Articles by Web Editor | Page 18

How To “Unerase”

You probably already know that you can use the History Brush (Y) as an “undo” on a brush, and that by default, the History Brush paints back to how your image looked when you first opened it. But did you know that the Eraser tool has a similar function? That’s right; the next time you’ve got the Eraser tool (E) active, look up in the Options Bar and you’ll see a checkbox for Erase to History. Normally, the Eraser tool erases to your Background color, but when you turn on this checkbox, it erases back to what the image looked like when you opened it.

October 2nd, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Out Of Memory? Try This First

Here’s a tip for avoiding those nasty out-of-memory warning dialogs. One of the reasons Photoshop needs so much memory is that by default it keeps a snapshot of the last 20 things you did to your document, thus allowing you to undo your previous 20 steps. (You can see the running list of your last 20 steps in the History palette.) As you might expect, storing 20 steps takes a mighty chunk of memory, and if you’re running a little low (or getting those evil out-of-memory warnings), one thing you might try is lowering the amount of steps Photoshop stores. In Mac OS X, go under the Photoshop menu, under Preferences, under General, and you’ll find a field for History States. (In Windows you’ll find Preferences under the Edit menu.) You can lower this number (try 8 States for starters), and you may avoid the dreaded memory warnings. Just remember, by lowering the States, you don’t have 20 undos anymore.

October 1st, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

Don’t Click In That Field!

Those tiny little fields up in the Options Bar can really be a pain sometimes, especially if you’re trying to highlight a field, delete the current value, and type in a new one. Instead of doing all that, just click on the field’s name and Photoshop will automatically highlight the entire field for you. That way, you can just type in new values and it will automatically replace the old values. Great thing is, this doesn’t just work in the Options Bar; it works in many of Photoshop’s palettes, including the Character and Paragraph palettes.

September 28th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Put Your Gradient Picker At Your Fingertips

Want to make the Gradient Picker appear under your cursor in your image window? You can do this when you have the Gradient tool (G) active, allowing access to your gradient library, by Control-clicking (PC: Right-clicking) within your image area. It also works with the Custom Shape Picker. Here’s an even slicker trick: You can use the Return or Enter key instead to bring up the Gradient or Custom Shape Pickers.

September 27th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Using The Pen? Stay Away From The Toolbox

Want to save trips to the Toolbox when using the Pen tool (P)? You’re in luck. Better yet, you don’t even have to hold down any modifier keys (such as Option/Alt, etc.), because Photoshop will do the work for you. Here’s why: When you draw a path, move your cursor over a line segment and your Pen cursor automatically changes to the Add Anchor Point tool, so you can click anywhere along that path to add a point. Move your cursor over an existing point, and it changes into the Delete Anchor Point tool (click on the point, and it’s deleted). This is called Auto Add/Delete, and it’s on by default (you can turn it off, should you want to, using the checkbox in the Options Bar).

September 26th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

How To Get An Undo After You’ve Closed The Document

As you probably already know, the History palette keeps track of the last 20 changes to your document, and you can use it for multiple undos when working on a project. The only bad part is that when you close your document, your undos (in History) are automatically deleted. However, there is a way to save an undo, as long as it’s a tonal adjustment (such as Curves, Levels, Color Balance, etc.), by creating adjustment layers. Just click on the half-white/half-black circle icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose your tonal adjustment from the pop-up menu to create an adjustment layer. These adjustment layers are saved along with your file. That way, the next time you open the file, you can go back and edit your Curves, Levels, etc., adjustment by double-clicking on the adjustment layer’s thumbnail. The last-applied adjustment will appear, and you can edit it live. If you decide you don’t want the original adjustment applied at all, you can drag the adjustment layer into the Trash icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. You can also add a Gradient fill, a Pattern fill, and even a Solid Color fill as an adjustment layer, giving you an undo at a later date, because again, they’re saved as layers with the file.

September 25th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Hit Those Channels Fast

When you’re in the Curves dialog (Command-M [PC: Control-M]), if you’re charging by the hour, you can certainly travel up to the Channel pop-up menu and choose each individual channel you want to work on, but if you want to do it the fast way, just press Command-1 for Red, Command-2 for Green, and Command-3 for Blue (PC: Control-1, Control-2, etc.). If you need to return to the composite RGB channel, press Command-Tilde (PC: Control-Tilde). By the way, the Tilde key looks like ~, and it lives right above the Tab key on your keyboard. Don’t feel bad. Nobody knows what the Tilde key is. We’re not sure it’s a real symbol at all. We think it was made up so there wouldn’t be an empty space there on your keyboard. Hey, it’s somewhat plausible.

September 24th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Use Your Last Settings And Save Time

This is a tip that will save you time when you’re making tonal adjustments using Levels, Curves, Color Balance, etc. (most anything that appears under the Adjustments submenu under the Image menu). When you bring up one of the tonal adjustment dialogs, it always displays its default settings, but if you hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) when choosing it from the Adjustments menu, instead of coming up with the default settings, it will display the last settings you used in that particular dialog. You can also add the Option (PC: Alt) key to the keyboard shortcuts. For example, the shortcut to bring up the Levels dialog is Command-L (PC: Control-L), but if you add Option (PC: Alt) to those keys, the Levels dialog will open with your last-used settings.

September 21st, 2007 | Web Editor | News | Comments (0)

Making The Color Palette Work Twice As Hard

If you use the Color palette (under the Window menu) to select colors, you’re probably already using the color ramp at the bottom of the palette for making quick color selections, but here are two tips that make using the ramp faster and easier. First, the color ramp doesn’t have to use the same color mode as the color sliders above it; for example, you can have RGB for your sliders and grayscale as your ramp. This is great because it gives you two different models to choose from without digging through menus. You can choose the color modes for both the sliders and the ramp from the Color palette’s flyout menu. The second tip is that if you quickly want to change color ramps, Shift-click on the ramp. Every time you click, it will rotate through to the next color mode.

September 20th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Getting More Control Over The Magic Wand

By default, the Eyedropper tool’s Sample Size option (in the Options Bar) is set to Point Sample, which comes into play if you’re using it to read values for color correction. But for now, it’s important to know that the Sample Size option chosen for the Eyedropper tool (I) actually affects how the Magic Wand tool (W) makes its selection (the two have an undocumented relationship). If you increase the Eyedropper’s Sample Size to 3 by 3 or 5 by 5 Average, the Magic Wand will select an average of a much larger range of pixels in the sample area. This is important to know, because if you don’t have Point Sample chosen and you set the Magic Wand Tolerance to 0, it won’t just select the individual pixel you click on—it will select all of the pixels that match any of the pixels in a 3 by 3 or 5 by 5 area. The next time your Magic Wand isn’t behaving the way it used to, check and see if you have changed the Eyedropper tool’s Sample Size.

September 19th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Fix Those Stray Pixels Fast!

Sometimes when making a selection with the Magic Wand tool (W) or Color Range command (under the Select menu), Photoshop will leave little stray pixels unselected. You can tell where they are because they appear to twinkle on and off, kind of teasing…nay, taunting you, because your selection is not complete. Luckily, there’s a quick way to rein in those renegade stray pixels. Go under the Select menu, under Modify, and choose Smooth. Enter a Sample Radius of 1 pixel and click OK. That will usually do the trick—those stray pixels are now selected.

September 18th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Bringing Back Those Cropped-Away Areas

When you’re using the Crop tool (C) to crop images, you’ll find that you actually have some options on how the area you’re cropping away is handled after the crop. For example, in the Options Bar (as long as you’re not on the Background layer) you’ll see an option that lets you either Delete the cropped areas or simply Hide them from view (in other words, the areas are still there, they just expand out into the canvas area). If you choose the Hide option, it crops the image window down to the size of the crop, but since the cropped-away areas are still really there, you can use the Move tool (V) to drag these cropped areas back into view.

September 17th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Reusing Your Last Curve Setting

Once you’ve applied a curve setting to an image, it’s very possible that you’d like to use that exact same setting again, or maybe you’d just like to tweak that setting a bit. Well, you can. To bring up the Curves dialog with the last curve you used still in place, press Command-Option-M (PC: Control-Alt-M).

September 14th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Creating Temporary Brushes

It’s easy to create a temporary brush based on your preset brushes in Photoshop. Just click on the Brush thumbnail in the Options Bar to bring up the Brush Picker. Using the Master Diameter slider, you can change your brush size from 1 to 2500 pixels. If you like the size of your new brush and you want to save it, just click the Create a New Brush Preset icon at the top right of the dialog. The Brush Name dialog will appear so you can name your new brush. When you click OK, the new brush will immediately be added to your Brush Picker (and Brushes palette).

September 13th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Making Your Guide Flip

Just like most page-layout applications, Photoshop has non-printing guides you can pull out anytime you need to align objects or type, but there’s also a trick for flipping the guides. To access the guides, make your rulers visible by pressing Command-R (PC: Control-R), then click-and-hold within one of the rulers and drag out a guide. If you pull out a horizontal guide from the top ruler, but really wanted a vertical guide, just press the Option key (PC: Alt key) as you drag and your guide will flip from horizontal to vertical (pretty slick). You can pull out as many guides as you need (there’s probably a limit to how many you can use, but we’ve never reached it). When you’re done using a guide, just use the Move tool (V) to drag it back to the ruler where it came from. To remove all of your guides at once, choose Clear Guides from the View menu.

September 12th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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