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Tip of the Day | Page 45

 

Toggling The Preview On/Off

So, have the adjustments you’ve made in Camera Raw helped or hurt your photo? Just press the letter P and you’ll quickly find out. This turns the preview of your changes off, and shows how the original file looked before you started tweaking it. To turn the preview back on, just press P again.

December 27th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Seeing Your RAW Image Without The Auto Corrections

By default, when you open a RAW image in Photoshop CS2, Camera Raw looks at the EXIF data embedded into your photo by your digital camera to find out which type of camera it was taken with, and once it knows, it applies a set of Auto corrections to the photo’s exposure, shadows, brightness, and contrast. If you’d like to see what your RAW image looked like before Camera Raw applied these Auto corrections, just press Command-U (PC: Control-U), and it turns off all the Auto corrections to give you a clear, uncorrected view. Pretty bad, eh? So press Command-U (PC: Control-U) to turn those bad boys right back on.

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

Slide Away The Aberrations

If you see areas of bright-colored fringe appearing around objects in your RAW photos, you’re suffering from Chromatic Aberrations (well, you’re not, but your camera’s lens is). Under the Lens tab in Camera Raw, there are two sliders (Fix Red/Cyan Fringe and Fix Blue/Yellow Fringe) that you let you slide those problems away, but seeing the problem clearly enough to eliminate the fringe is your first challenge. That’s why you’ll want to know this tip: If you hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) while you’re dragging either Chromatic Aberration slider, it will only show the two channels you’re adjusting in the preview area, making it easier to see—and repair—the problem.

December 21st, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (1)

Updating The Histogram As You Crop

The fact that Camera Raw has cropping built in should be cool enough, but its Crop tool (C) is smarter than Photoshop’s. For example, when you drag out a cropping border in Camera Raw, take a look at the histogram in the top-right corner—it instantly updates to show you the histogram for just the areas that appear inside your cropping border. Sweet!

December 20th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Don’t Click The White Balance Tool On Something White

The White Balance tool (I) actually works best by clicking on something in your photo that is light gray, rather than clicking on something that supposed to be white. Once you’ve clicked on a light gray area, use the Tint and Temperature sliders if you want to tweak the white balance a little bit, but use the White Balance tool to do most of the work.

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

Black And White Conversions In Camera Raw

Believe it or not, Camera Raw is great for creating black-and-white conversions. Start by opening a RAW image, then lowering the Saturation to –100. Adjust the Exposure and Shadows sliders to create a nice contrasty image, then drag the Contrast slider to the right to give the image even more contrast. Now try all the different White Balance presets until you find the one that looks best for your particular conversion. You can even add sharpening if you like by clicking on the Detail tab and adjusting the Sharpness slider. And best of all, you can create a surprisingly good black-and-white image before it actually enters Photoshop CS2.

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

Instant Thumbnail Size Control

Want to change the size of your thumbnail preview in your Layers, Channels, or Paths palettes? Just hold the Control key (PC: Right-click) and click in an open area of the palette (such as the space under your Background layer, or beneath the bottom channel in the Channels palette), and a pop-up menu of thumbnail sizes will appear. For instance, in the Layers palette you can choose from No, Small, Medium, or Large Thumbnails, instantly changing your thumbnail view.

December 14th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Timing Is Everything!

Want to know how long a particular Photoshop command takes? Click on the right-facing triangle toward the bottom left-hand corner of your image window. From the pop-up menu that appears, under Show, choose Timing. This starts the equivalent of a stopwatch that times your Photoshop commands in seconds. This is great for speed tests, pitting one machine against another. Which one runs the fastest Smart Sharpen? Time it and find out.

December 13th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Custom Brushes: Start With A Clean Slate

If you’re going to build your own custom brush in Photoshop, sometimes it’s easier to start with an existing brush and edit it. The problem is that you may have all sorts of settings already in place (Texture, Scattering, Shape Dynamics, etc. along with all their individual options). To set everything back to their defaults could take a while. At least it would if you didn’t know this cool little trick: Click on the brush you want to use as your starting point for your custom brush, and in the Brushes palette, click on the options you want to edit (like Texture, Scattering, etc.). Then, from the palette’s flyout menu, choose Clear Brush Controls, and all the selected options will be instantly reset to their default settings.

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

Building A Better Background Eraser Tool

Here’s a tip for making Photoshop’s Background Eraser tool much more effective. Choose the Background Eraser tool (it’s in the Eraser tool’s flyout menu in the Toolbox), and in the Options Bar, lower the Tolerance setting to 20. Click on the Brush thumbnail to open the Brush Picker and choose a large, hard-edged brush. Then, press P to switch to the Pen tool, making sure that the Paths icon (middle one at left in the Options Bar) is selected. Draw a path just outside the edge of the object you want to isolate (you don’t have to be precise; in fact, stay just outside the edges of the object and draw straight lines all the way around the image). Go to the Paths palette (under the Window menu), and in the palette’s flyout menu, choose Stroke Path. When the dialog appears, under Tool, choose Background Eraser, and click OK. The Background Eraser will instantly trace around your image, following the path you created. Now that the edges have been erased, you can use the regular Eraser tool to erase the rest of the background area.

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

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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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