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Undo A Save? That’s Impossible, Isn’t It?
This is a great trick we learned from our buddy Mike Ninness, and the first time we saw it, we said, “Hey, wait a minute, that can’t be.” Oh, but it be. It’s how to undo a Save. This is especially helpful after you’ve flattened an image, saved the file, then realized that you needed to change something on a layer. This only happens to us about every other day, and here’s the keyboard shortcut to fix it: Command-Option-Z (PC: Control-Alt-Z). Press it a few times after you’ve flattened and saved, and look in your Layers palette to see all the layers come a-rumbling right back. Pretty slick stuff.
Fall In Love With A Temporary Brush, Or Not
You can create a temporary brush anytime in Photoshop by playing with the options in the Brushes palette (which is nested in the Palette Well by default). After you make your choices, start painting. When you switch to another brush, the temporary brush you just created is gone. If you fall in love with your temporary brush (which is considered illegal in 48 states) and want to save it, before you change brush sizes, click on the Brush thumbnail in the Options Bar, and when the Brush Picker appears, click on the New Preset Brush icon in the upper right-hand corner, you sick pup.
Top-Secret Photoshop Splash Screen Update!!!!!!!!!
If you want to see the secret Photoshop beta startup screen (the pre-release version of Photoshop CS2), just hold the Command key (PC: Control key) and choose About Photoshop from the Photoshop menu (or Help menu on a PC). It will show you the splash screen, displaying CS2’s secret pre-release code name. I’m telling you, those engineers know how to party.
Feather A Selection Without The Guessing Game
Most of us try to guess how many pixels will give us the nice, soft selection we’re looking for when we use the Feather Selection dialog (under the Select menu). Sometimes we guess right, and other times we press Command-Z (PC: Control-Z) to undo the damage before trying again. Try this instead: Make your selection first, and then press Q to turn on the Quick Mask mode. Now make the edge fade out by going under Filter, under Blur, and choosing Gaussian Blur. You can see how much of a blur you’ll need to soften the edges as you adjust the Radius amount. When you’re done, press Q to get back to Standard mode with the selection already made with the exact amount of feathering that you want.
Dragging-And-Dropping Where You Want
If you drag an image from one document to another, the dragged image appears right at the spot where you let go of the mouse button. You may know that if you hold the Shift key when you drag-and-drop the image, the dragged image will automatically be centered within the receiving image. But you can go one better—make a selection in the receiving document, then hold the Shift key before you drag. Your image will be centered within the selection, instead of within the entire document. Scary, isn’t it? You can also copy-and-paste the selection and Photoshop will center the pasted image in the selection.
Want Arrowheads? Photoshop Can Add Them For You!
This one is pretty slick because it’s been a feature in Photoshop for a while, but eight out of ten Photoshop users will tell you Photoshop can’t create arrowheads on the ends of lines (if it makes you feel any better, nine out of 10 dentists didn’t think Photoshop could do it either). Here’s how: First, go under the Shape tools (in the Toolbox) and choose the Line tool. Then, up in the Options Bar, you’ll see icons for the shape tools. Directly to the right of these eight icons is a down-facing triangle. Click on that triangle and out pops a dialog where you can click a checkbox to add arrowheads to either the beginning or end of your line, and you can choose the Width, Length, and even the Concavity (there’s that dentist thing again).
The Multiple Undo Shortcut
Need to back up a few steps to re-adjust a setting? Piece of cake. Here’s a shortcut to do just that. You can step back through your History palette (found under the Window menu) by pressing Command-Option-Z (PC: Control-Alt-Z) a few times. This doesn’t delete the items, but takes you back a step in the History palette each time you apply the shortcut.
Let Those Windows Breathe!
Since version 3.0, Photoshop has done something called “protecting the palettes” (I don’t know if that’s its official name, but we’ve always heard it called that). What it means is that as you increase the size of your image using the Zoom tool (Z), Photoshop stops increasing the size of the image window when it reaches the left edge of your open palettes (if you have turned on the Resize Windows To Fit checkbox in the Options Bar). When it reaches this safety zone, the window stops growing, and only the image within the window continues to zoom. The only way to get around this (in previous versions of Photoshop) was to close your palettes. Then you could zoom the window as large as you’d like. However, Adobe addressed this problem back in Photoshop 6, and now if you want to keep the window growing, choose Ignore Palettes in the Options Bar when using the Zoom tool.
Swapping Crop Fields
Adobe snuck a little button into the Options Bar that’s hardly noticeable. It works with tools such as the Crop tool (C), and it’s a big time saver. For example, for the Crop tool it swaps the measurements in the Width and Height fields, so if you have the Crop tool set to crop to exactly a 5×7", if you click this button, it will now crop to 7×5". See? I told you it was handy.
The Undocumented Airbrush Toggle Trick
This cool, undocumented shortcut comes from our good friend, Web wizard, and all-powerful overlord of every Photoshop keyboard shortcut known to man, Michael Ninness (author of the book Photoshop 7 Power Shortcuts, from New Riders, ISBN 0735713316). Here’s the tip: As you probably know by now, the Airbrush tool has been gone from the Toolbox since 7.0, but you can add Airbrush control to some painting tools by clicking on the Airbrush icon found in the Options Bar of most Brush tools. However, that takes a lot of trips up to the Options Bar. Ah, if only there were a keyboard shortcut that would let you toggle this Airbrush feature on and off at will. Well, there is, and thanks to Michael, we can share it here—it’s Option-Shift-P (PC: Alt-Shift-P). Makes you want to buy Michael’s book, doesn’t it?
Pausing For A Brush Preview
If you’re choosing your brush tips from the expanded Brushes palette, you don’t have to actually click on a brush to see the large preview of it at the bottom of the Brushes palette (which is nested in the Palette Well by default). Instead, just pause your cursor right over the brush you want to preview, and in just a second the preview will appear, even though you didn’t actually click on the brush tip. The catch is: The Show Tool Tips checkbox must be turned on in the General Preferences for this “pause preview” to work.
Photoshop’s Hidden Step And Repeat
Although Photoshop doesn’t have a visible Step and Repeat function (like many vector or page-layout programs do), it still has the feature—it’s just a bit hidden. For example, let’s say you have an object on a layer, and you want to duplicate and move or rotate that object a number of times in succession (a typical step-and-repeat), here’s how you can do it in Photoshop CS2: Start by going to the original layer with the object, then press Command-Option-T (PC: Control-Alt-T) to bring up a special version of Free Transform. Now you can transform your object (move it, rotate it, skew it, etc.) then press Return (PC: Enter) to lock in your transformation. You’ll notice that your original object remains untouched on its layer and you now have a new layer with the transformed object. Now press Command-Option-Shift-T (PC: Control-Alt-Shift-T) and this will create a duplicate of your last move, and at the same time it creates a new layer, thereby giving you a step-and-repeat (you have to try this once, and you’ll immediately “get it”).
Photo-Retouching Safety Tip
Here’s a tip that many photo retouchers use—do all your retouching on a layer above your image. That way, you don’t damage the underlying image, and you have control over opacity and blend modes you normally wouldn’t have. It’s also easy to erase areas you wish you hadn’t retouched. The key to making this work is to get the Clone Stamp tool (S) and in the Options Bar, turn on the Sample All Layers option. That way you can sample from the underlying image and then paint on the layer above it (believe it or not, by default Photoshop doesn’t let you do that—it only lets you clone from the active layer to that same layer).
Lights, Camera, Action: Slide Shows Using Photoshop
You can create a mock slide show presentation by opening multiple images in Photoshop and then pressing Control-Tab to rotate through the images. Plus, you can hold the Shift key and click on the Full Screen Mode icon near the bottom of your Toolbox to allow your images to fill the full screen (holding Shift will switch all of your open images to the Full Screen Mode at once). Press Tab to hide your palettes and you’re all set to give a slick presentation. To exit your mini-slide show, press Tab to see the Toolbox, and then Shift-click on the Standard Mode icon.
Moving Your Image In Full Screen Mode
In Photoshop CS2 you can pull off something users have been wanting for years—the ability to change the placement of your entire image once you’re in Full Screen mode (where your image is centered onscreen, surrounded by a black border with no menus, palettes, or tools visible). Just enter Full Screen mode (press F, F, then Tab), hold the Spacebar, and your cursor will change into the Hand tool. Click-and-drag your entire image anywhere on the screen you’d like. To return to regular mode, press F then Tab.
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Photoshop Tutorials
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Wild West Grunge
Corey shows you how to recreate this rugged, weathered look using a couple of filters, blending modes, and layer masks.
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Wall of Text
Use a clipping group to place an image inside of a background of text, with another layer of text placed in front to create depth.
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Natural Brushes
In this tutorial Corey shows you how to take an existing image and turn it into it’s own custom brush.
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Custom Coins
In this tutorial Corey creates a realistic-looking coin effect using the channels palette and the lighting effects filter.
Text Shape Layers
Converting text into shapes allows you to distort the text as you like while retaining straight, clean edges.
Borders Under a Minute
Create really cool borders in under a minute to use on virtually any one of your photos or even video for that matter.- Custom Coins
In this tutorial Corey creates a realistic-looking coin effect using the channels palette and the lighting effects filter. - Natural Brushes
In this tutorial Corey shows you how to take an existing image and turn it into it's own custom brush.
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Creative Contrast in Photoshop CS3
In this tutorial, we’ll take a look at some interesting techniques for improving contrast using the Shadow/Highlight command, empty adjustment layers, blend modes, and the Blend If sliders in the Layer Style dialog. -
Enhanced Workflow in Lightroom 1.1
In this article, we'll focus on techniques that will strengthen your workflow skills and simultaneously reveal some of the new features in Lightroom 1.1. -
Handlin’ Photoshop and Illustrator Content in Flash
we’ll take a look at how things work across Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash-specifically, some features and techniques for getting rasterized Photoshop content and vector Illustrator content into your Flash movies. -
Understanding Channels in Photoshop CS3
Photographer Chris Alvanas wants to go over Channels, because understanding what they are and what they do is key to understanding what their potential is.
Removing Those Typographically Incorrect Spaces
If you’re trying to set type that looks typographically correct in Photoshop, there’s an old habit you’ll have to break, and that’s the curse of putting two spaces at the end of every sentence. This is a holdover from people who at one time used traditional typewriters, where adding two spaces was necessary, but in typesetting that’s a huge no-no. About 70% of the text I copy-and-paste from text files that people give me has two spaces, but I use this Photoshop tip to fix the problem in just seconds. First, go under the Edit menu and choose Find and Replace Text. In the Find field, press the Spacebar twice (entering two spaces), then in Change To, press the Spacebar just once. Click Change All, and every time Photoshop finds two spaces at the end of a sentence, it will replace it with just one, making you typographically correct.
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Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Tour May. 19 - Nashville, TN
Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Tour May. 22 - San Francisco, CA
Photoshop CS3 for Photographers Tour May. 28 - New York, NY
Maximum Photoshop Tour May. 30
