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. That 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.

February 17th, 2010 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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 dragóleft to make them lighter, right to make them darker.

February 16th, 2010 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

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.

February 15th, 2010 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Kick It Up a Notch with Smart Filter Masking

Last topic on Smart Filters: 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.

February 12th, 2010 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Blend Mode in Smart Filters

In the olden days, you could control how a specific effect reacted to an image by choosing Edit>Fade (effect name). This would give you a blend mode option for the effect, as well as an Opacity control. The problem with this was you had no way to go back and modify that setting once it was completed. In Smart Filters, you have the option to set the blend mode and opacity of that effect, and still keep the control you need to modify it later. Just double-click on the Edit Blending Options icon that appears to the right of the Smart Filter in the Layers panel.

February 11th, 2010 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Smart Filters! Smart Filters! Smart Filters!

Gone are the days of having to use Undo for a filter. Now you can apply filters with aplomb because we have Smart Filters! The Smart Filter works much in the same way that an adjustment layer worksóit places the filter in a separate layer that you can manipulate nondestructively.

To use Smart Filters, you’re going to have to turn your content into a Smart Object. Control-click (PC: Right-click) on the layer that contains the content, and select Convert to Smart Object. Once that is completed, you can go into the Filter menu and apply the filter you would like.

Once the filter is applied on the Smart Object, you will see a sublayer in the Layers panel that contains the Smart Filter. You can double-click on the Smart Filter and make any necessary adjustments or hide it by clicking on the Eye icon. There are a couple of filters that do not work as a Smart Filter: Extract, Liquify, Pattern Maker, and Vanishing Point.

February 10th, 2010 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

Document Your Happy Accidents

Sometimes our best creations happen by pure experimentation and accident. Sitting in front of a Photoshop file, you are 40 History States in, and then it happens…magic! You really want to be able to get back to that moment. To do so, make sure that you turn on the History Log checkbox in the General Preferences (Photoshop>Preferences>General [PC: Edit>Preferences>General]). You can save the information as metadata, as a separate text file, or both!

February 9th, 2010 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

Sample Color from Anywhere

You can use the Eyedropper tool to pick colors from any area of your screen. First, press the letter I to select the Eyedropper tool, then click-and-hold inside your document, and drag outside the document window onto the object you’d like to sample. Release your mouse button and the sampled color appears as your new Foreground color.

February 8th, 2010 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

File>Open Recent

Under Photoshop>Preferences (PC: Edit>Preferences), you have an option called File Handling. In the Recent File List Contains field, you can specify how many files you would like it to remember.

February 5th, 2010 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Opening Multiple Images in Photoshop CS3

To open multiple images in Photoshop CS3, you can Shift-click a series of images in the Open dialog, and then click Open. You can also select noncontiguous images by Command-clicking.

February 4th, 2010 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)