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Secret Opacity See-Through-Part-Of-A-Layer Tip

 

This is a pretty wild tip—how to make just one part of a layer have a lower opacity. We know it sounds impossible, but this is totally cool. Start by making a selection on any area of the layer that you want to become transparent, while the rest of the layer remains at 100%. Then go under the Edit menu and choose Fill. When the Fill dialog appears, from the Mode pop-up menu choose Clear. Then lower the Opacity of the fill to whatever percentage you’d like, then click OK and voila—part of your layer has opacity, while the rest remains at 100%. Majorly cool! (Note: You have to think in reverse here. Clear set to 100% Opacity will make the selected area completely transparent.) Wait, what if you decide later that you want to fill it back in? Here’s how: Just start making copies of your layer by pressing Command-J (PC: Control-J), and as you do, you’ll see the transparency disappear. You may have to make five or more copies, but son of a gun if it doesn’t work. When it looks right, hide all but those copied layers, and from the Layers palette’s flyout menu, choose Merge Visible.

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Imageready’s Supercharged Eyedropper

In previous versions of Photoshop, you could only use the Eyedropper tool to sample a color from other open images in Photoshop, but for some reason, ImageReady had a supercharged Eyedropper. If you clicked the mouse button within your image and held it down, you could leave your image window and sample colors from, well… just about anything—including your computer desktop or any other open application. Freaky! Fortunately, Adobe finally added this same power to Photoshop’s Eyedropper tool.

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