See Just the Tools I Actually Use?

Although you see a whole bunch of tools in Photoshop’s Toolbox, along the left side of the window, you probably only use a few of them. Luckily, you can hide all those that you don’t use and have a smaller, less-cluttered Toolbox. Here’s how: Go under the Edit menu and choose Toolbar (near the very bottom of the menu) to bring up the Customize Toolbar dialog (seen above). You’ll see two columns: the left side lists all the tools in Photo shop, and when you see a tool you’re not going to use, drag-and-drop it over to the column on the right, and it’s hidden. When you’re finished, click Done, and now you’ve got a smaller, cleaner Toolbox with just the tools you actually use.

TIP: USE SINGLE-KEY TOOL SHORTCUTS

You can select most tools in Photoshop’s Toolbox using a single key on your keyboard, and some of them actually make sense. For example, press B to get the Brush tool, or C to get the Crop tool, or T for the Horizontal Type tool, or P for the Pen tool. But then, of course, there’s J to get the Healing Brush tool, or O to get the Burn tool, so don’t get used to it making sense. Anyway, to find out any tool’s one-key shortcut, just click-and-hold on it in the Toolbox, and when its flyout menu pops out, it will list the shortcut. If there are multiple tools that use the same shortcut (like T for all four Type tools), then just add the Shift key (so, it’s Shift-T) to toggle through the different tools associated with it.