Zoom tool (Z):

Use this tool to click and enlarge your image in the main screen. Note that you can also do this by using the keyboard shortcut: Ctrl/Cmd + "+" or "-".

Hand tool (H):

Use this tool to move the image around the main screen. It only works when it's enlarged bigger than the main screen. If you are working with any other tool at the time and need to shift your image in the main window left/right or up/down, hold the Spacebar and the Hand will appear, allowing you to shift the image and release the space bar so that the tool you were originally using reappears.

Move tool (V):

This is one of the most useful tools in Photoshop Elements. Use it to click, hold, and reposition images, objects, or text in multi-layered files.

Rectilinear Marquee tool (M):

As the name suggests, you'd use this for making quick rectangular or square selections. Once drawn, only the pixels inside that selection can be altered. Those outside the selection are protected. To cancel a selection, choose Select | Deselect or Ctrl/Cmd + D. To draw a perfect square, hold the Shift key while clicking and dragging in the image. To move the already made selection, click immediately inside the cropping marquee and click and drag it to reposition the live selection. In this case, using the Move tool will not only move the selection, but all of the pixels inside the selection too.

Elliptical Selection tool (M):

As the name suggests, use this to create an elliptical or a circular selection around your subject. To create a perfect circular shape, hold the Shift key while clicking and dragging in the image to create your selection.

Lasso tool (L):

The Lasso tool is exactly that: click then drag the cursor to draw a line around your subject. Because it's a freehand operation, accuracy is quite hard to maintain. If your editing style requires you to work with selections frequently, l would highly recommend purchasing a graphics tablet. These devices basically replace the clumsy mouse with a pen shaped electronic stylus, making it far easier to execute fine and very accurate brush strokes.

Polygonal Lasso tool (L):

This selection tool is particularly good for selecting geometric shapes because it operates on a point to point basis. Click the mouse once, reposition the cursor and click a second time, reposition the cursor and click a third time, and so on. Each time you mouse-click, it pins the straight selection line to the canvas. Drawing a square selection takes just five clicks.

Magnetic Lasso tool (L):

This is also a freehand type of drawing tool—except for the fact that, as its name suggests, the selection line's qualities are to stick to the edges of objects with measurable contrast. So, if you're selecting a black object on a white background, it will work seamlessly with little or no real draftsmanship. As long as you follow the outline of the object roughly, it will make the line for you. The magnetic qualities of the tool can be increased/decreased, depending on how defined the contrast edge in the subject is.

Magic Wand tool (A):

This is an all-time favorite for most editors because its selection capabilities are based on the color of the pixels that you click. Vary its effectiveness by increasing or decreasing the Tolerance levels so that it selects a wider, or narrower, range of the color that was initially clicked. Like all of the selection tools, if you hold the Shift key while clicking in an image, each subsequent click adds to the overall selection. If you over-select something (because the Tolerance is set too high), you can also subtract from the overall selection by holding the Alt/Opt key while clicking. You can also set the tool to Contiguous (which limits the color selection to those pixels of a specific color that adjoin the sample, or dis-contiguous, in which case all pixels of that color, regardless of where in the image they are, get selected.

Red Eye Removal tool (Y):

By clicking and dragging a small selection marquee (square shape) over the offending red eye, Elements looks for red pixels and turns them gray. Essentially, it removes the ugly red eye effect by making the pupils appear gray. Although your subject might have green or blue eyes, gray eyes are far more preferable to red eyes. Note that this tool also has a check button for removing pet eye.

Spot Healing Brush (J):

This is probably the most useful of all retouching tools because it's so easy to use, and it's very effective. Choose a brush size, move the cursor over the blemish, and click once. Photoshop Elements copies the pixels from around the outside of the brush shape and pastes them inside, virtually erasing (covering up) the blemish in the original image. It works like magic in most retouching situations, providing the blemish is not too near other strident details, like hair, in which case, it might copy unwanted items into the target area. Making the brush smaller usually solves this problem.

Healing Brush (J):

This retouching tool works in a similar format to the Spot Healing brush, except that you must first select a source area by holding the Alt/Opt key and clicking in a good area of the image. This tells Photoshop Elements where you want to copy pixels from. You then shift the cursor over the area to be repaired and click a second time to paste the copied pixels over the damaged pixels. This is especially useful if the retouching area containing good pixels is a long way from the area requiring repair. For larger repairs, you can easily click, hold, and move the brush over a larger or misshapen area, before releasing the mouse to fix it. Remember that the larger the brush size, the further afield Elements looks for a good source area, which increases the possibility of copying inappropriate details, as well as good stuff.

Smart Brush tool (F):

This is one of Elements clever all-in-one tools where the brush operates as a selection tool, detecting the edges of the object you paint over, while automatically adding into that selection one of the visual effects available (these are chosen off of the quite extensive menu—lighting, nature, portrait, tints, black and white, special effects, and many more). Success here relies on your object having a defined edge that the selection tool can identify. If it goes over the bounds of the image, you can simply paint in reverse mode or fine-tune the effect using the Refine Edge feature found in the tool's options panel.

Detail Smart Brush tool (F):

This is the big brother to the Smart Brush in that it relies on your painting and drawing skills over letting Elements just automatically select edges. Because of this, I find this tool hard to use. Again, a graphics tablet would make this a lot easier to use.

Clone Stamp tool (S):

I like the Healing Brushes because they blend the color and tone from the source into the target area. With this tool, what you select is exactly what is copied into the target area (although you can adjust the opacity of the sample). So, if you need to repair some lighter-colored pixels, it's important to find some equally light-colored good pixels to use as your source area, otherwise the transfer of pixels in the copy and paste operation will be visible. Use this tool, with the Opacity set to a very low number, to copy and paste good pixels over the bad pixels in very transparent layers. It takes considerably longer doing this, but it's also easier to cover your (retouching) tracks, and can give you a more professional-looking result.

Pattern Stamp tool (S):

This is similar to the Clone Stamp, but instead of copying and pasting pixels from the same or even a different image, this tool applies textures. I think it has limited application in photography, but I can see it being an asset for designers and web builders.

Blur tool (R):

As its name suggests, use this brush-based tool to add softness to critical areas of your images. This tool is very useful for blurring small areas, but works too slowly if you try and apply it to a large area with a big brush on a high-resolution image file. For big jobs, I'd use a selection and one of the blur filters.

Sharpen Brush (R):

This works in the opposite direction to the Blur brush in that you can literally paint in some sharpness to small areas of a picture. It's incredibly useful for fine-tuning portraits, for example, but it's easy to go too fast with this, which produces a jarring, pixellated look to the file. Use with care.

Smudge tool (R):

This effects brush allows you to push pixels around as if they were made of wet paint. It works well, but if the image file is low resolution, manipulating the pixels makes the image appear defocused and blurry—the higher the resolution in the original file, the better the results.

Dodge tool (O):

This (along with the Burn and Sponge tools) is one of the unsung heroes of the image editing world because it allows you to make significant changes to parts of the image without the need for complex selections or masks. It's an adjustable brush-based tool that allows you to paint lightness into three distinct tonal ranges: the highlights, midtones, and shadows. How fast this effect materializes is controlled using the tool's Exposure slider.

Burn tool (O):

This adjustable brush works in the opposite direction to the Dodge tool. The Burn tool allows you to paint in darkness to three distinct tonal ranges: the highlights, midtones, and shadows. How fast this happens is controlled, like the Dodge Tool, by using the Exposure slider. These tools benefit by choosing a low exposure setting. The slower the process goes, the less noticeable it is in the finished product.

Sponge tool (O):

This brush-based tool operates by increasing or decreasing the saturation (color intensity) over which the brush passes. You can increase the color, or decrease it, to the point where it turns black and white. Note that it'll only have an effect if the original contains visible color information—it won't work, for example, if you try and increase the saturation of a sky that looks white because it has been overexposed.

Brush tool (B):

Not surprisingly, this [paint] Brush tool works just like an artist's brush. Choose color from the Color Picker at the bottom of the toolbar and start painting. For the best results, use a graphics tablet.

Impressionist Brush tool (B):

As its name might suggest, this clever tool copies the pixels over which you brush and represents them, in one smooth action, in a blurred, impressionistic style, hence the name. You can choose from a range of impressionist brush stroke styles.

Color Replacement tool (B):

This brush-based tool allows you to choose one specific color in the image, and by choosing a second color from the color picker, you can simply replace the color that was initially picked from the picture with the new color that's been chosen from the Tool Bar. Quite an effective tool.

Eraser tool (E):

As its name suggests, this tool is used to erase pixels from any image. It is especially useful for jobs such as cutting objects out of a background or blending images together from different layers.

Background Eraser tool (E):

This is another type of selection tool that works on the edge contrast in the image—you set the parameters with the brush Size and Tolerance. Set it up, then click and drag just away from the object you want the background removed from and it removes the background pixels while hopefully leaving the subject. I write hopefully because I find this tool hard to control. You be the judge. You can work in Contiguous or Discontiguous modes. Much of its success relies on the type of image you try it out on.

Magic Eraser tool (E):

I suspect that this tool is based on the same pixel-grabbing design as the Magic Wand selection tool, except that, instead of selecting pixels, it removes pixels based on their color. You can adjust its efficiency using the Tolerance slider. I find this a lot easier to control over the Background Eraser tool.

Paint Bucket tool (K):

This feature has been in Photoshop Elements forever, and is used, as its name suggests, to slop paint (color) over the image. Like most of Photoshop Elements' tools, how far the paint spreads across the canvas (the image) can be controlled using the Tolerance slider, the Contiguous check box, and the tool's Blend Mode. And by changing its Opacity value, you effectively water the paint down. I use this tool quite a lot to throw a color wash over an image if I want to give it an old, faded, or different emotional feel. You can also use it in conjunction with an Adjustment Layer, or a mask, to darken, lighten, or color selected parts of an image file. It's a very handy yet underutilized feature.

Gradient tool (G):

This is used both as a photographic tool and for graphic design applications. Click and drag the gradient line through the image in any direction to apply it to the picture—in combination with the tool's Blend Mode and the Opacity slider. Photographers use this feature in the same way as they might a graduated neutral density filter that slides over the front of the lens, specifically for landscapes and for artists, to re-color images. It can be especially effective with black and white files. This is another underutilized Elements tool in my opinion.

Eye Dropper (I):

This is a very useful, but nevertheless underrated, feature in Photoshop Elements. Use the eyedropper to sample the brightness levels in any part of your image, specifically to check the density of the shadows or highlights. This tool is substantially useful if your screen is not calibrated because it can indicate possible tonal loss in very bright or dark regions of the file, irrespective of what you might actually see onscreen.

Custom Shape tool (U):

This tool shares space with the Rectangle tool, the Rounded Rectangle tool, the Elliptical tool, the Polygonal tool, the Star tool, and the Line tool. All of these are vector shapes and can be applied to photographs, or used solo, as part of a design or illustration. Since they are vectors, they can be enlarged or reduced with no loss of quality. Use shapes as text boxes, design elements, or the Custom Shape Tool itself to apply features such as a copyright stamp to pictures. There are 560 (yes, I counted them all) different shapes to choose from under the submenus: Animals, Arrows, Banners and Awards, Characters, Crop Shapes, Dressup, Faces, Flowers, Foliage and Trees, Food, Frames, Fruit, Music, Nature, Objects, Ornaments, Shapes, Signs, Symbols, Talk Bubbles, and Tiles. Phew!

Horizontal Type tool (T):

Use this tool by clicking into the main window and typing in order to add text. Its features mirror those of a typical word processing application. Text is placed on its own special vector text layer, which can be edited independently of the image into which it has been placed. It's a very useful feature.

Pencil tool (T):

You use this in exactly the same way as you would a regular artist's HB pencil. It works best in conjunction with a graphics tablet, which will give you significantly more drawing accuracy than if you use a regular mouse.

Crop tool (C):

Click, hold, and drag inside an image to draw a crop marquee. Click OK, and all of the pixels outside of this marquee will be removed from the file. Use this to recompose a shot at the editing stage. The Crop tool can also be used to rotate an image, as well as crop it. It can also be used to add a border to an image first by dragging the Crop tool to the extremities of the image, then, in a second action, pulling the edges of the Crop Marquee off of the image and onto the surrounding canvas area. When you click OK, that section between the edge of the image and the canvas becomes a color border. Choose a color from the Color Picker before you create the border.

Recompose tool (W):

A relatively new addition to Photoshop Elements, the Recompose tool uses the power of Photomerge (originally used to stitch panoramas together) to bring separate subjects closer together or further away—in the same frame. It's somewhat tricky to use, and, like many of the fully automated tools in Elements, it doesn't always produce good results simply because every picture is completely different from the previous one. It's worth a try, though.

Content Aware Move tool (Q):

This is a select, copy, and paste tool. You draw a generous line around the subject (the Source) that's to be moved and drag the entire selection to a new location (the Target). Using Elements' content-aware AI, it analyzes the Target area and blends the copied pixels into the new background. In my experience, this doesn't work as accurately or as convincingly as a manual copy, paste, and blend adjustment might, but if the situation is right (if there are enough pixels in the Source area), it does the job beautifully.

Straighten tool:

This tool is used to level all of those photographs that have uneven horizons. Click, hold the mouse, and drag the ensuing line across the real horizon in the shot, and when you release the mouse button, the image rotates to make the line you drew, 100% on the level. Amazingly, this also works for vertical lines.

Color Picker (P):

This feature, located at the base of the Tool bar, allows you to change the color of the Foreground and Background palettes. Pressing D on the keyboard resets the Color Picker to its default black foreground/white background state. Pressing the X key swaps black with white, foreground, and background. Use this feature to select a color whenever using any of Photoshop Elements brush tools, pencils, drawing tools, Paint Bucket, and anything else that requires coloring in. Note that, instead of clicking the small color square at the base of the Tool bar and then choosing a color from the Color Picker panel, you can move the cursor off of the Panel and over the image to choose a tint from the image itself.