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Been Bingeing On RAM? Maybe It’s Time To Purge!
What do you do if the dreaded “Not enough RAM to complete this function” dialog appears? Outside of buying more RAM and installing it on the spot, you might want to purge some of the “junk” hanging around in RAM so you can free up some space to complete the project you’re working on. You do this by going under the Edit menu, under Purge, and choosing to empty your Undo, Photoshop’s Clipboard, your History States, or everything at once (All). They’re in the order you should proceed, so first try purging your Undo and see if that frees up enough memory. If that doesn’t do it, try the Clipboard, then Histories. If that doesn’t do it, try this super-slick insider tip: Make a tiny (1×1") selection within your document, and then go under the Edit menu and choose Copy three times in a row. Believe it or not, it often works, and has gotten us out of more than one sticky situation.
Save Clicks When You Close
This is such a quick little tip that you might not think that it matters, but it saves a few seconds every time you close a document. If you close a number of documents a day (and my guess is, you do), it really starts to add up fast. When you close a document, Photoshop presents you with a dialog asking, “Save changes to the Adobe Photoshop document before closing?” You have three choices: (1) Don’t Save, (2) Cancel, and (3) Save. Here’s the shortcut: Press the letter D for Don’t Save, press S for Save, and C for Cancel.
Instant Selection From Any Path
When you’re using the Pen tool (P) to create a path, you can go to the Paths palette (under the Window menu) and click on the third icon from the left (at the bottom of the palette) to turn your path into a selection, or you can use the keyboard shortcut Command-Return (PC: Control-Enter). We prefer the keyboard shortcut, because it will do the exact same job faster and saves us from opening the Paths palette, taking up valuable screen real estate. Note: If you want to create a selection from an existing path, select that path in the Paths palette and then use the shortcut.
Let Photoshop Do The Math When Copying/Pasting
If you’ve selected something within your Photoshop document and you want to copy-and-paste that item into its own separate document, don’t worry about typing the Width and Height into Photoshop’s New document dialog. Photoshop automatically figures that you’re going to paste that image into a new document, so when you open the New dialog, the exact size of your copied selection has already been entered for you, so just click OK, and then paste your image inside—it’ll be a perfect fit.
Zoomed In? Don’t Use The Scroll Bars
If you’ve zoomed in on an image, using the scroll bars can be incredibly frustrating, because you move just a tiny bit. Here’s how to get around that—don’t use the scroll bars. (Okay, there’s more to it than that.) Instead, when you’re zoomed in, use the Hand tool, but to save time, access it by simply pressing the Spacebar. It temporarily switches you to the Hand, letting you easily navigate through your zoomed image.
Boss Around Your Color Swatches
Here are a few tips for using the Swatches palette (found under the Window menu). I’m sure you know that if you click on a color in the Swatches palette, that color becomes your new Foreground color. Here’s one you may not have realized—if you Command-click (PC: Control-click) on a swatch, that color now becomes your Background color. Also, you can delete any swatch by holding the Option key (PC: Alt key) and clicking on the swatch you want to remove. You can also add a color to your swatches by setting your Foreground color to the color you want to save and clicking on any open space at the bottom of the Swatches palette.
Super-Fast Inches To Pixels
Want to change the unit of measurement for your image? Don’t go digging through Photoshop’s menus for the Preferences dialog, just Control-click (PC: Right-click) on Photoshop’s rulers and a contextual menu will appear with a list of measurement units. (Note: If your rulers are not showing, press Command-R [PC: Control-R]). Choose the one you want, and your rulers will instantly reflect the change. If you feel you must access the Units & Rulers Preferences dialog, just double-click anywhere on one of Photoshop’s rulers and the dialog will appear.
The Undocumented Fill Shortcut
There are all sorts of keyboard shortcuts for filling selections, entire layers, and stuff like that, but if you look under the Edit menu, next to the Fill command, there’s a new little shortcut in CS2 for bringing up the Fill dialog itself (about time!). It’s Shift-F5 (PC: Shift-F5). However, there’s an undocumented keyboard shortcut that will do the same trick—it’s Shift-Delete (PC: Shift-Backspace). This is a good one to pull on your Photoshop buddies and co-workers as a Photoshop trivia question, because few people know it exists.
Bring Order Back To Your World
In Photoshop, you’re constantly moving your palettes around, and before long, you’ve got one messy set of palettes littering your screen. If your palettes get messy, you’re only one simple menu command from having them back at their factory-fresh default locations. Just go under the Window menu, under Workspace, and choose Reset Palette Locations, and all will be right with your world once again (that is, until you mess ’em up again).
Fix Those Tool Settings Fast
There’s no doubt you’ll be “messing” with many, if not all, of the options for the tools you use every day in Photoshop. One day you’ll go to use a tool, and you’ll have messed with it to the extent that something’s just not right. To quickly get back to any tool’s default settings, choose the tool from the Toolbox, then Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the tool’s icon that appears in the Options Bar on the far left. A contextual menu will appear where you can choose Reset Tool to set it back to its factory-fresh defaults. By the way, while you’re there, you can also choose Reset All Tools and they will all revert to their defaults.
Creating The Über Palette
You’ve been able to nest one or more palettes into another palette since back in Photoshop 3.0. No big deal, but now you can not only nest but you can also dock palettes one atop the other, creating a giant über palette. Here’s how: Drag the name tab of one palette to the bottom edge of a second palette and slowly drag upward. A thin, black double-line will appear at the bottom of the top palette, letting you know it’s “time to dock.” Release the mouse and your palettes will be docked, one on top of the other. Now, when you move the top palette, all docked palettes will move with it as a group. We use this feature to stack our Character and Paragraph palettes (both found under the Window menu) so we can access all our type settings in one place.
Shrink Those Palettes Down To Size
Are your palettes in the way, but you don’t want to hide them all using the Tab key? You can double-click the palette’s name tab, and the palette (and any nested palettes) will minimize to just the tab itself, giving you back lots of screen real estate. Need the palette back, just double-click on its tab again.
Ask Photoshop To Remember More
Photoshop CS2 remembers the last 30 documents that you had open, but by default it only displays the last 10 under the File menu, under Open Recent. However, you’re not limited to just 10. Would you rather Photoshop displayed the last 15 instead? Then in Mac OS X, go under the Photoshop menu, under Preferences, and choose File Handling (in Windows, Preferences can be found under the Edit menu). When the dialog appears, under Recent File List Contains, enter the desired number of files (up to 30) that you want to have quick access to under the Open Recent menu.
Where’s The 3D Transform Filter?
You can kill a lot of otherwise productive time searching for the 3D Transform filter that’s been in Photoshop for years. That’s because—it ain’t there. It no longer installs when you install Photoshop, but Adobe thought that somebody, somewhere, might want to use it for something, so even though it doesn’t install, you can find it in the Goodies folder on the Photoshop CS Resources and Extras disc. Just drag it into Photoshop’s Filters folder inside the Plug-Ins folder to get it back in your Filter menu (under Render).
Make That Options Bar Float - Float???
You may not realize it, but the Options Bar, which seems permanently docked to the top of your work area, can actually be redocked to the bottom of your screen, or you can make it into a floating palette. To make it float, just click on the little tab on the far left side of the bar, drag it away, and voilà, it floats. To dock it at the bottom of your screen, drag the tab down to the bottom left-hand side of your screen and it snaps into place. You can even hide the Options Bar altogether by choosing Options from the Window menu. You can always get it back by double-clicking on any tool.
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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
