Prepress Cleanups—In A Snap

This is a great tip if you’re zoomed in close to an image for retouching, or checking it in prepress for spots or specs, because it lets you check the entire image in a very methodical way—using your keyboard to navigate zone by zone. Here’s how:

Press the Home key to jump to the upper-left corner of your image window.
Press the End key to jump to the lower-right corner of your image window.
Press the Page Up key to scroll upward one full screen.
Press the Page Down key to scroll downward one full screen.
Press Command-Page Up (PC: Control-Page Up) to scroll one full screen to the left.
Press Command-Page Down (PC: Control-Page Down) to scroll one full screen to the right.

Once you’ve learned these shortcuts, you can start by pressing the Home key (jumping you to the upper left-hand corner of your image). Clean that area then press the Page Down key to move methodically down the left side of your image until you reach the bottom of your window. Then press Command-Page Up (PC: Control-Page Down) to move one screen to the right, clean that area, then press the Page Up key to move methodically up the image until you reach the top. Repeat these steps until you’re finished. The advantage of doing it this way, besides the sheer speed of using keyboard shortcuts, is that you’ll see every area of the image without missing a spot.

January 26th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Actions Power Tip: Add An Action To Your Action

Here’s an actions power tip: Did you know that you can build an action that will include an existing action? Here’s how it’s done: As you’re recording your action, just go to the Actions palette, click on the existing action you want to include in your current action, and click the Play button at the bottom of the Actions palette. The existing action will now be added as a step in your current action (pretty scary stuff).

January 25th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Drag-And-Drop Curves For Quick Correction

If you’re color-correcting a number of images that are basically the same (for example, catalog shots or high school yearbook shots, where the lighting and composition are pretty much the same), you may want to apply the same Curve setting to a number of images. Rather than saving the Curve setting and loading it each time, try this tip: Use the Create New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu at the bottom of the Layers palette to create a Curves adjustment layer, and then just drag-and-drop that adjustment layer from your current image to your target image.

January 24th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

The Secrets Of Searching In The Browser

Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking that you have to assign keywords to your photos before you can start using Bridge’s Find function (although keywords certainly make it easier). But to find out just how much power the Find function really has, just press Command-F (PC: Control-F), then choose your options from the pop-up menus in the Criteria section. If you remember you shot the photo you’re looking for with a certain camera, you can search All Metadata for that make and model. You can also search by Rating, Date Created, and a host of other criteria.

January 23rd, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Creating Reusable Diagonal Guides

If you’ve used Photoshop’s rulers at all, you know that you have your choice of either a vertical or horizontal guide. That’s not a bad thing, but there’s one thing missing—a diagonal guide. Since Photoshop doesn’t have one, here’s a tip for making your own: Start by clicking the Create a New Layer icon in the Layers palette, then double-click on your Foreground color swatch and in the resulting Color Picker, set it to R: 161, G: 253, B: 253 (the color Photoshop uses for its built-in guides). Switch to the Line tool found in the Shapes tools (Shift-U until it comes up), and on this new layer draw a diagonal line where you want your guide to appear (make sure you have Fill Pixels icon selected in the Options Bar). It’s not a bad idea to copy that layer into a separate document and save it on your drive—so anytime you need a diagonal line, you can just open that document and drag it right in.

January 22nd, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

3D Print Effects (And Where To Get Those Goofy Glasses)

For a brief time back in the 1950s, 3D movies were all the rage, but it was short-lived, probably because you had to wear those cheesy-looking 3D glasses to experience the effect. Although 3D has come a long way since then, unfortunately you still have to wear the cheesy glasses. Be that as it may, the 3D effect is starting to appear again in print ads in trendy magazines, which generally include the paper 3D glasses in the magazine. This effect can be created in Photoshop, no problem. The hardest part is finding a supplier for 3D glasses (okay, we’ll help on that part too. Try 3D Glasses Direct at www.3dglasses.net). Here’s a tip on how to create the 3D effect in Photoshop: Open an RGB image, then go to the Channels palette and click on the Red channel. Go under the Filter menu, under Other, and choose Offset. For Horizontal enter –5 and set Vertical to zero. For Undefined Areas, choose Repeat Edge Pixels, then click OK. In the Channels palette, click on the RGB channel to reveal the effect. Then, lastly, you have to determine which part you want to appear as “coming out of the image” toward the person viewing it. Switch to the History Brush (Y), and using a soft-edged brush, paint over the area you want to “jump out” from the image. As you paint with the History Brush, you’ll see your original untouched image paint back in (don’t sweat it, that’s what it’s supposed to do). Now all you have to do is order the glasses.

January 19th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Saving Your Actions As Printable Text Files

This is a totally undocumented actions tip, and if you need it, it’s a real lifesaver. Once you’ve created an action, you can actually save a text document with all the action steps so you can have a printed hard copy of your action. Here’s how: In the Actions palette, click on the action set containing the action that you want to save as a text document. Hold Command-Option (PC: Control-Alt) and from the Actions palette’s flyout menu, choose Save Actions. When the Save dialog appears, you’ll notice that the three-letter file extension is TXT (indicating it’s a text file) rather than ATN (which is the Photoshop action format). Click OK and you’ve got a text file you can open in any word processor to print out your steps.

January 18th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

New Snapshot: The Mistake Insurance Policy

The great thing about Photoshop’s History feature is that you can (by default) undo your last 20 steps. Perhaps even more important is that you can always return to how the image looked when you opened it, so you never really do any permanent damage (as long as the file is open). However, what if you opened an image, worked on it for a while, and it was really looking great, but about 10 minutes later, it took a turn for the worse (this happens to us more often than we’d care to admit). If you undo the last 20 steps, it may not take you back far enough to the point that you want to return to, and the only other choice is to go all the way back to where you started. Here’s a tip to keep you from pulling your hair out: Any time your image is at a stage where you think it looks pretty good, go to the History palette, and at the bottom of the palette, click on the Create New Snapshot icon. Think of it as an insurance policy, so that if things go bad, you can at least return to that spot and try again. It’s not a bad idea to create a new snapshot about every five minutes when you’re working on a big project. To keep from loading up on snapshots, when you create a new one, delete one or two snapshots before it.

January 17th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Applying Multiple Filters? Not On My Layer!

Thinking of applying a number of different filters to a particular layer? Don’t do it. Instead, make a copy of your layer by pressing Command-J (PC: Control-J), then apply the first filter. Make another copy of the layer and apply the second filter; make another copy, apply the third filter, and so on. You can use Photoshop’s layer blend modes in the Layers palette to get the effect that one filter is applied on top of the others, and now you’ve got full control over each individual filter applied. If you don’t like one of the filters, just drag that layer into the Trash. Better yet, you’ve got blend and opacity control you wouldn’t have by simply applying filter over filter.

January 16th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Assigning Metadata To Multiple Files

Want to assign metadata to more than one photo at a time in Bridge? (Perhaps you want to embed your copyright info into 30 or more photos at once.) Just Command-click (PC: Control-click) on all the photos you want to affect, then enter the custom info you want (in one of the IPTC fields in the Metadata palette) and that info will be added to every selected photo at once.

January 15th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

More Control Over Filters

We love Photoshop’s Fade command (which acts like an “undo on a slider”), and when it comes to applying filters, we use it all the time to gain more control (including blending mode control) over filters we apply. The only downside to the Fade command (which is found under the Edit menu) is you can only use it one time—you get one opportunity to Fade, or choose a Blend Mode, then you’re stuck. Here’s a tip to keep the control of your filters for as long as you’d like: When you’re about to apply a filter, make a duplicate of the layer before you apply the filter by pressing Command-J (PC: Control-J) and then apply the filter. This keeps the application of your filter fully editable—you can change blend modes as often as you like, change opacity, add a layer mask to determine where the filter shows and where it doesn’t, or even toss the layer in the Trash and start all over.

January 12th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Accessing Grayed-Out Filters In CMYK

One of the bad things about converting from RGB mode to CMYK mode (under the Image menu) is that many of Photoshop’s coolest filters can only be applied in RGB mode, and once you’re in CMYK mode, many of them are grayed out in the Filter menu, so they can’t be accessed. So what do you do if you really want to use one of those filters? (Whatever you do, don’t convert back to RGB mode, then back to CMYK. That’s image suicide.) Instead, try this tip: In the Channels palette, click on the Cyan channel. Go to the Filters menu and you’ll notice that all those grayed-out filters are now suddenly available. All you have to do now is apply the filter you want to each channel individually (once each on Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and finally the Black channel), and the filter will appear as though you applied it to the entire image (in reality, you did—you just did it the more laborious way). One way to speed up this process is to create an action that will do it all for you with one click of the mouse.

January 11th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Troubleshooting Actions? Slow Down!

If you’re an advanced user, chances are you’re no stranger to using actions, and in fact, you probably create your own (rather than using the default actions that ship with photoshop, many of which redefine the term “useless”). If you do create your own actions, you’ve already found that you spend more time troubleshooting your actions than you do creating them in the first place. Well, this little tip makes the troubleshooting process a lot easier, and saves you both time and frustration. The problem is (and this won’t sound like a problem) Photoshop runs actions so quickly that you don’t see each step, or each dialog, so tracking down a missing or wrong step is just about impossible. Luckily, you can actually slow down your action, or even put a pause between each step, by using Photoshop’s Playback Options dialog found in the Actions palette’s flyout menu. When it appears, you can choose to play your action Step by Step, seeing everything as it happens, or you can choose to enter the number of seconds you’d like it to pause. Then, when you replay the action, you can see everything step by step and track down the culprit.

January 10th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Have Photoshop Select The Shadows And Highlights

This is a trick we use for prepress and for photo retouching because it instantly lets you select all the shadow areas (or highlight areas if you wish) for a particular image, and it’s so easy because Photoshop does all the work. To have Photoshop select just the shadow areas in your image, go under the Select menu and choose Color Range. When the dialog appears, in the Select pop-up menu, choose Shadows (or Highlights), and click OK. The shadow areas are instantly selected. This is ideal for situations where your scanner has plugged up the detail in the shadow areas (pretty common in most sub-$1,000 desktop scanners). Once the shadows are selected, you can “open them up” by going to the Levels dialog (under the Image menu, under Adjustments) and moving the midtones Input Levels slider to the left to bring back some of the shadow detail lost in the scan.

January 9th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (2)

Visual Control Over Your Selections Using Quick Mask

Did you know that you can use Quick Mask mode to expand or contract your selections visually? Here’s how: Create a selection (using any of Photoshop’s selection tools), and then switch to Quick Mask mode (press the letter Q). Now you can go to the Levels dialog under the Image menu, under Adjustments) and tweak the size of your selection. Moving the midtones Input Levels slider to the far left makes the selected area smaller (contracting the selection). Moving the midtones Input Levels slider to the far right makes the selected area larger (expanding the selection). The changes here usually aren’t drastic, so you’d use this technique when a small adjustment to your selection is necessary, but seeing it like this beats the heck out of guessing.

January 8th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)