Open Up Some Screen Real Estate

A lot of times when you’re working on a project, your screen can get really cluttered with palettes (Photoshop is an especially palette-heavy application). If you want all the palettes out of the way for your convenience while you’re working, just press Shift-Tab to hide them, or Shift-Tab to bring them back. The menu bar, the Options Bar, and the Toolbox will still be visible.

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

No More Jaggy Lasso Tool Selection

Have you ever tried to create a smooth selection using the Lasso tool? It’s just about impossible, right? (If it sounds like it isn’t, give it a try—open a new document, take the Lasso tool, and draw any random selection, and then look at the selection. It’s jaggy—not crazy jaggy, but it’s certainly not smooth.) If you were trying to create a selection for an interface design, or a realistic element of some sort, it would just be too jaggy to use. Here’s a tip:

(1) Press L to get the Lasso tool and draw around the area you want to use as your selection.

(2) Press the letter Q to enter Quick Mask mode (your selection will now be surrounded with a reddish hue).

(3) Go under the Filter menu, under Noise, and choose Median. As you move the Radius slider to the right, you’ll see your edges smooth out.

(4) When it looks nice and smooth, click OK then press the letter Q again to return to Standard mode, and you’ll have nothing but a nice rounded selection.

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

Find The Center Of Any Document

Need to find the exact center of your image? All you need is a layer filled with your Foreground color, and Photoshop will do the rest (okay, you have to do a little, but Photoshop will certainly help). First, click on the Create a New Layer icon in the Layers palette and press Option-Delete (PC: Alt-Backspace) to fill it with your Foreground color. Make your rulers visible (press Command-R [PC: Control-R]) and drag a guide down from the top ruler. When you get close to the center of the image, the guide will automatically snap to the exact horizontal center. Do the same with the side ruler, and it automatically snaps to the vertical center of your image. (Note: If there’s not any snapping going on, be sure Snap is turned on under the View menu.)

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

Rearranging Your Brushes

One of the things in Photoshop that just didn’t make sense to us was that you couldn’t easily rearrange the order of your brushes in the Brushes palette or Brush Picker. Oh sure, you could create a whole new custom set with the brushes you wanted, in the order you wanted them, but it would take a while, and frankly, was such a pain that we only know a handful of people who actually went through the trouble. Well, our wish for easily rearranging brushes is finally here, but the process is a bit hidden beneath the surface. To move a brush from one spot in the palette to another, go under the Edit menu, and choose Preset Manager. In the Preset Manager dialog, under Preset Type, choose Brushes. Then, click-and-drag the brush of your choice to the location of your choice. At last, we are free to move brushes among the herd.

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

Miss The Old Default Actions?

If you miss the old default set of actions that has been shipping with Photoshop for years, you can get it back fairly easily. Just go to the Actions palette’s flyout menu and choose Sample Actions to reload that old default set.

August 21st, 2007 | Web Editor | Tip of the Day | Comments (0)

Transforming And Copying At The Same Time

Generally, when you apply a transformation to an object (scaling, rotating, distorting, perspective), you apply that transformation to the object itself. However, here’s a cool tip if you want to apply a transformation (using Free Transform) on a duplicate of your object, rather than on the original: Press Command-Option-T (PC: Control-Alt-T), then use the Free Transform tool as you usually would. You’ll notice that as you begin to transform, the original object remains untouched, and a copy is transformed instead.

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

Reaching The Free Transform Handles

If you want to use Free Transform on a layer, but your image extends beyond the edges of your document window (and this happens frequently if you’re collaging different photos together), you won’t be able to reach the Free Transform handles to scale your image down to size. Here’s the keyboard shortcut that lets you reach each and every handle, no matter how far the image extends outside your current canvas area. Just press Command-T (PC: Control-T) to bring up Free Transform, then press Command-0 (zero) (PC: Control-0) and your window will zoom out to exactly the right size to enable you to reach all the handles. Cool!

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

Been Bingeing On RAM? Maybe It’s Time To Purge!

What do you do if the dreaded “Not enough RAM to complete this function” dialog appears? Outside of buying more RAM and installing it on the spot, you might want to purge some of the “junk” hanging around in RAM so you can free up some space to complete the project you’re working on. You do this by going under the Edit menu, under Purge, and choosing to empty your Undo, Photoshop’s Clipboard, your History States, or everything at once (All). They’re in the order you should proceed, so first try purging your Undo and see if that frees up enough memory. If that doesn’t do it, try the Clipboard, then Histories. If that doesn’t do it, try this super-slick insider tip: Make a tiny (1×1") selection within your document, and then go under the Edit menu and choose Copy three times in a row. Believe it or not, it often works, and has gotten us out of more than one sticky situation.

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

Save Clicks When You Close

This is such a quick little tip that you might not think that it matters, but it saves a few seconds every time you close a document. If you close a number of documents a day (and my guess is, you do), it really starts to add up fast. When you close a document, Photoshop presents you with a dialog asking, “Save changes to the Adobe Photoshop document before closing?” You have three choices: (1) Don’t Save, (2) Cancel, and (3) Save. Here’s the shortcut: Press the letter D for Don’t Save, press S for Save, and C for Cancel.

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

Instant Selection From Any Path

When you’re using the Pen tool (P) to create a path, you can go to the Paths palette (under the Window menu) and click on the third icon from the left (at the bottom of the palette) to turn your path into a selection, or you can use the keyboard shortcut Command-Return (PC: Control-Enter). We prefer the keyboard shortcut, because it will do the exact same job faster and saves us from opening the Paths palette, taking up valuable screen real estate. Note: If you want to create a selection from an existing path, select that path in the Paths palette and then use the shortcut.

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