose from.
The Strength slider is shown activated. You can type in a number, or access the slider, shown, by clicking on the arrow on its right side. This value determines how far the initial color clicked on is pushed, or smudged in the direction you drag. At 100 % the initial color stays with the pointer and acts the same as the brush tool. At any lower setting, the initial color will fade, and later colors will be dragged and smeared.
The Finger Painting check box will cause the foreground color currently selected in the color box of the toolbox, and Color palette, to be used as the initial color of each stroke. When unchecked, the initial color will be that which is under the cursor when clicked. Choose the Use All Layers check box if you want to use colors from all layers. When unchecked, only the active layer’s colors will be smudged. Note that, while these two choices affect where color data is picked up, the smudged result exists only on the current active layer.
If you have doodled with a tool’s options and want to get back to the default settings, right-click that tool’s icon at the far left end of its options bar (in Photoshop 6, left-click). Choose either Reset Tool to reset only the current tool, or Reset All Tools to restore default settings to every tool.
Please note that all descriptions, and illustrations featured refer to files which are in Photoshop’s .psd format, and which are in RGB color mode. Other file formats, and color modes may generate different options. Some Photoshop features are not available for images not in .psd format, or RGB color mode. To find what color mode your image is in, choose Image > Mode.
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