Tools reference
Every tool group in the PhotoFresco toolbar — selection, painting, retouching, vector and navigation tools — with their key options.
The toolbar works like Photoshop's: tools are organized into groups, one button per group. Press a group's key letter to activate it, press Shift + the letter to cycle through the group's subtools, or long-press / right-click the button to pick from the fly-out.
The tool groups
| Key | Group | Tools |
|---|---|---|
V | Move | Move |
M | Marquee | Rectangular, Elliptical, Single Row, Single Column |
L | Lasso | Lasso, Polygonal Lasso, Magnetic Lasso |
W | Quick selection | Magic Wand, Quick Selection, Object Selection |
C | Crop & slice | Crop, Perspective Crop, Slice, Slice Select |
K | Frame | Frame (rectangle), Ellipse Frame |
I | Measure | Eyedropper, Color Sampler, Ruler, Count, Note |
J | Healing | Spot Healing Brush, Healing Brush, Patch, Red Eye |
B | Brush | Brush, Pencil, Color Replacement, Mixer Brush |
S | Stamp | Clone Stamp, Pattern Stamp |
Y | History | History Brush, Art History Brush |
E | Eraser | Eraser, Magic Eraser, Background Eraser |
R | Focus | Blur, Sharpen, Smudge |
O | Tone | Dodge, Burn, Sponge |
G | Fill | Gradient, Paint Bucket |
U | Shapes | Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Line, Custom Shape |
P | Pen | Pen, Freeform Pen, Curvature Pen, Add/Delete Anchor, Convert Point, Paths |
T | Type | Horizontal Type, Vertical Type, Horizontal Type Mask, Vertical Type Mask |
A | Path select | Path Selection, Direct Selection |
H | Navigate | Hand, Rotate View |
Z | Zoom | Zoom |
Each tool's settings appear in the options bar under the menu. The sections below cover the options that matter most.
Selection tools
- Marquee (
M) — rectangular and elliptical selections, plus single-row/column. Options: New/Add/Subtract/Intersect modes, Feather (0–250 px), anti-alias, and a Style menu for fixed-ratio or fixed-size drags. Hold Shift while dragging to add to a selection, Alt/Option to subtract. - Lasso (
L) — freehand. The Polygonal Lasso clicks straight segments (Enter closes, Esc cancels, Backspace removes the last point); the Magnetic Lasso snaps to edges, tuned by Width, Contrast and Frequency. - Magic Wand (
W) — picks similar colors, controlled by Tolerance (0–255), Contiguous, anti-alias, Sample All Layers, and a Sample Size averaging menu. - Quick Selection — paint to grow a selection, with brush size, tolerance and a Hard Edge option.
- Object Selection — drag a box (or lasso) around a subject; there's also a Select Subject button. This is a local heuristic that finds the dominant foreground region — fast and private, but not a machine-learning cutout, so complex subjects may need a pass of Quick Selection cleanup.
- All selection tools offer Select and Mask… for edge refinement. More in Layers, masks & selections.
Painting tools
- Brush & Pencil (
B) — Size, Hardness, blend Mode, Opacity, Flow and stroke Smoothing.[and]change size while painting. The Brushes and Brush Settings panels hold presets. - Mixer Brush — blends colors already on the canvas, with Wet, Load and Mix controls.
- Color Replacement — repaints hue while keeping texture.
- Gradient (
G) — Linear, Radial, Angle, Reflected and Diamond shapes, with Reverse, Dither and Transparency options, plus the Gradients panel of presets. Paint Bucket fills with the foreground color or a pattern, with tolerance. - Eraser (
E) — brush, pencil or block modes. The Magic Eraser deletes similar pixels in one click (like the wand + Delete); the Background Eraser samples as you drag to peel a subject off its background.
Retouching tools
- Spot Healing Brush (
J) — one-click blemish removal; Content-Aware, Create Texture or Proximity Match types. - Healing Brush — like Clone Stamp but blends the patch with surrounding tone. Alt/Option-click to set the source. The Patch tool drags a selection to its replacement area.
- Clone Stamp (
S) — exact pixel copying: Alt/Option-click to set the source, then paint. Aligned mode and a Sample menu (current layer or all layers) in the options bar; the Clone Source panel gives precise offsets. - Blur / Sharpen / Smudge (
R) and Dodge / Burn / Sponge (O) — classic local adjustments, painted on. - History Brush (
Y) — paints an earlier history state back into the image.
Vector, type & crop
- Shapes (
U) — rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, polygons, lines and custom shapes as editable shape layers with fill and stroke (solid or dashed) plus boolean combine operations. - Pen (
P) — full path editing: standard, freeform and curvature pens, anchor-point tools, and a combined Paths tool. Finished paths can become a selection, a mask or a shape. Enter commits a path, Esc cancels. - Type (
T) — horizontal and vertical text with font family/style, size, color, alignment, anti-alias modes and Warp Text. Type Mask variants create a selection in the shape of the text. Character, Paragraph and Glyphs panels carry the fine controls. - Crop (
C) — ratio presets (1:1, 4:5, 16:9 and friends), rule-of-thirds or grid overlays, a Straighten mode, and the choice to delete or keep cropped pixels. The Perspective Crop tool squares up skewed photos.
Navigation
- Hand (
H) pans — or just hold Space with any tool. Rotate View spins the canvas non-destructively; double-click the button to reset. - Zoom (
Z) — click to zoom in, Alt/Option-click out, with Scrubby Zoom dragging. Double-click the Zoom button for 100%, the Hand button to fit the screen. - The Eyedropper (
I) samples colors; the Color Sampler pins up to several persistent readouts in the Info panel; Ruler, Count and Note round out the group.
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