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Freeform/Pen Tool Quick Switch
If you’re using the Freeform Pen tool (Shift-P until it comes up), there are times when you may want to temporarily switch to the regular Pen tool so you can draw a straight-line segment. You can actually do this by holding the Option key (PC: Alt key) and then releasing the mouse button. This temporarily switches you to the regular Pen tool so you can draw your straight-line segment by moving the mouse. When you’re done, click-and-hold, release Option/Alt, and you’re back to the Freeform Pen tool.
Power Up Your Layer Styles
Here’s a little-known tip for controlling the intensity of your layer styles. This is particularly helpful if you’ve applied a number of different layer styles to a layer, and want to affect them all at the same time, rather than tweaking each one individually. It’s called Scale Effects, and it’s buried in the Layer menu, at the bottom of the Layer Style submenu. Choose it, and a dialog appears with a slider set to 100% by default. As you increase the amount (up to 1000% maximum), it increases the “scale” of all your effects. For example, if you increased the scale of a Drop Shadow layer style, the shadow would become blurrier and its distance from the object would become greater. If you adjusted a Stroke Layer Style, the stroke would become thicker, etc. Pretty powerful stuff.
How To Combine Two Paths Into One
If you’re using the Pen tool (P), and you’ve created multiple paths within your document, these paths are totally separate, and are moved independently of one another. However, if you want these paths to move as one unit—combine them. Just switch to the Path Selection tool (Shift-A until it comes up), then go up to the Options Bar and click on the Combine button. Now when you move one path, all the combined paths move right along with it.
Seeing Your Full-Color Image While Editing A Channel
When you’re working on an individual channel in the Channels palette (under the Window menu), by default Photoshop displays your current channel onscreen in grayscale. If you make changes to that channel, you only see how the change affects that channel. However, there is a little-known trick that lets you see the full-color image, while editing the currently selected channel. While you’re editing the channel, just press the Tilde key (~), which is right above the Tab key on your keyboard, and you’ll see the full RGB preview as you edit.
The Histrogram Palette’s Visual Cues
When you’re using Photoshop’s Histogram palette (under the Window menu), not only can you see a histogram of each individual channel (select the All Channels View option from the Histogram palette’s flyout menu), but you can use color as your visual cue to quickly see which channel is which. Just choose Show Channels in Color from the palette’s flyout menu, and then the Red channel histogram will appear in red, the Green in green, etc.
Photoshop’s Own Slideshow
If you don’t want to create a full PDF Presentation, you can create a mini slide show right within Photoshop. Just open all the images you want in your slide show, then Shift-click on the Full Screen Mode icon near the bottom of the Toolbox (it’s the third icon from the left), and press the Tab key on your keyboard. To step through your slide show, press Control-Tab.
Managing The Metadata Overload
The Metadata palette in Bridge provides much more information than the average person will ever need. If you don’t need all this “metadata overload,” you can set it up so it only displays the data you care about, giving you a more orderly, easier-to-read Metadata palette. To do this, go to Bridge’s Metadata palette, click on the flyout menu, and choose Preferences. In the dialog that appears, uncheck any fields you don’t need displayed, turn on the checkbox at the bottom for Hide Empty Fields, and click OK.
Embed Your Message Into Your Photos
As you know, your digital camera embeds background info into your photos (called EXIF data), and Photoshop embeds its own info when you edit the image (called File Properties). However, in Photoshop CS2 you can add your own info (called IPTC data) in the IPTC area within the Metadata palette in the Adobe Bridge. This is where you might embed your copyright info, website, or other comments that people viewing your file might find important. To add your info, just click next to any IPTC item that has a Pencil icon to the right of it, and a field will appear where you can enter your own custom info.
Keeping Track Of Your Every Move
If you’d like to keep a running record of every step, every tweak, every movement—virtually every little thing you’ve done to your image in Photoshop CS2—you can do just that. It’s called History Logging. Basically, it keeps a running log (in the background) of all your History States, and it can save it to a text file that you can open and view later. To turn on this History Log, go under the Photoshop menu (PC: Edit menu), under Preferences, and choose General. At the bottom of the Preferences dialog, turn on the checkbox for History Log, then choose if you want the log items embedded into the file (metadata), written to a text file, or both.
The New Way To Create A Clipping Group
If you’re used to the old Command-G (PC: Control-G) shortcut to clip the layer you’re on into the layer beneath, then you’re going to have some frustrating times in CS2. That’s because Command-G (PC: Control-G) now creates a Layer Group, not a clipping group (or clipping mask as Adobe renamed it in CS). To create a clipping mask, you have to use the old shortcut from pre-CS versions of Photoshop, which is to the hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) and in the Layers palette click once right between the two layer (your cursor will change to two overlapping circles—that’s your cue to click). You unclip them the same way.
Doing Animations? Don’t Jump To Imageready
In previous versions of Photoshop, if you wanted to create an animation, you’d have to jump to ImageReady (Photoshop’s Web graphics sibling that comes preinstalled with Photoshop). Although ImageReady still comes with Photoshop CS2, you don’t need to jump over there to do your animations; now you can do them right within Photoshop. Just go to the Window menu and choose Animation, and ImageReady’s familiar-looking animation palette will appear across the bottom of your Photoshop screen, and a row of buttons for animation options will appear near the top of your Layers palette.
Action Insurance Policy
Have you ever written an action, and after it’s done, you wish you hadn’t run it in the first place? Maybe the effect just doesn’t look right on the image, or there’s a mistake or missing step in your action? Well, here’s a tip that will help you, not just when you’re testing your action, but even after you’ve perfected it. Bring up the Actions palette (found under the Window menu), click on the Create New Action icon, and once you’re recording, make the first step of your action creating a snapshot. To do this, just open the History palette (under the Window menu) and click on the Create New Snapshot icon at the bottom of the palette. That way, if after the action runs, you don’t like the results, you can just click on the saved snapshot in the History palette, and the image will instantly return to how it looked when you opened it.
Getting Before And After Previews
If you’re applying a correction filter, such as the Unsharp Mask filter, you can get a before and after view of your image even before you click the OK button (and then press Command-Z [PC: Control-Z] to undo/redo the filter). Instead, click-and-hold on the preview box inside the Unsharp Mask filter. When you click-and-hold, you get the before preview in the window; when you release the mouse button, it shows you how the image will look with the filter applied. Pretty handy. If you need to see the full preview onscreen, you can toggle the Preview checkbox on or off. Another tip is to hold the Command or Option (PC: Control or Alt) button while in a filter dialog, and then your cursor changes into the Zoom tool. You can then zoom in or out in your preview window by clicking within it.
Want Better Gradients On Press? Here’s The Tip
If you’re designing a job that will ultimately go to a printing press in CMYK mode and it’s going to contain one or more gradients, you’ll get better printed results (less color shifts) if you create those gradients after you convert to CMYK mode.
Going to press? Make sure your monitor is in the “Right Space”
By default, the RGB space for your monitor is set to sRGB, which is an okay mode for designing Web graphics. However, if you’re producing graphics for print, the sRGB mode is just about the worst RGB space your monitor could possibly be set at. It clips off lots of colors that are actually printable in CMYK mode, and therefore is pretty unsuitable for prepress work. We recommend changing your RGB workspace to an RGB space that’s more appropriate for doing print work. We like Adobe RGB (1998), which is a very popular RGB space for prepress work. You choose this RGB space under the Photoshop menu, under Color Settings (in Windows, Color Settings can be found under the Edit menu). When the Color Settings dialog appears, under the Working Spaces area, choose Adobe RGB (1998) from the RGB pop-up menu.
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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
