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Tip of the Day | Page 22

 

CHANGING THE COLOR OF YOUR IMAGE WINDOW (AKA: PASTEBOARD) IN PHOTSOHOP

In CS5 you can change the background color that your images show up on in the image window. For example, some folks prefer to have their images surrounded by black or even white instead of the default medium gray. If you ever want to change this just press Command-K (PC: Ctrl-K) to go into Photoshop’s preferences. Then click on the Interface section on the left side (second from the top) to bring up the interface preferences. Now change the Color settings for the Standard Screen Mode to whatever color you want your images to appear over.

January 6th, 2011 | | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

CHANGING YOUR RULER SETTINGS

Instead of going through the preferences to change your unit of measure, you can Control-click (PC: Right-click, though more and more Macs now have access to the Right-click, too) on the ruler and select your preferred measurement unit from the contextual menu.

January 5th, 2011 | | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

RESETTING PHOTOSHOP’S PREFERENCES

Here’s a quick way to reset your preferences in Photoshop: Press-and-hold Command-Option-Shift (PC: Ctrl-Alt-Shift) while you start Photoshop. As you start the program you will get a pop-up dialog asking you if you would like to delete the settings file. Deleting the file will create a new set of preferences from scratch.

January 4th, 2011 | | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

TURN THE FONT OFF AND ON

The Font Preview is either loved or hated. I find myself usually turning it off, and here’s why: I love fonts—lots of them. I install fonts like there’s no tomorrow. I’m assuming that this is going to catch up to me at one point or another, but I continue to troll sites to find more and more fonts.

December 31st, 2010 | | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

TURNING OFF THE CROP TOOL OVERLAY

I have to say this tip rocks if you use Adobe Camera Raw a lot. See, in previous versions of Camera Raw, if you cropped your photo you’d still see all of the cropped area around it as you were working (as shown here). It was really annoying and you never got to see your real photo until you opened it in Photoshop. Now in the new version of Camera Raw, you can get rid of that crop overlay stuff and actually see your photo the way that it’s going to look by clicking on another tool. So when you’re done cropping just press the letter Z key, for example, to go to the Zoom tool and get out of crop mode. Trust me, it’s a lot easier to work on your photo this way.

December 30th, 2010 | | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

A QUICK GOTCHA WITH THE P KEY IN CAMERA RAW

Here’s a little “gotcha” from the last tip. Remember that little preview checkbox we talked about? Well it only displays a before/after view of the current panel you’re working in. For example, say you make a bunch of changes in the Basic panel (Exposure, Blacks, Saturation, etc…) and then switch to the HSL / Grayscale panel and make a bunch of color changes there. If you turn off the Preview checkbox while in the HSL / Grayscale panel you’ll only see the before and after views of the effects of that specific panel. In other words, your Basic panel changes that we mentioned first will be turned on unless you go back to that panel instead.

December 29th, 2010 | | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

BEFORE AND AFTER IN CAMERA RAW

As you work on a photo in Camera Raw, you’re undoubtedly going to want to see what it looks like in comparison to the original. Well, Camera Raw doesn’t really have a side-by-side preview, but here’s the next best thing: When you’re in Camera Raw, there’s a Preview checkbox at the top right of the image preview. You can turn it on to see your changes or turn it off to see the before view of your photo. However, that’s kind of lame. Instead, just hit the letter P to toggle the preview on and off.

December 28th, 2010 | | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

PERFORMANCE PREFERENCES

Here are two things that can help in the Performance preferences: Your Memory Usage can let you specify how much of your RAM you would like to dedicate to the use of Photoshop. And, you also have the option of setting up a scratch disk in the Performance preferences (think of a scratch disk as temporary RAM that Photoshop creates by using actual hard drive space).

December 27th, 2010 | | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

UNDO HEAVEN, JUST ADD HISTORY STATES

If you are like me, and love having a good amount of Undos in the event that you go overboard with your adjustments, you can change the amount of History States that you have in Photoshop CS5. Note that the location of the History States preference has changed as well. Choose Photoshop>Preferences>General (PC: Edit>Preferences>General) and notice that there is now a Performance option on the left. You can change the History States in this area. Keep in mind though, if you are excessively using History States, you may want to rethink what you are doing wrong in the first place. I know I have to.

December 24th, 2010 | | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

FINDING THE PANEL TABS HARD TO READ? CHANGE THE FONT SIZE

Sometimes, it’s a bit hard to read the type in the panels. Choose Photoshop>
Preferences>General (PC: Edit>Preferences>General) and change the UI Font Size. 
This will make the type in the panels larger. You will need to restart Photoshop to see the type change.

December 23rd, 2010 | | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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