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Tip of the Day | Page 23

 

TOGGLE BETWEEN KEYFRAMES

When animating objects in the timeline, Photoshop interpolates between keyframes to give a sense of movement. However, if you would like the animation to toggle between keyframes, Control-click (PC: Right-click) on that keyframe in the timeline to bring up the contextual menu and select Hold Interpolation. The appearance of the keyframes will change, and when played back it will cut to each keyframe.

SCRUB THROUGH TIMELINE

You can quickly scrub through the timeline by clicking-and-holding on the Current Time Indicator. You will notice the cursor turn into opposing arrows. Just click-and-drag either to the left or right to scrub through the timeline.

CHANGE TIMELINE SETTINGS

You can modify the duration setting in the timeline by going to the Animation panel’s flyout menu and selecting Document Settings. In the dialog, you can set the duration and also choose a frame rate from the pop-up menu or you can enter a custom setting.

VIDEO CAN ALSO BECOME A SMART OBJECT

One of the cool features of video layers is that they can be set up as Smart Objects. This opens up a ton of possibilities for image manipulation, including scaling, rotation, and even warping.

USE OVERLAY IN THE CLONE SOURCE PANEL

Have you ever used the Clone Stamp tool and wondered what exactly you were going to paint in the area? Wonder no more. Now you can turn on the Show Overlay checkbox at the bottom of the Clone Source panel to automatically see an overlay of the image, as you would clone it. Also, by default the “Clipped” option is turned on in CS5 and that clips your overlay to the actual brush size. If you want a full image overlay (which you probably won’t because it’s really hard to see your original image) you can turn Clipped off. One more thing. You can automatically turn this feature off and on by turning on the Auto Hide checkbox.

THE CLONE SOURCE PANEL

This panel has a couple of neat features for people who spend a lot of time in cloning. You can now set up a series of preset areas in the Clone Stamp tool. Simply click on one of the icons at the top of the Clone Source panel and Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on a point. This will save that location to the first icon. Click on the second icon and do the same thing. Now you can save a series of location points and go back by just clicking on the icon.

BLACK AND WHITE 101

Black and white could not get any easier. Open an image. Choose Image>Adjustments>Black and White. Instead of using all of the sliders that are in the resulting dialog, click on the different areas of the image that you want to make darker or lighter and drag—left to make them lighter, right to make them darker.

RESET A DIALOG

If you are working with any dialog that has an OK and a Cancel option, you don’t always have to cancel out to get back to the original state of the effect. If you press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key when you are in a dialog, the Cancel button will turn into a Reset button. This will give you a chance to try the effect again without having to leave the dialog.

KICK IT UP A NOTCH WITH SMART FILTER MASKING

You can selectively show or hide any of the filters that you have applied to a Smart Object by painting on the mask for the Smart Filter (just click on the Smart Filter’s thumbnail, select the Brush tool, and paint with black). This takes your creativity to a completely different level.

Get On The Grid, Part II

Conversely, if you read the previous tip and found the functionality to be extremely annoying don’t sweat it – you’re not alone. That’s why Adobe gave us the ability to turn off the pixel grid. Just click the View menu and go under Show. Click on Pixel Grid to turn it off. If you ever want it back on just go to the same place to enable it again.

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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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