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Sometimes you will find that the Help feature may not offer complete assistance on a specific topic. Documentation for software often changes and expands, and LiveDocs is Adobe’s answer to this problem. If you go to www.adobe.com/support/documentation, you can access online documentation on all of your Photoshop topics. The good part about this documentation is that it is developed on a collaborative level, allowing the community to chime in on questions and answers to the topics at hand.
The best place to check out what’s new and improved is still in the Help feature. Choose Help>Photoshop Help and you will launch the Adobe Help Viewer. This has an index of all things CS3, and includes a section on what is new.
In Photoshop CS3 Extended, you have the ability to work with 3D files. This, however, carries specific requirements to do so. If your graphics card has a hard time keeping up with 3D, you can turn off the Enable 3D Acceleration in the Performance preferences.
Here are two things that can help in the Performance preferences: Your Memory Usage can let you specify how much of your RAM you would like to dedicate to the use of Photoshop. And, you also have the option of setting up a scratch disk in the Performance preferences (think of a scratch disk as temporary RAM that Photoshop creates by using actual hard drive space).
Rather than using a keyboard shortcut to zoom in and out, use your scroll wheel! Most mice these days have a center scroll wheel on them. If you press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key and use the scroll wheel on the mouse, you can zoom in and out of your document.
If you are like me, and love having a good amount of undos in the event that you go overboard with your adjustments, you can change the amount of History States that you have in Photoshop CS3. Note that the location of the History States preference has changed as well.
Choose Photoshop>Preferences>General (PC: Edit>Preferences>General) and notice that there is now a Performance option on the left. You can change the History States in this area. Keep in mind though, if you are excessively using History States, you may want to rethink what you are doing wrong in the first place. I know I have to.
Sometimes, it’s a bit hard to read the type in the panels. Choose Photoshop>Preferences>General (PC: Edit>Preferences>General) and change the UI Font Size. This will make the type in the panels larger. You will need to restart Photoshop to see the type change.
At the bottom of the Help menu, there is an option that teaches you how to create your own How To tutorials for Photoshop. In order to create How To tutorials, you will need some HTML skills and to know the directory where you need to place the How To files. Sorry, there is no How To for HTML. This is Photoshop.
Starting off in a similar manner to our CS2 tips, there are really cool features and tutorials packed right inside of Photoshop CS3. If you choose Help>How To, you can run through some tutorials on how to expand your knowledge on a variety of Photoshop topics.
If you’ve worked with a shape layer, you’ve probably noticed the appearance of a thin outline around the shape. The outline you see around a shape layer really doesn’t mean anything. It won’t print or show up on a saved Web image; however, it does look flat-out distracting when you’re trying to work with your images. Just click the mask next to the shape layer it’s on, and that outline will disappear. Click on it again if you ever want to turn it back on.
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Corey has a cool trick for creating a flare brush and see how one effect can lead to another.
See how you can add some subtle touches to give that green screen studio shot the Hollywood treatment.
Corey shows how to create reflective holiday ornaments using 3D in Photoshop.
This week Corey has a cool new trick for using 3D reflections in a rather creative way!
If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.
Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith