stopping a tool

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
April 27, 2019
2 replies
2559 views

hello all. this may seem like a stupid question, but I am just learning photoshop and I am wondering how to stop a tool. For example, if I choose a paintbrush, how do I get it to stop appearing aside from choosing another tool? thank you

stop

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Conrad_C

Community Expert

it’s important to understand that a tool is always selected. When you start Photoshop, even before you do anything, a tool is already selected, usually the Move tool. There’s no way to have no tool selected.

If you’ve used a brush tool and you don’t want it to affect the document anymore, switch back to the Move tool (shortcut: press V). Or the Hand tool (H), which won’t accidentally edit anything because it only pans the document in the window.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Conrad+C wrote
There’s no way to have no tool selected.

I guess you could have a non raster layer selected, or even no layer at all, or just turn the selected layer off. That would essentially be the same as having no tool selected. Some of those would result in the error cursor below. Tools like Marquee, Crop and several others would still function though.

Perhaps we should be asking why having a tool selected is presenting a problem?

gener7

Community Expert

You can only deselect an unwanted tool by selecting another one. That's how it works. A simple way would be to press the "h" key on your keyboard to deselect the brush tool and select the Hand Tool which will not accidentally edit your document.

Does that help?