Articles by Web Editor | Page 20

Getting Your Warnings Back (Resetting All Dialogs)

One thing I love about Photoshop is that a number of warning dialogs have a magical checkbox that says “Don’t show this dialog again” (or something along those lines). However, if you later decide you want these warning dialogs put back into play (this is especially helpful if you’re training someone new on your computer), you can have them become active again. Just go under the Photoshop menu (PC: Edit menu), under Preferences, and choose General. In the General section of the Preferences dialog, click on the button at the bottom of the dialog named Reset All Warning Dialogs.

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

Escape From The Crop Tool (Or Die!)

Sometimes when you’re using the Crop tool (C), you change your mind and decide not to crop. If this happens to you, do you have to crop and then press the undo shortcut? Nah, press the Escape key to cancel your crop and remove the cropping border. You can also click on the circle with a slash icon (the international symbol for “NO”) on the far right of the Options Bar to cancel a crop. Okay, there’s one more way, just switch tools—a dialog will appear asking you if you want to complete the crop or not. Just hit Don’t Crop.

July 16th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Scrubby Slider Shift-Click Trick

Adobe borrowed scrubby sliders, a very cool feature from Adobe After Effects, and put it in Photoshop. You use it by clicking on a field’s name, rather than in the field itself, and the value in the field changes as you drag (scrub) over the field’s name. However, it scrubs in very small increments. That is, unless you hold the Shift key, which is ideal when you need to make big changes in the field (like from 0 to 256).

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

Quick Trick To Reapply That Filter

Want a convenient shortcut that lets you run the last filter you applied, without going to the Filter menu? Too bad (just kidding). Simply press Command-F (PC: Control-F). What if you don’t want the same settings (ah, I knew you were going to ask that)? Try pressing Command-Option-F (PC: Control-Alt-F), which brings up the dialog for the last filter you applied with the last settings you used.

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

How To Tame The Select Similar Command

A popular trick for making selections of large areas (such as backgrounds) is to select part of the background that contains most of the colors that appear within that background. Then you can go under the Select menu and choose Similar. Photoshop will then select all the similar colors in your image. This can really speed up the task of selecting an entire background, especially if the background is limited to just a few colors. Here’s the tip: Do you know what determines how many pixels out the Similar command selects? Believe it or not, it’s controlled by the Magic Wand’s Tolerance setting. The higher the setting, the more pixels it selects. Eerie, ain’t it? Sooooooo… if you use Similar, and it doesn’t select enough colors, go to the Magic Wand tool, increase the Tolerance setting, and then try running Similar again. This all makes perfect sense (at least to an engineer at Adobe).

July 11th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Can’t Remember Selection Shortcuts? Look At The Cursor

If you’ve made a selection and want to add to that selection, just hold the Shift key and you can add more area to it. Of course, we just told you it was the Shift key, but what if you couldn’t remember which key it was? Just press a modifier key (such as Shift, Option/Alt, Command/Control, etc.) then look at your cursor. When you hold the Shift key, a little plus sign appears at the bottom right-hand corner of the cursor to tell you that you can add to the selection. Hold Option (PC: Alt) and a minus sign appears to tell you that you can subtract from the selection. Hold Command (PC: Control) and a pair of scissors appears, telling you that if you click-and-drag the selection, it will cut out the image inside of the selection and move it right along with the cursor.

July 10th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Using The Lasso Tool? Keep It Straight

We normally use the Lasso tool (L) for drawing freeform selections, but sometimes you’ll find that while drawing your selection you’ll need to draw a perfectly straight segment, even for just a few pixels. You can do just that by holding the Option key (PC: Alt key), releasing the mouse button, and continuing to draw your selection. You’ll notice that your cursor changes to the Polygonal Lasso tool, and that as you move the mouse, a perfectly straight selection will drag out. When you’ve dragged the straight selection where you want, click-and-hold the mouse button (to add a point), release the Option/Alt key, and you’ll be back to the regular Lasso tool again. Drag the mouse to continue drawing your selection.

July 9th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Getting A Fresh Histogram In One Click

When you have the Histogram palette open to monitor your tonal adjustments to an image, you may see a tiny warning symbol in the top-right corner of your histogram. That’s its way of letting you know that you’re looking at a histogram reading from the histogram’s memory cache—not a fresh reading. If you want to refresh the histogram and get a new reading (and you should), you can click directly on the tiny warning symbol and it will refresh immediately for you.

July 6th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

The Hidden Measurement Pop-Up Menu

You probably already know the trick about entering values in measurement fields in the Options Bar. You can change your unit of measure by typing the appropriate abbreviation after the value (for example, if you want 100 pixels, you’d type in “100 px”). But there’s an even easier way (and you don’t have to memorize a bunch of abbreviations). Just type your number, Control-click (PC: Right-click) in the field, and a pop-up menu of measurement units will appear. Just choose the one you want and it’ll take care of the rest.

July 5th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Lost Your Cursor? Find It Fast!

Photoshop’s cursors can be easy to lose onscreen, especially if you’re working on a big screen or with the crosshair cursor (meaning you have the Caps Lock key active). Well, the next time you’re working on an image, and you say to yourself, “Hey, where in the heck is my cursor?” (but you use a different word in place of “heck”), try this—just hold the Spacebar down for a moment. This temporarily changes your cursor into the Hand tool, whose icon is larger, white, and easy to see. Once it appears, you’ll see right where your cursor is, and you can release the Spacebar.

July 3rd, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

A Tip For People Who Train New Photoshop Users

If you’re responsible for training beginners, especially in a corporate environment where you’re training people to do specific tasks in a specific order (like prepress), you can use this and the previous two tips to make your (and their) life easier. First, go to the Menus command (found under the Edit menu) and hide every menu item you don’t want them to see or mess with, leaving only the items they’ll actually use visible. You can even hide palettes they don’t need to see (by double-clicking on the word “Window” in the dialog and turning off the Eye icons to hide palettes). This makes Photoshop appear less cluttered, and therefore less intimidating. As they learn more and get better, you can reveal additional features to them.

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

Don’t Use It? Hide It!

Photoshop has more than a hundred different filters, and most of us probably use just a handful in our daily work. In fact, so far as we’ve been able to determine (through years of user-testing), only three people in the world today use either the Pattern Maker filter or the Fiber filter, and even they don’t like them. So, if there are filters you never use, do they have to hang around clogging up your filter menus? Absolutely not (if you have CS2). Just go under the Edit menu and choose Menus. In the list of Application Menus commands, double-click on Filter to reveal a list of all Photoshop filters. Now, just turn off the Eye icon (a.k.a. the Visibility button) beside the filters you don’t want to see. Don’t worry, if for some reason you decide you need to temporarily access one of those hidden filters, just go under the Filter menu, to the submenu where it used to appear, and choose Show All Menu Items.

June 29th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Want Some Hints For The Tool You’re Currently Using?

If you want some tips about the tool you currently have selected, just go to the Window menu and choose Info. This brings up the Info palette and at the bottom of the palette you’ll find a tip or two for the tool you’re using. If you don’t see these tips, go to the Info palette’s flyout menu and choose Palette Options. When the options appear, at the bottom turn on the checkbox for Show Tool Hints.

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

Side-By-Side Photo Review

Want to compare two photos side-by-side? Just open both in Photoshop CS2, then go under the Window menu, under Arrange, and choose Tile Vertically, which places both photos onscreen, side-by-side, at their maximum “fit-in-window” size.

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

Cursor Too Small? Make It Bigger

At long last, bigger brush cursors are here. Just go to Preferences under the Photoshop menu (or under the Edit menu in Windows), under Display & Cursors, and choose Full Size Brush Tip. You also have the option of adding a crosshair to the center of your brush cursor by turning on that option (which appears just below the Full Size Brush Tip).

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

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Photoshop Tutorials

Design Effects
Corey shows how to use the luminosity of an image to create a cool design effect and spice up your simple photos.
Stylized Comic Book Effect
Using this effect, you can transform anyone into a comic book character with a halftone, saturated look.
Text Shape Layers
Converting text into shapes allows you to distort the text as you like while retaining straight, clean edges.
Borders Under a Minute
Create really cool borders in under a minute to use on virtually any one of your photos or even video for that matter.

Halftone Smudge Brush

Here is an unusual way of using the Smudge tool to generate interesting halftone streaks.
Scale Effects

Now this is something that still seems to stump people in Photoshop when it come to Layer Styles.
Energize That Photo

Learn how to add excitement and energy to your photo in just a few simple steps.
Design Elements from Photos

Here is a cool way to use parts of you photos as abstract design elements.

Acrobat 9 PDF Security
In this tutorial, learn about applying and removing security options in Acrobat 9
Flash Video the Easy Way, Pt. 3
Tom Green demonstrates how to embed a Flash document into a Dreamweaver document and play it on a browser using the Insert>Flash Video menu in Dreamweaver.
Premiere Pro CS4 Nest Command
In this video, Franklin McMahon uses Premiere Pro CS4 to create a nested sequence and then overlay it over a backdrop.
Roundtrip Logo From Illustrator to Photoshop
Dave Cross creates some grungy text using graphics with a texture image.

Imageready’s Supercharged Eyedropper

In previous versions of Photoshop, you could only use the Eyedropper tool to sample a color from other open images in Photoshop, but for some reason, ImageReady had a supercharged Eyedropper. If you clicked the mouse button within your image and held it down, you could leave your image window and sample colors from, well… just about anything—including your computer desktop or any other open application. Freaky! Fortunately, Adobe finally added this same power to Photoshop’s Eyedropper tool.