Tip of the Day | Page 49

Use The Move Tool Anytime

When you’re using just about any of Photoshop’s tools, you can temporarily switch to the Move tool at any time by simply holding the Command key (PC: Control key). It’s temporary, and as soon as you release it, you’re back to the tool you started with.

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

Showing One Effect In The Filter Gallery

The idea behind the Filter Gallery is the stacking up of one filter on top of the next, but if you want to see any one of the filters by itself, just Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on the Eye icon beside that filter in the filter stack, and all the other filters will be hidden from view. Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on the same Eye icon to bring them all back into view.

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

See Every Tweak With Bigger Filter Gallery Previews

Once you’ve chosen a filter from the Filter Gallery (under the Filter menu), you’ll probably want to spend some time tweaking the settings. If that’s the case, you’ll also need to see a larger preview of your work so you can really see the effects of each little tweak. You can do that by clicking on the up-facing triangle button, to the left of the OK button. This hides the center column (the list of filters) and expands the Preview pane into its space, giving you the full preview experience.

October 9th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Don’t Cancel; Reset And Save Time

Most of Photoshop’s dialogs (but not all) will let you use this little tip, which can save you loads of time. When you’re making changes in a dialog (let’s use the Levels dialog as an example) and decide that you don’t like the changes you’ve made, one option is to click the Cancel button to close the dialog, leaving your image unchanged. Then you can reopen the dialog and try again. This is an incredible waste of valuable time, so instead, Photoshop lets you “reset” the dialog—putting the settings back to what they were when you first opened it. Just hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) and look at the Cancel button—it changes into the Reset button. Click it, and it resets the dialog automatically, as if you hadn’t made any changes at all. Big, big time saver.

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

Stuck In A Field? Here’s How To Escape

This is one of those tips that keeps you from pulling your hair out. Sometimes when you’re editing values in a field (for example, you’re typing numbers in the Opacity field for a layer) and you’ve entered the number you want, Photoshop doesn’t automatically take you out of that field (meaning your cursor is still flashing in the Opacity field). It gets worse if you’ve switched to another layer (besides the Background layer) and you want to use a keyboard shortcut to switch tools. For example, you press the letter T to switch to the Type tool, but instead of getting the Type tool, you get an error sound because your cursor is still in the Opacity field (you can’t type letters in a number field). Here’s how to get around it. Just press the Return (PC: Enter) key on your keyboard to lock in the change in your field and release your keyboard for other tasks.

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

Copy One Layer, Or Copy ‘Em All

If you’re working on a layered document, and you make a selection and copy that selection, by default Photoshop only copies the information on your currently active layer (and that’s a good thing). However, there may be times when you want to copy your selection as if the image was flattened (in other words, you want to copy everything on all visible layers). If that’s the case, press Command-Shift-C (PC: Control-Shift-C), and you’ll copy as if the image was flattened, not just on the active layer.

October 4th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Let Photoshop Straighten Your Crooked Scans

That’s right—straightening is totally automated in Photoshop. In fact, try out this ideal situation: Toss two or three photos casually onto your scanner bed, without taking the time to carefully align them, and scan them all with just one pass of your scanner. Then, open the single scan of the three photos in Photoshop, go under the File menu, under Automate, and choose Crop and Straighten Photos. Photoshop will then crop, straighten, and even put each photo into its own separate document. Nice.

October 3rd, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

How To “Unerase”

You probably already know that you can use the History Brush (Y) as an “undo” on a brush, and that by default, the History Brush paints back to how your image looked when you first opened it. But did you know that the Eraser tool has a similar function? That’s right; the next time you’ve got the Eraser tool (E) active, look up in the Options Bar and you’ll see a checkbox for Erase to History. Normally, the Eraser tool erases to your Background color, but when you turn on this checkbox, it erases back to what the image looked like when you opened it.

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

Out Of Memory? Try This First

Here’s a tip for avoiding those nasty out-of-memory warning dialogs. One of the reasons Photoshop needs so much memory is that by default it keeps a snapshot of the last 20 things you did to your document, thus allowing you to undo your previous 20 steps. (You can see the running list of your last 20 steps in the History palette.) As you might expect, storing 20 steps takes a mighty chunk of memory, and if you’re running a little low (or getting those evil out-of-memory warnings), one thing you might try is lowering the amount of steps Photoshop stores. In Mac OS X, go under the Photoshop menu, under Preferences, under General, and you’ll find a field for History States. (In Windows you’ll find Preferences under the Edit menu.) You can lower this number (try 8 States for starters), and you may avoid the dreaded memory warnings. Just remember, by lowering the States, you don’t have 20 undos anymore.

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

Don’t Click In That Field!

Those tiny little fields up in the Options Bar can really be a pain sometimes, especially if you’re trying to highlight a field, delete the current value, and type in a new one. Instead of doing all that, just click on the field’s name and Photoshop will automatically highlight the entire field for you. That way, you can just type in new values and it will automatically replace the old values. Great thing is, this doesn’t just work in the Options Bar; it works in many of Photoshop’s palettes, including the Character and Paragraph palettes.

September 28th, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

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Photoshop Tutorials

- Reverse Restoration
  Corey shows you how to make a new photo look damaged by blending in some unusual textures.
- Rain Drops
  In this tutorial, Corey not only creates the raindrops, but also the splashes that are formed with the raindrops hit the hands.
- G.I. Joe
  Corey's tutorial this week was inspired by a real American hero!

More Fun with 3D

Continue exploring the possibilities with Photoshop’s new 3D tools.
Reverse Restoration

Corey shows you how to make a new photo look damaged by blending in some unusual textures.
3D Background Effects

Use Photoshop’s new 3D tools to create some dazzling background effects.
Striking Match, Part 2

In the second part of this tutorial, Corey finishes creating this illustration of a striking match.

Layers TV: Episode 110
New episodes are coming soon. In this old episode, RC goes start to finish through a Flash CS4 project using the new 3D tools and importing an audio file. Corey talks about the distortion features inside of Adobe Illustrator. You can download each episode by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes. var so = new SWFObject('http://media.kelbymediagroup.com/players/player.swf','mpl','500','300','7'); so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true'); // so.addVariable('type','rtmp'); so.addVariable('file','http://media.kelbymediagroup.com/switch/video/layers-tv-episode-110.mp4'); so.addVariable('plugins','hd-1'); so.addVariable('hd.file','http://media.kelbymediagroup.com/switch/video/layers-tv-episode-110-hd.mp4'); so.addVariable('hd.state','false'); so.addVariable('image','http://www.layersmagazine.com/images/layerstv-logo.jpg'); so.addVariable('height','300'); so.addVariable('width','500'); so.addVariable('autostart','false'); so.addVariable("backcolor","0x000000"); so.addVariable("frontcolor","0xF1F1F1"); so.addVariable("lightcolor","0xF88E21"); so.addVariable("quality","100"); so.write('player'); [...]
NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 for Mac
The new professional-level Quadro FX 4800 with 1.5 GB of memory brings a much-needed performance upgrade to the Mac Pro lineup.
Prezi
Prezi is a Flash-based visualization, storytelling, and presentation tool that allows you to create nonlinear presentations.
Terry White’s New App | Printing from Lightroom 2
Happy Thursday everyone! Just wanted to pop on in and share what’s new in the intranets: Terry White’s New Iphone App Terry white over at his techblog is usually covering all sorts of technology and letting us know what his favorite apps are for the iphone. He’s taken that love and mixed it with [...]

Adding Keywords to Multiple files

In Bridge, you can add keywords to images to make searching for pictures a little less cumbersome. You don’t, however, want the process to become tedious as well. By either Command-clicking (PC: Ctrl-clicking) or Shift-clicking on images, you can select multiple files inside Bridge. Once you have the files selected, you can go to the Keywords panel and turn on any keyword you like. This will apply the keyword to all of the files that you have selected. It takes away a little bit of the pain of categorization, but just a little.