The cursor:
This is your basic item, you can move windows
and minimize or maximize them. Nothing art wise though.
Magnifying glass:
enlarges image where you click.
Click on image to enlarge.
Paint brush: The paint brush will be one of your
favorite tools once you learn the size, opacity, and hardness. You
can fool around with these factors by yourself, and when you feel you have
a good paint brush, try it out on a skin. My brush consists of the
size 1-6 and opacity and hardness at 100. A brush size 1-6 means
you're always in control for precision, which is great when you are working
on skins, which means more detail, which means better skins.
Click on the image to enlarge it.
Lasso: The lasso has three main modes, freehand, point to point, and smart edge. I don't recommend using any of the selections but point to point. Freehand is to easy to screw up on, and allows for little or no mistakes. Smartedge doesn't seem that smart all the time, and is usually cursed at instead of using it. Point to point is you soluction, when you zoom in you can get every pixel of the image, and make it look like it was cropped, paste it into your skin, with little or no white stuff.
Shape Select, Eyedropper, and Eraser: The shape select is kinda like the lasso, with a few obvious differences. No precision and it, well, takes the form of shapes. Using the rectangle is the only shape you'll use, if you use this tool. Eyedropper is a great tool for taking colors off of logos and getting pitch black, storing it into your first available color slot. The eraser is a simplistic tool, erasing all layers, eventually getting to the invisible layer. I think you can handle it.