This is a quick summary of Photoshop’s Tools palette with a description of each tool’s functions and shortcuts. Great for those brand new to Photoshop.

I decided to start at the beginning. The very beginning. For those people who just “picked up” a copy of Photoshop and have no idea what to do with it. The keyboard shortcut is in ( ).

Rectangular Marquee Tool (M)
Use this tool to make selections on your image, in a rectangular shape. This changes the area of your image that is affected by other tools or actions to be within the defined shape. Holding the Shift key while dragging your selection, restricts the shape to a perfect square. Holding the Alt key while dragging sets the center of the rectangle to where your cursor started.

Move Tool (V)
Use this tool to, well, move things. Usually you use it to move a Layer around after it has been placed. Hold the Shift key to limit the movements to vertical/horizontal.

Polygon Lasso Tool (L)
Ok, this should be the Lasso Tool, but I use the Polygon Lasso a lot more often. Use this to draw selections in whatever shape you would like. To close the selection, either click on the beginning point (you’ll see the cursor change when you’re on it), or just double-click. When holding the Ctrl key, you’ll see the cursor change, and the next time you click, it will close your selection.

Magic Wand Tool (W)
Use this to select a color range. It will select the block of color, or transparency, based on wherever you click. In the Options Bar at the top, you can change the Tolerance to make your selections more/less precise.

Crop Tool (C)
The Crop Tool works similarly to the Rectangular Marquee tool (see above if you have no short-term memory). The difference is when you press the Enter/Return key, it crops your image to the size of the box. Any information that was on the outside of the box is now gone. Not permanently, you can still undo.

Slice Tool (K)
This is used mostly for building websites, or splitting up one image into smaller ones when saving out. It’s kind of an advanced tool, and since you’re in here for the basics, we’ll kind of skip over it. Kinda makes you mad I made you read all that for nothing, huh?

Healing Brush Tool (J)
This is a really useful tool. Mildly advanced. You can use this tool to repair scratches and specs and stuff like that on images. It works like the Brush tool (see below). You choose your cursor size, then holding the Alt key, you select a nice/clean area of your image. Let go of the Alt key and paint over the bad area. It basically copies the info from the first area to the second, in the form of the Brush tool. Only, at the end, it averages the information, so it blends.

Brush Tool (B)
This is one of the first tools ever. It’s what Photoshop is based off of. Well, not really, but it’s pretty basic. It paints one your image, in whatever color you have selected, and whatever size you have selected. There’s a lot of options for it, but this is basic, so you don’t get to learn them. Ha.

Clone Stamp Tool (S)
This is very similar to the Healing Brush Tool (see above). You use it the exact same way, except this tool doesn’t blend at the end. It’s a direct copy of the information from the first selected area to the second. When you learn to use both of these tools together in perfect harmony, you will be a Photoshop MASTA! Not really, it’s just less irritating.

History Brush Tool (H)
This tool works just like the Brush Tool (see above) except the information that it paints with is from the original state of your image. If you go Window>History, you can see the History Palette. The History Brush tool paints with the information from whatever History state is selected.

Eraser Tool (E)
This is the anti-Brush tool. It works like an eraser (duh) and erases whatever information wherever you click and drag it. If you’re on a Layer, it will erase the information transparent. If you are on the background layer, it erases with whatever secondary color you have selected.

Gradient Tool (G)
You can use this to make a gradiation of colors. Gradiation doesn’t appear to be a word, but it makes sense anyway. It creates a blending of your foreground color and background color when you click and drag it. Like a gradient.

Blur Tool (R)
The Blur tool is cool. It makes things blurry. Click and drag to make things blurry. The more you click and drag, the blurrier things get.

Dodge Tool (O)
This tool isn’t as crappy as the car brand. It’s actually used to lighten whatever area you use it on. As long as it is not absolute black. Absolute black won’t lighten.

Path Selection Tool (A)
You use this tool when working with paths. Since this is all about the basics, I won’t go into details. It’s related to the Pen Tool (see below) though.

Horizontal Type Tool (T)
It makes type. Or text. Or whatever you want to call it. You can click a single point, and start typing right away. Or you can click and drag to make a bounding box of where your text/type goes. There’s a lot of options for the Type Tool. Just play around, it’s fairly straight-forward.

Pen Tool (P)
I mentioned this tool above. It’s for creating paths, in which you would use the Path Selection Tool to select the path. Paths can be used in a few different ways, mostly to create clipping paths, or to create selections. You use the tool by clicking to add a point. If you click and drag, it will change the shape of your path, allowing you to bend and shape the path for accurate selections and such.

Rectangle Tool (U)
By default it draws a Shape Layer in the form of a rectangle. It fills the rectangle with whatever foreground color you have selected. It’s pretty complicated, don’t hurt yourself with this one.

Notes Tool (N)
Like post-it notes, but digital. You can use this tool to add small little note boxes to your image. These are useful if you’re very forgetful or if you’re sharing your Photoshop file with someone else. I’m pretty sure it only works with .PSD files.

Eyedropper Tool (I)
This tool works by changing your foreground color to whatever color you click on. Holding the Alt key will change your background color.

Hand Tool (T)
You can really make short work of your job with the Hand Tool. It’s for moving your entire image within a window. So if you’re zoomed in and your image area is larger than the window, you can use the Hand Tool to navigate around your image. Just click and drag. You can get to this tool at any time when using any other tool by pressing and holding the Spacebar.

When I first started freelancing as a college student, I was eager to do any website and would say “Yes” to anything, regardless of my skill set or the time involved. It was just nice to know that someone needed me for a skilled task. Unfortunately, I quickly found myself working all the time, eating Ramen noodles, and not getting anywhere in terms of paying off my wonderful college debt. To make things worse, these people were also giving my contact info out to other such people (you know, the lady who has been thinking about selling dog sweaters online and has a $100 budget for an e-commerce site, 1000 brochures, and a guranteed #1 Google search result for the “dog”, “sweater”, and “love”).

Anyways, now four years later, my world (AND financial success) now requires ample use of the answer “No.” And here are ten questions I nearly always answer “No” to:

1) Can you show me a mock-up to help us choose a designer/developer? No.
I fell for this once when I was young and naive. I made no money and wasted lots of time. Don’t do unpaid work for the chance to be paid — this wouldn’t fly in any other industry, so why web design? The best case scenario (though rare) is that you get a job with a client who knows that you’ll work for free when necessary. The worst case scenario is that they don’t pay you, and still use your stuff, knowing you don’t have the legal resources to do anything about it. Most likely though, you’ll just waste time.

2) Can you give us a discount rate? No.
There are A LOT of companies out there that do not see web design as a service worth more than $20 an hour. These should never be your clients. In my early post-college years, I used to value “getting the job” so highly, I would take on an inordinate amount of work for the pay. Let me tell you that it’s not worth it. Ever. Remember, you may be doing this company a favor, but on the flip side, you’re hurting your own future, and your family’s. Nowadays, I give my hourly rate immediately, and it weeds out many potential clients. It’s simple math really — if doubling your rate loses half your client work, then you’re still making as much in half the time. If you do excellent work, get paid for it – there will always be comparable “firms” charging double what you are.

3) Will you register and host my site? No.
Sure it seems like a good idea — free recurring revenue right? Well, maybe… if you can first get them to pay, and then if you can justify making $10 a month for the endless phone support you’ll have to give at all hours of the night. You see, once the client thinks that you are responsible for their email and website functionality, you WILL get called all the time when their email shows the slightest wavering or their website 404s for any reason on their home computer. Believe it or not, I’ve even known someone who had a client call about his cell phone functionality just because my friend hosted his site. Don’t do it…it’s not worth it. Give them a registrar and hosting company and let them sign up themselves.

4) Can you copy this site? No.
Now you may think that I answer “No” strictly from a moral standpoint, and although that is true, there are other equally important reasons. First, if they’re copying a site, they have shady ethics themselves and the chances of you getting paid on time and in the full amount are unlikely. Second, doing this type of work reduces you to a monkey, and although some of your work may be like this to pay the bills, why purposely pursue it? Third, if it’s a true copy, the only benefit you may receive is payment – you really won’t get to use it for a portfolio or example work, and furthermore, this type of client is one you do not want work from in the future.

5) Can I pay for my e-commerce site from my website sales? No.
I hate to be the pessimist, but when I am asked this, I want to tell them that they most likely won’t make any money so they might as well ask me to do it for free. Yes, I know there are exceptions, so sometimes I will ask them about their business, marketing, and revenue plans, which 99% of them don’t have. They just thought that selling t-shirts would a novel idea for the internet. I usually go into a spiel about having to support me and my family, and I can’t do it with speculative work — I then recommend Yahoo! Shopping or CafePress, and 9 times out of 10, they never get their site up anyways.

6) I have a great idea. Do you want to…? No.
Not much different from #5, but could be a much larger time waster if you buy in. Again, not trying to be a jerk, but if the person adds little to the potential business outside of speaking an idea, then any work you proceed to do is mere charity (which you may be okay with). But to be honest, I’d rather be charitable with my family and friends and make them partners for free versus a stranger. Trust me, if some really has a great idea, they’ll make you partners AND pay you as well.

7) Do you have an IM account? No.
I might give it out if it’s to a person I can trust during an intensive project, but as a general policy, I tell clients that it’s my general policy not to. The reason here is obvious — you have a life and other clients beyond them. Many clients see you as an on-call employee, and this is bad. This is why you quit your day job…

8) Can I just pay the whole amount when it’s done? No.
I require 50% up front (unless it’s a huge job — then maybe 33%). I need that assurance that they have “bought in” on this project, and that I can plan on the income, pay bills, and eat. People who want to pay at the end are much more likely to back out after you’ve done tons of work.

9) Is there any way you could get this done tonight or this weekend? No.
Once they know that you helped them out one time, they will expect it in the future. Now you might choose to get extra done at night (I do all the time), but don’t start making promises about getting things done at night or on the weekends/vacation. I know a lot of freelancers that charge night/weekend hours as well, so that might be a possible route to take as well. Because the reason you freelance is for the freedom, right? Right?

10) Can I be sure you won’t use this work in anything else? No.
This is a very sensitive subject because most clients misunderstand it (intellectual property is a tricky subject anyways). In my Terms and Conditions that I require all new clients to sign, I make sure they know that (1) their code has utilized code from other projects which I haven’t charged them for (2) I will probably use code from their project on other projects (3) the own the code and implementation of the project (finished website), but not the actual code pieces (login system, image uploader, etc.). I pride myself in productivity and speed, and I need to use other code all the time to accomplish this. Not to mention that I sell stock Flash which I may need old code to help build. They’re not paying you to create code that they in turn will sell, so make sure they know that it’s the implementation and not the coding that’s theirs.

There are others I’m sure. Feel free to add you own and remember, it’s the opportunities you avoid that will define your success just as much as the ones you take…

My neighbours don’t like it.

I can appreciate you looking to friends for support on this project; however, it’s often difficult for others to understand the needs of the project at this stage. If you really believe these parties’ opinions to be valuable, we should involve them in the full process. Let’s schedule a sit-down with any new stakeholders next week, so that we can review the brief, strategy and challenges with them, and see if they still hold the same perspectives.

We really liked your portfolio; can you make our project look more like what you did for Client X?

It’s funny you ask that because we try to do the opposite. In our minds, we have to look at each client’s needs individually, and deliver a solution that’s uniquely theirs. It’s funny that you mention Client X, as they were initially very unsure of the approach we took, and it has ultimately served them very well.

Let’s not worry about what others are doing. I want the approach we deliver to be distinctly yours. Think of it as a new suit that you wouldn’t have thought of trying on. We’re pretty objective, and as such will help you find something that meets your needs. In time to come, you’ll find that it fits you quite nicely.

Someone in accounting mocked-up a really neat idea for this.

We’re happy to take a look at other ideas but sometimes doing so increases the overall time requirement, as we would need to answer more questions and increase the number of meetings. If you would like to do this, I can draft an addendum to the estimate to make a provision for this. Alternately, if budget is a key concern, I’d ask you to sit down with this individual and find out if there’s a specific problem they are working to solve. This may save some billable time, and help crystallize the concerns in a fashion that will help us respond best.

It’s a great start, but we need to add this, and this, and this…

I can understand your desire to not leave anything out, and it’s a not an uncommon sentiment. At the beginning of the project, however, you noted that you really wanted to build something around your customers’ needs. In my experience, the organizations that do this best focus on a few key items, and work to deliver them in the best way possible. Adding more can confuse customers and sometimes even scare them away. Just look at the most successful brands in the marketplace and you’ll see that they are highly selective in their messaging.

I love beige; can we get more beige in this?

Personal preferences are powerful motivators; personally, I love hot pink, but it doesn’t work in all settings. I’d like to step back to the creative brief for a moment. You note that your company really wants to connect with adolescent males who love hardcore sports. Do you think beige will connect with them?

I don’t really know what I think about this approach.

That’s fair; this is a big change from what you’ve done in the past, and in my mind, it’s a bold new direction for you. As a result it may take a while for you to absorb this one fully. So, let’s start with more strategic concerns. I’ve made a copy of our original assessment document, and have flipped to the project and messaging directives section. Let’s look over that, and see if we’re not meeting any of the requirements we set out with.

I just don’t know; it’s just so different.

That’s great; different is good! A key aspect to positioning your firm is to find an approach that others aren’t employing. It makes sense that you’re not sure about it though; new things often make people feel that way. I remember hating espresso when I tried it for the first time! Thank goodness I gave it a chance, as I feel quite differently now. Let’s look at the creative brief, and see if we’re meeting your predetermined criteria for the project. If we are, it could indicate that we just need take a little time to get used to this new direction.

Can we make the text bigger?

Yes. Could you perhaps show me a couple of other websites that employ a text-size that feels right to you? We can then compare the two to see how much larger we should make it. (Note: This often leads to us finding that the proposed text is actually larger than what the client had believed.)

I’ll know what I like when I see it.

A lot of people feel that way when it comes to visual treatments, but it’s hard for us to respond with such vague direction. Can you imagine ordering food like that? “Bring me something that’s good, and I’ll eat it if I like it. Otherwise, you’ll just have to make different dishes until I’m satisfied.”

Let’s me ask some questions that might help us identify what you are looking for. Is this approach too conservative or non-traditional? Does it feel overly light or dark? Are the images too passive or overly active? (Note: These questions can go on for some time; the focus is to keep them polarizing, in order to extrapolate some kind of hard response to aesthetic leanings.)

I was at this sandwich shop the other day, and they have an amazing website. Can we make ours look like theirs?

I don’t believe that doing so would result in a solution that meets your needs. Creative strategies are generally tailored to meet the particular requirements of a specific effort. That being said, it sounds like their site really resonated with you. Let’s take a look at their site, and try to extrapolate what points felt good to you. Maybe it will help us better learn what sensations you’d like to elicit on behalf of your audience.

I’ll end with two other little suggestions that you may find helpful. First of all, don’t just toss the design comps in front of the client. Start meetings with a review of the problems you’ve solved and the steps you went through to do so. This sets the stage for you to unveil the work and orients the clients in your process.

Additionally, don’t screw-up. Make sure you’ve addressed all of the necessary design challenges thoroughly and accurately. If there’s a hole in one part of your solution, it can raise questions about the entire approach. Even a small chink in the armor can erode your client’s trust.