A Brief Overview of the Tools

I thought a nice place to start would be with a brief overview of the tools. There may be be a more in-depth look at each one later. Keep in mind that most tools have subsequent tool options.

Here is what the tool palette looks like in Elements 11:



Here is a vary simple definition of each tool. The definitions are by no means all-inclusive to the functionality of each tool (or set of tools).

Icon	Name	Description
	Zoom	Zoom in and out of your image
	Hand	Allows you to "pan" around images without changing the window position
	Move	The move tool allows you to move selected objects or entire images around your canvas
	Rectangular Marquee	A selection tool that allows you to select parts of an image or canvas in the the form of a rectangle
	Lasso	Allows you to make free-form selections by hand
	Quick Selection	Select parts of your image or canvas
	Redeye Removal	Repair eye artifacts in photograps
	Spot Healing Brush	Remove artifacts and objects from images
	Smart Brush	Selectively brush on various effects and fixes
	Clone Stamp	Clone parts of images over others to fix damage, add or remove objects, or apply effects
	Blur	Tools to decrease the sharpness of details
	Sponge	Tools for altering color saturation
	Brush	Allows you to "paint" color on images
	Eraser	Remove parts of your image or object/td>
	Paint Bucket	Flood-fill areas with the selected foreground color
	Gradient Tool	Apply gradients to a selection, canvas, or image
	Color Picker	Used to sample color from images for color-matching purposes
	Custom Shapes	Add preset shapes to your projects
	Text Tool	Add text to projects in a variety of modes
	Pencil	Draw in pixels on raster layers
	Crop	Tool cuts away the parts outside the boundaries of the tool
	Recompose	Transformation tool that allows elements of an image to be rearranged
	Cookie Cutter	Tool that contains a variety of shapes. When applied to a image, object, or canvas, this tool removes the area outside of the shape
	Straighten	Straighten crooked images (such as scanned images)

Notes for Paint Shop Pro Refugees

The closest thing to the burn and dodge brush tools are located in the Sponge tool options of Elements 11.

The closest thing to the smudge brush is in the Blur tool options. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent to the soften brush there, however. The closest thing I could find is holding down the ALT key on the keyboard and using the sharpen mode within the Blur tool options.

There is no pen tool in PSE capable of vectoring. Custom shapes (preset shapes) do not seem to be editable on a node-level, either.