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Tip of the Day | Page 48

 

Resizing Paths The Easy Way

When you’re working with paths, you can visually resize your path by using the Path Selection tool. To do this, press A to get the tool, then go up in the Options Bar and turn on the checkbox for Show Bounding Box. This puts a Free Transform-like bounding box around your path, and you can use this bounding box to resize your path by dragging the handles (remember to hold the Shift key to resize it proportionately).

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

Undo On A Slider!

If you apply a technique (such as a filter or a paint stroke) and the effect is too intense, you can always undo the effect by pressing Command-Z (PC: Control-Z). But if you just want to decrease the intensity, instead of completely undoing it, go under the Edit menu and choose Fade. Want a less intense effect? Just move the Opacity slider to the left. The farther you drag, the less intense the effect. Drag all the way to the left, and the effect is undone.

November 7th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Cracking The Easter Egg Mystery

Easter Eggs are usually funny little messages hidden within an application (engineer humor just cracks us up). Photoshop has a few of its own, but one of the lesser-known Easter Eggs is Merlin Lives. To see this Easter Egg, go to the Paths palette (under the Window menu), hold the Option key (PC: Alt key), and in the palette’s flyout menu, choose Palette Options. When you do, a tiny floating palette will appear with a picture of Merlin and just one button named “Begone,” which closes the dialog. I have to party with those engineer guys.

November 6th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Removing Edge Fringe When Collaging

Any time you’re creating a collage, you’ll eventually add an image that has little white pixels around the edges of your object. Here’s a tip for getting rid of that “fringe.” Go under the Layer menu, under Matting, and choose Defringe. Try the default setting of 1 pixel and click OK. What this does (here’s the techno speak) is replace the edge pixels with a combination of the pixel colors in your object and the colors in the background (whew, that hurt). That usually does the trick. If it doesn’t, Undo it, then try a 2- or 3-pixel Defringe.

November 5th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

How To Duplicate A Color Stop

Here’s the scenario: You’re making a custom gradient using the Gradient tool (G) (by double-clicking the gradient thumbnail in the Options Bar to get to the Gradient Editor) and you need to duplicate one or more of the color stops. No problem. Once you’ve created one gradient color stop, you can make copies by Option-dragging (PC: Alt-dragging) it. Also, as long as you keep the Option key (PC: Alt key) down while you drag, you can jump right over other existing stops. It’s a color stop love fest, can you feel it?

November 2nd, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Zooming All Your Tiled Images At Once

If you’ve chosen to tile your open windows (in the Window menu, under Arrange, choose Tile Horizontally [or Vertically]), in Photoshop CS2 you get some hidden functionality. If you want all the tiled images to be displayed at the same level of magnification, just hold the Shift key, grab the Zoom tool (Z), zoom in on one of the images, and all the other tiled images will jump to that same magnification. This is great when you’re trying to compare a number of similar images for detail.

November 1st, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

The Trick To Tricky Extractions

Adobe’s own Julieanne Kost (Photoshop guru and instructor supreme) showed this at the Photoshop World Conference & Expo, and it had everybody’s jaw dropping, but little has been said of it since, even though it’s built into Photoshop CS2’s Extract function (found under the Filter menu). It’s called Textured Image and you use it when you’re dealing with a tough extraction—a person with a dark shirt posing on a dark background, for example—and Extract can’t really tell where the shirt ends and the background begins. Turning this on helps detect the edges by examining the texture, and if it detects a texture (like you might find in a shirt), it can often help pull you out of a tight situation.

October 31st, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Having History Track Your Layer Visibility

By default, the History palette tracks the last 20 things you did in Photoshop, but (weird as this may sound), it doesn’t track when you hide or show a layer. For some reason, it just doesn’t record that. Well, that is unless you know this tip: Go to the History palette’s flyout menu and choose History Options. When the History Options dialog appears, turn on the checkbox for Make Layer Visibility Change Undoable. Now, you can undo your showing and hiding of layers from the History palette.

October 30th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Getting Back To The Filter Gallery Defaults

Let’s say you’ve tried all the filters in the Filter Gallery, and changed each setting so much that you can’t remember what the default, out-of-the-box settings were. Well, you’re out of luck (kidding). Here’s a trick for getting back to those default settings for any filter the Filter Gallery supports (like any of the Artistic filters, the Sketch filters, etc.): Open one of these filters (by choosing it from the Filter menu) and when it opens in the Filter Gallery, press-and-hold the Command key (PC: Control key) and you’ll see that the Cancel button changes into the Default button. Click it (while still holding down Command/Control) and the default settings will magically reappear.

October 29th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

What’s Smarter Than Using Guides?

Oh wait. I know this one. It’s…it’s…Smart Guides! (That’s right, for 500 points.) These little below-the-radar additions to CS2 are there to help you align objects on layers, but they don’t show up just on the edges of your object. As you drag your layer, they look for angles and corners within your layer, and the guides then extend out from there. That’s why they’re called “Smart.” To turn them on within your multilayered file, all you have to do is go under the View menu, under Show, and choose Smart Guides. Once they’re enabled, they appear automatically as you drag. They’re handier—and smarter—than you’d think.

October 26th, 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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