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Tip of the Day | Page 26

 

Accessing Tools in a Tool Group

Let’s say that you are using the Magic Wand tool, but would rather be using Photoshop CS3’s new Quick Selection tool. No problem! Just press-and-hold the Shift key while pressing the group’s keyboard shortcut (W, in this case) and you can access all the tools within that tool group.

Changing the Pasteboard Back to Its Original Setting

Okay, so it’s not a full tip per se, but after playing around with the pasteboard, you will decide that the gray was just fine (everyone does). If and when you do, the RGB settings are 192, 192, 192. Just click on your Foreground color swatch, enter these settings in the Color Picker, and then Shift-click on the pasteboard again.

Changing the Color of your Pasteboard

Ever get tired of the gray pasteboard? Here’s how you can change it: Select the Paint Bucket tool (G) from the Toolbox (it’s nested beneath the Gradient tool). Select a new foreground color. Press-and-hold the Shift key, click on the pasteboard, and it will change to your Foreground color. Done!

Changing Your Ruler Settings

Instead of going through the preferences to change your rulers, 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.

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.

Turn the Font Off and On

Often, I echo Matt Kloskowski’s feeling that 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.
As you install more and more fonts on your machine, you might notice that there could be a performance problem. Because of this, we should go to Photoshop>Preferences>General (PC: Edit>Preferences>General) and turn off the Font Preview Size checkbox in the Type preferences. You can also turn on the Font Preview Size there too, if you happen to like it. I’ll stay away from that argument now.

LiveDocs to the Rescue!

Sometimes you will find that the Help feature may not offer complete assistance on a specific topic. Documentation for software often changes and expands, and LiveDocs is Adobe’s answer to this problem. If you go to www.adobe.com/support/documentation, you can access online documentation on all of your Photoshop topics. The good part about this documentation is that it is developed on a collaborative level, allowing the community to chime in on questions and answers to the topics at hand.

Check Out Photoshop Help

The best place to check out what’s new and improved is still in the Help feature. Choose Help>Photoshop Help and you will launch the Adobe Help Viewer. This has an index of all things CS3, and includes a section on what is new.

Does Your 3D Act More Like 1D?

In Photoshop CS3 Extended, you have the ability to work with 3D files. This, however, carries specific requirements to do so. If your graphics card has a hard time keeping up with 3D, you can turn off the Enable 3D Acceleration in the Performance preferences.

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).

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Viewing and Basking in your Image

When I’m done working with an image, I like to sit and admire it (hey, I spent six hours working on it, I should). To do that, I hit the Tab key, then hit the F key three times. This hides all of the panels and toolbars and lets you see the image by itself surrounded by black. To get back to regular mode, press the F key and the Tab key one more time.

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