If you're new to Elements, it's very helpful to have a printed toolbox reference. If you'd like to make your own, you can do so by typing "About the toolbox" into the help search box to the right of the menu bar, and printing the resulting help page. Keep this printout handy so you can refer to it throughout these lessons.
When you look at the toolbox, notice how some of the buttons have a tiny arrow in the lower right corner. This arrow indicates that other tools are hidden under that tool. To access the other tools, click and hold down on a button and the other tools will pop out. Try this now by clicking on the rectangle marquee tool and changing to the elliptical marquee tool.
Now hold your cursor over one of the buttons and you should see a tool tip appear that tells you the name of the tool and its keyboard shortcut. The rectangle and elliptical marquee tools have a shortcut of M. When multiple tools share the same shortcut key, you can press the key multiple times to switch between all tools that share that shortcut. So if a marquee tool is not already active the M key will switch to it. Once a marquee tool is already active, the M shortcut will toggle between the rectangular and elliptical marquee tools. Another shortcut for cycling through the hidden tools is to Alt (Win) or Option (Mac) click on the toolbox button. You can also switch between similar tools from the tool options bar.
Take a few moments now to familiarize yourself with the tool names using the tool tips. You'll notice that every tool in the toolbox has a link in its tool tip. Feel free to click these links to learn more about each tool from Photoshop Elements built-in help. Use the shortcuts you've just learned to explore all the hidden tools. Don't worry about using each tool for now; we'll get to that soon enough. For now, you should just get to know the tool locations and their icons.
