| Here are 10 tips on how to speed up your work in photoshop, helping to save time, money and stress.
Tip 1: Changing Through Open Images Something we've all had to contend with at some point in our photoshop use, multiple images open at the same time. Now theres a few ways you can change between them, but the quickest way I've found is by pressing Control-Tab. This works in photoshop 6 and higher on windows, and photoshop cs on macintosh. Tip 2: Copying From Multiple Layers Surely you've experience a situation where you've made a selection of something to copy, but it is comprised of multiple layers? Well there's a way to get around this, simply use Shift-Control-C instead of the usual Control-C, this will copy the selection just as if it were a flattened image. Tip 3: Moving At Anytime Want to move a layer or something else, but too lazy to change the tool? i know how you feel, so here's the solution, hold Control and you'll have the move tool, but as soon as you release Control you lose the move tool. Good for those quick moves. Tip 4: Default Colours You all probably know this one already, but it's still a handy thing to know. If you want the default colours simply press the letter D, this gives you a black foreground colour and white background colour. If you want them the other way around simply press the letter X. Tip 5: Filtering Again Want to use the filter again with the same settings? Just press Control-F, it repeats the previous filter with the same settings, use it once, or use it lots. Tip 6: Nudging If you have the move tool selected, you can nudge. What does nudge doe you ask? It's simply an easy way of moving an object or layer a few pixels. How do you do it? Well this depends on how far you want to nudge and whether you would like the object/layer being nudged to create a new layer. Anyway I'll give the 3 nudge methods. Firstly there's simply the pressing of one of the Arrow keys, one press means one pixel in that direction. Secondly, to move more pixels hold Shift when pressing the Arrow keys, this will move it 10 pixels in that direction. And lastly to put the nudged object/layer on a new layer, just hold Alt when pressing the Arrow keys. Unfortunetly with this last one, each nudge gets put on a new layer. Tip 7: Filling Objects Surrounded By Transparent Pixels Here's the problem, you have an object on a layer and you wish to fill that object with a solid colour, but when you got to fill it, the whole layer gets filled. And here I am to the rescue, simply press Shift-Alt-Backspace, what does it do? It fills the object with the foreground colour, but it ignores the transparent pixels. Tip 8: Extractions For those images with hard to extract objects, simply tick the box in the Extraction window that says 'Textured Image'. This helps detect those hard to determine edges where the colour of the object and the colour of the background are very similar. Tip 9: Removing Edges Your making a collage and you find that an object has some unwanted pixels around it's edges left over from it's source image. Instead of using the Eraser tool and going around the edges manually, simply go to LAYER>MATTING>DEFRINGE, set the amount of pixels to 1 and click 'ok'. Your once ugly edges should now be gone, if not try again, or undo and try with 2 or 3 pixels instead. Tip 10: Selecting A Field Those little fields for inputting pixel size, brush size, etc. are pretty small, and you may have trouble clicking in them, well just click the fields name, which is to the left of the field, it should automatically highlight the field. |