Articles by Web Editor | Page 24

How To Know If A Photo Is Open In Photoshop

If you’re in Bridge and notice a little round icon with a bent page has appeared in the bottom-right corner of your thumbnail, that’s Bridge’s way of telling you that the image is currently open in Photoshop.

May 23rd, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

How To Get More Than Three Panes

That headline is a setup I can hardly resist, but I’m going to totally ignore it and jump right to the tip, although it panes me. (Sorry, I couldn’t help it.) By default, Bridge (and the File Browsers that came before it) has three panes visible on the left side of the window (with the Folders and Favorites panels on top, Preview in the middle, and the Metadata and Keywords panels below that). But in CS2 it doesn’t have to be just three—you can add more panes (ideal if you’re working on a really large monitor). Here’s how: Just click-and-drag the tab of the pane you want to have in its own section until it appears right beneath one of the existing panes. When you see a thick, blue horizontal line appear between the two panes, that’s your cue—release the mouse button, and your pane has a new home.

May 22nd, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Seeing Your PDF Pages Bigger

If you’re using the previous tip to view PDF documents within Bridge, here’s a tip you’ll probably want to know to make your PDF’s pages appear larger onscreen. If your PDF contains regular letter-sized pages, click the Switch Filmstrip Orientation icon found to the right of the arrow buttons below the PDF. This switches your view so your thumbnails appear along the side, which makes your letter-sized pages larger. Now you can grab the bottom-right corner of the Bridge window and expand it to make your view even bigger, so it’s “biggity big” (that’s a technical term, not to be used lightly).

May 21st, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Viewing The Pages Of PDFs From Within Bridge

Got a multipage PDF and want to see inside it? No sweat—just switch to Filmstrip view (click the Filmstrip icon near the bottom-right corner of the Bridge window), click on the PDF’s thumbnail in Bridge, and little arrow buttons will appear beneath the PDF, which let you move from page to page inside the PDF.

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

Seeing More Than One Folder Of Images At A Time

If you’d like to see more than one folder of photos onscreen at the same time, it’s no problem, because in CS2 you can have multiple Bridge windows open at the same time. Just press Command-N (PC: Control-N) and a new Bridge window will appear (your previous Bridge window will still be there). Now, navigate to the folder you want to display in this window, and you’re set-your original window is still open, and your new window is showing some new photos. Mighty darn handy stuff for a Buckaroo like yourself.

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

Deleting Folders From The Bridge

This is one Adobe snuck into CS2, and they made so little fuss about it, hardly anyone realizes they did it—you can now delete entire folders from right within Bridge. Just click on the folder and press Command-Delete (PC: Control-Delete). Now, with great power comes great responsibility, so don’t just start deleting stuff all willy-nilly (by the way, I have no idea what willy-nilly means), because those folders have photos in ’em. Even though you’ll get a warning dialog before the folder disappears, make sure that before you click OK to delete a folder, that’s really what you want to do.

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

Resetting Bridge’s Preferences

Want all the options in Bridge set back to the factory defaults? Then close Bridge, hold down Command-Option-Shift (PC: Control-Alt-Shift) and then launch Bridge again. A dialog will appear asking what you want to do. Turn on the Reset Preferences checkbox and click OK. Now when Bridge appears, the preferences are factory-fresh.

May 15th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Keeping Bridge Always On Top

The idea behind Bridge is to use it to manage all your images for all your programs, and if you’re doing just that, you’ll definitely want to know how to keep Bridge up front, and floating above whichever program you currently have open. First, click on the Switch to Compact Mode icon that appears in the upper-right corner of Bridge’s Options Bar. Then, once it switches to Compact Mode, a new icon will now appear to the left of that icon—the Switch to Ultra-Compact Mode icon (I kid you not). If you use either Compact Mode, Bridge will remain at the foreground just like a floating palette, no matter which program you’re using. To stop the floating, just click on the Switch to Full Mode icon (which had been the Compact Mode icon—it changes its function depending on the mode you’re using—I know, it’s confusing).

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

Renaming Your Label Colors

Although you can’t change the color of the color labels themselves, you can change each color’s name to something that makes more sense to you when you’re sorting your images. For example, if you want change the Green label to read “Keepers,” just press Command-K (PC: Control-K) to go to the Bridge Preferences, click on Labels (along the list on the left side of the dialog), and then delete the word “Green” that appears to the right of the green dot, type “Keepers.” Click OK to close the Preferences dialog. Now, when you look in the Label menu, it will be updated with your new name.

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

Uncluttering Your View

Want to hide all of that distracting info that appears beneath your thumbnails? Just press Command-T (PC: Control-T) and all that stuff (even the file names) is hidden, giving you a clean, unobstructed view of just your images and nothing more. When you want the all the distracting junk back, just press the shortcut again.

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

A Sneak Peak At Your Photo’s Data

You don’t have to go digging through your photo’s EXIF data to learn more about the image. Just hover your cursor over a photo’s thumbnail for a moment, and a little yellow window will pop up with some brief background info, like the file’s format, size, pixel dimensions, date created, date modified, resolution, etc. However, this only works if you have Tooltips turned on, so if you don’t, press Command-K (PC: Control-K) to open the Bridge Preferences, choose General (from the left side of the dialog), and turn on the checkbox for Show Tooltips; now try the hovering trick again.

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

Rating Your Images In Full Screen Mode

This is one of the most effective ways to sort your photos after you’ve imported them from your digital camera, because you can only really tell which photos are in sharp focus when they’re viewed at nearly full screen. So in Bridge, Shift-click on all the contiguous photos you want to review, press Command-L to launch the slide show, press W to see the images full screen, and then press Spacebar to start the slide show. As a photo appears full screen, just press numbers (1–5) to rate that photo instantly. For example, a photo appears onscreen and it’s not that great, type 3 and it gets a three-star rating right on the spot. Try this once, and you’ll start doing this all the time. Unless of course, you hate it—then you’ll probably never do it again.

May 8th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Separating Your “Best Of The Best”

If you’ve rated some of your photos as five-star photos (the best of the bunch), aren’t there some five-star photos that are better than the others? You know, the best of your best? Of course there are, and now you can separate just those (so you can really see the cream of the crop). Here’s how: First you must view just your five-star photos, so choose Show 5 Stars from the Unfiltered pop-up menu near the top right of the Options Bar. Then Command-click (PC: Control-click) on just your best five-star images to select them. Control-click (PC: Right-click) on any selected image and choose a color from the Label submenu in the contextual menu that appears (I chose Red). That color is now tagging your best five-star images. To see just your red five-star photos, go back to the Filtered pop-up menu (it’ll change from Unfiltered to Filtered once you’ve selected an option), and choose Show Red Label. Now you’re seeing your “Best of the Best.”

May 7th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Creating New Folders The Fast Way

Want to create a folder from right within Bridge? Scroll down to any open space (you’ll usually find a blank spot at the bottom of your list of thumbnails, so scroll down there), then Control-click (PC: Right-click) and from the contextual menu that appears, choose New Folder. Note: If you don’t see any empty space, adjust the size of your images using the Thumbnail Size slider along the bottom of the Bridge window.

May 4th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Rating Multiple Photos At Once

If you see a number of photos in Bridge that you want to have the same rating, first select the images (Shift-click on them or Command-click [PC: Control-click] noncontiguous images), then drag your cursor over the rating area (those five dots that appear below any selected thumbnail). The rating you apply to that one photo will be applied to all your selected photos.

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

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

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.

3D Design

Using 3D tools in Photoshop CS4 Extended to create a logo element.
Bullet Hole Brushes

Here we will uses a series of custom shapes to create a bullet hole on a brush.
Displaced Effects

Here is a quick and easy way to use displacement maps to create a cool grunge look.
More Fun With Brushes

Here we will explore another aspect of custom brushes to create a cool background effect.

Create Smart Contact Sheets in Adobe InDesign
Adobe Bridge CS3 and InDesign have this secret relationship that allows you to do some really cool things with automating image placement and metadata
Exposure Blending in Photoshop
Digital cameras make very easy is blending more than one exposure together for contrast control, increased dynamic range, or creative purposes
Image Slide Show in Adobe Fireworks
How do you create a slide show without having to write a bit of code? The answer is Adobe Fireworks.
Using IFrames in Adobe Dreamweaver
Follow along with this tutorial and learn how to create an IFrame on your website using Dreamweaver.

Document Your Happy Accidents

Sometimes our best creations happen by pure experimentation and accident. Sitting in front of a Photoshop file, you are 40 History States in, and then it happens—magic! You really want to be able to get back to that moment. To do so, make sure that you turn on the History Log checkbox in the General Preferences (Photoshop>Preferences>General [PC: Edit>Preferences>General]). You can save the information as metadata, as a separate text file, or both!