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Get More Control Over Your Paint Strokes
Photoshop lets you affect a brush stroke even after you’ve painted it by using Photoshop’s Fade command (found under the Edit menu). Fade works like “undo on a slider,” and dragging the Opacity slider all the way to the left will completely undo your freshly painted brush stroke, but if you stop anywhere before the far-left side, it will instead simply lighten the stroke. You can also use the Mode pop-up menu to alter how your stroke blends with the object below it.
Navigating The Brush Picker Like A Pro
Now that you’ve learned how to bring up the Brush Picker right where you want it, it wouldn’t hurt to learn this quick navigation tip to keep you from spending more time there than necessary. Once you’ve selected a brush in the Picker, just use the Arrow keys on your keyboard to navigate up, down, left, or right to other brushes in the Picker. Once you choose a brush and you are no longer in the Brush Picker, you can use the Period and Comma keys to move forward and backward through the different brushes. Shift-Comma and Shift-Period will jump you to the first and last brushes in the Brush Picker, respectively.
Brushes Right Where You Want ‘Em
Here’s a tip that gives you a faster and more convenient way to switch to another preset brush without using the Brushes palette—and you might find that you like it even better. Just press the Control key, then click within your image (PC: Right-click) and the Brush Picker will appear directly under your cursor. Plus, you can even change the Master Diameter of the brush that you choose in the Picker. This is one you’ll have to try to appreciate the sheer speed and convenience of putting your brushes at your fingertips anytime.
Get Rid Of Unwanted Brushes
You probably already know that you can add a brush to the Brushes palette, but did you know that it’s even easier to delete them? Just hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) and you’ll notice that your cursor changes into a pair of scissors. Click once on the brush you want to delete and that baby’s gone—no warning dialog, no chance to change your mind—it’s gone.
Rotate To Any Angle The Fast Way
If you have a specific angle that you’d like to rotate a layer to, it’s easy. Get the Measure tool (it looks like a ruler and is in the Eyedropper tool’s flyout menu in the Toolbox), and click-and-drag out a line at the desired angle. Then go under the Edit menu, under Transform, and choose Rotate. Your layer will instantly rotate to match the angle that you drew with the Measure tool. Note: To rotate the Background layer, you must first select it (Command-A [PC: Control-A]).
You Don’t Need The Brushes Palette To Change Brush Size
In Photoshop CS2 you can increase or decrease the size of your brush by 10 pixels by pressing the Left or Right Bracket keys when the Brush tool (B) is selected. Once your brush is more than 100 pixels in size, it then moves in 25-pixel increments; if you go higher than 200 pixels, it moves in 50-pixel increments until you reach 300 pixels, at which point it moves in 100-pixel increments.
Want A Finer Grid? You Got It!
While we’re talking Curves, by default the Curves dialog displays a 25% grid. If you’d like a finer grid, you can Option-click (PC: Alt-click) once within the grid, and it will then display a 10% grid.
Let Photoshop Do The Work In Curves
Let’s say you’re using the Curves dialog for correcting images and you have an image where you’re trying to adjust the color of some green plants. How do you know where that particular green “lives” on the curve so you can dial in and adjust it? Photoshop can tell you—in fact, you can have Photoshop automatically plot that color on the curve for you. With the Curves dialog open, just Command-click (PC: Control-click) on that color within your image. Photoshop will then add a point to the curve that represents the spot you sampled, and now you’re ready to tweak it.
Open Up Some Screen Real Estate
A lot of times when you’re working on a project, your screen can get really cluttered with palettes (Photoshop is an especially palette-heavy application). If you want all the palettes out of the way for your convenience while you’re working, just press Shift-Tab to hide them, or Shift-Tab to bring them back. The menu bar, the Options Bar, and the Toolbox will still be visible.
No More Jaggy Lasso Tool Selection
Have you ever tried to create a smooth selection using the Lasso tool? It’s just about impossible, right? (If it sounds like it isn’t, give it a try—open a new document, take the Lasso tool, and draw any random selection, and then look at the selection. It’s jaggy—not crazy jaggy, but it’s certainly not smooth.) If you were trying to create a selection for an interface design, or a realistic element of some sort, it would just be too jaggy to use. Here’s a tip:
(1) Press L to get the Lasso tool and draw around the area you want to use as your selection.
(2) Press the letter Q to enter Quick Mask mode (your selection will now be surrounded with a reddish hue).
(3) Go under the Filter menu, under Noise, and choose Median. As you move the Radius slider to the right, you’ll see your edges smooth out.
(4) When it looks nice and smooth, click OK then press the letter Q again to return to Standard mode, and you’ll have nothing but a nice rounded selection.
Find The Center Of Any Document
Need to find the exact center of your image? All you need is a layer filled with your Foreground color, and Photoshop will do the rest (okay, you have to do a little, but Photoshop will certainly help). First, click on the Create a New Layer icon in the Layers palette and press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill it with your Foreground color. Make your rulers visible (press Command-R [PC: Control-R]) and drag a guide down from the top ruler. When you get close to the center of the image, the guide will automatically snap to the exact horizontal center. Do the same with the side ruler, and it automatically snaps to the vertical center of your image. (Note: If there’s not any snapping going on, be sure Snap is turned on under the View menu.)
Rearranging Your Brushes
One of the things in Photoshop that just didn’t make sense to us was that you couldn’t easily rearrange the order of your brushes in the Brushes palette or Brush Picker. Oh sure, you could create a whole new custom set with the brushes you wanted, in the order you wanted them, but it would take a while, and frankly, was such a pain that we only know a handful of people who actually went through the trouble. Well, our wish for easily rearranging brushes is finally here, but the process is a bit hidden beneath the surface. To move a brush from one spot in the palette to another, go under the Edit menu, and choose Preset Manager. In the Preset Manager dialog, under Preset Type, choose Brushes. Then, click-and-drag the brush of your choice to the location of your choice. At last, we are free to move brushes among the herd.
Miss The Old Default Actions?
If you miss the old default set of actions that has been shipping with Photoshop for years, you can get it back fairly easily. Just go to the Actions palette’s flyout menu and choose Sample Actions to reload that old default set.
Transforming And Copying At The Same Time
Generally, when you apply a transformation to an object (scaling, rotating, distorting, perspective), you apply that transformation to the object itself. However, here’s a cool tip if you want to apply a transformation (using Free Transform) on a duplicate of your object, rather than on the original: Press Command-Option-T (PC: Control-Alt-T), then use the Free Transform tool as you usually would. You’ll notice that as you begin to transform, the original object remains untouched, and a copy is transformed instead.
Reaching The Free Transform Handles
If you want to use Free Transform on a layer, but your image extends beyond the edges of your document window (and this happens frequently if you’re collaging different photos together), you won’t be able to reach the Free Transform handles to scale your image down to size. Here’s the keyboard shortcut that lets you reach each and every handle, no matter how far the image extends outside your current canvas area. Just press Command-T (PC: Control-T) to bring up Free Transform, then press Command-0 (zero) (PC: Control-0) and your window will zoom out to exactly the right size to enable you to reach all the handles. Cool!
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Photoshop Tutorials
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Wild West Grunge
Corey shows you how to recreate this rugged, weathered look using a couple of filters, blending modes, and layer masks.
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Wall of Text
Use a clipping group to place an image inside of a background of text, with another layer of text placed in front to create depth.
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Natural Brushes
In this tutorial Corey shows you how to take an existing image and turn it into it’s own custom brush.
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Custom Coins
In this tutorial Corey creates a realistic-looking coin effect using the channels palette and the lighting effects filter.
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.- Custom Coins
In this tutorial Corey creates a realistic-looking coin effect using the channels palette and the lighting effects filter. - Natural Brushes
In this tutorial Corey shows you how to take an existing image and turn it into it's own custom brush.
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Creative Contrast in Photoshop CS3
In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at some interesting techniques for improving contrast using the Shadow/Highlight command, empty adjustment layers, blend modes, and the Blend If sliders in the Layer Style dialog. -
Enhanced Workflow in Lightroom 1.1
In this article, we'll focus on techniques that will strengthen your workflow skills and simultaneously reveal some of the new features in Lightroom 1.1. -
Handlin’ Photoshop and Illustrator Content in Flash
we’ll take a look at how things work across Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash-specifically, some features and techniques for getting rasterized Photoshop content and vector Illustrator content into your Flash movies. -
Understanding Channels in Photoshop CS3
Photographer Chris Alvanas wants to go over Channels, because understanding what they are and what they do is key to understanding what their potential is.
Removing Those Typographically Incorrect Spaces
If you’re trying to set type that looks typographically correct in Photoshop, there’s an old habit you’ll have to break, and that’s the curse of putting two spaces at the end of every sentence. This is a holdover from people who at one time used traditional typewriters, where adding two spaces was necessary, but in typesetting that’s a huge no-no. About 70% of the text I copy-and-paste from text files that people give me has two spaces, but I use this Photoshop tip to fix the problem in just seconds. First, go under the Edit menu and choose Find and Replace Text. In the Find field, press the Spacebar twice (entering two spaces), then in Change To, press the Spacebar just once. Click Change All, and every time Photoshop finds two spaces at the end of a sentence, it will replace it with just one, making you typographically correct.
- Chicago, IL
Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Tour May. 19 - Nashville, TN
Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Tour May. 22 - San Francisco, CA
Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Tour May. 28 - New York, NY
Maximum Photoshop Tour May. 30
