7 Sponge Tool
Used to change
color saturation
Found at #23 in the Toolbar diagram at left
The burn, and sponge tools are hidden
under the dodge tool in the toolbox. To
access them, click and hold on the dodge tool icon (the one that looks
like a black lollipop) and hold the mouse button down. Choose the tool
you want from the pop-up menu that appears.
The sponge tool will increase or decrease the color saturation (richness, intensity) of whatever you drag over. Use the Flow setting to limit how fast the tool acts.
To use the sponge tool, select it in the toolbox, choose your settings, and pick a brush in the options bar, and drag in the image. This tool has an effect on click, but does not do any additional work until it’s moved. However, repeated stroking over the same area does have a cumulative effect.
If you choose Edit > Fade immediately after using this tool, you can change the opacity of the strokes you have just applied.
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.
Note that these tools cannot be used on 1 bit Bitmap mode, or Indexed color mode images.
The keyboard shortcut for the sponge tool is the letter O. You can cycle through the dodge, burn, and sponge tools by holding down the Shift key while pressing the shortcut letter.
The illustration below is the sponge tool’s options bar. 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.
From the Mode menu, choose Desaturate to cause colors to
move towards gray, or become less colorful. Choose Saturate to
cause colors to become more intense, rich, and pure.
Use the Flow setting to limit how much the brush affects the colors each time you pass over them with your brush. Flow allows a cumulative effect even within a single stroke, so repeatedly passing over the same spot will add or remove more saturation.
If you want the brush to continue to apply color for as long as the left
mouse button is pressed, even if you are not moving the cursor, click
the airbrush button to activate that option.
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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