How Do I Get Tools On The Toolbar?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
March 31, 2019
3 replies
4037 views

I'm a bit stuck. I'm so used to using GIMP, I've not really been able to understand Photoshop that well. With GIMP, all the necessary tools were in the toolbar, but here there isn't any. I tried to add other tools to the toolbar through edit > toolbar, but not everything is showing up. Only some of it shows. Help?

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E

EeveeonE83980361Author

Known Participant

Sorry, none of those are useful. Even if I do pick the tools I want, none of them actually appear. Instead, I get random tools I didn't pick. There has to be a way to add more to the toolbar or at least show all the tools? Isn't it a pretty obvious flaw to not have all the tools there? Whilst I'm on the topic of tools, how do I pick the other tools with hotkeys. I noticed how the similar tools are bound to the same key, and when I try to use the second third or fourth tools (Using the hotkey), they don't seem to work.

jane-e

Community Expert

What workspace are you in? Go to Essentials and see if your tools reappear.

A screen shot would be useful — otherwise we have to make guesses based on a few clues.

Trevor.Dennis

Community Expert

Nope, that doesn't fix anything. I guess I'll just have to assign some hotkeys.

Most of the tools have shortcuts, but because Photoshop has so many tools, some of them share the same shortcut. The default is to use the Shift key to toggle through all the brushes, for instance. I don't like that option and turn it off. I also remove the shortcut from the tools I rarely use, and borrow some shortcuts for other tools.

On my desktop I have lots of room because I use three large monitors, so I like to have all the tools showing directly, and not hidden behind pop-outs. That's easily done with Edit Toolbar that Jane showed you. The double arrow top left toggles between single and double row, and I am obviously using two rows. I find this the most convenient way to work.

A shortcut I borrow is Y which I use for Smudge and Blur, I can't remember where I borrowed it from

The trick to making this work, is using Custom Workspaces, because you can save custom shortcuts to them. So different workspaces have different shortcuts.

Does that help at all? Shout if you need more help.

Nancy OShea

Community Expert

There isn't enough space for all the tools that Photoshop contains. Consequently, you must decide which tool groups are most important to your project and save it as a Preset. Some people have multiple toolbar presets for different tasks like painting, masking or photo editing. Saved presets can be loaded from the Customize Toolbar panel.

To launch the customize panel, click and hold the 3 dots icon on the toolbar > Edit Toolbar.