100 Photoshop Quick Tips

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2009-03-17T17:43:00.001+07:00

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#61 Photoshop Tips: Making the Color Palette Work Twice As Hard

2008-02-04T23:07:00.000+07:00

If you use the Color palette to select colors, you’re probably already using the color ramp at the bottom of the palette for making quick color selections, but here are two tips that make using the ramp faster and easier.

First, the color ramp doesn’t have to use the same color mode as the color sliders above it. For example, you can have RGB for your sliders and gray scale as your ramp. This is cool because it gives you two different models to choose from without digging through menus. You can choose the color modes for both the sliders and the ramp from the Color palette’s pop-down menu.

The second thing is that if you quickly want to change color ramps, Shift-click on the ramp. Every time you click, it will rotate through to the next color mode.

#60 Photoshop Tips: Getting More Control Over the Magic Wand

2008-02-04T21:01:00.000+07:00

By default, the Eyedropper’s tool’s Sample Size option in the Options Bar is set to "Point Sample", which comes into play if you’re using it to read values for color correction. But for now, it’s important to know that the Sample Size option chosen for the Eyedropper tool actually affects how the Magic Wand tool makes its selection (the two have an undocumented relationship).

If you increase the Eyedropper’s Sample Size to 3 by 3 or 3 by 5 Average, the Magic Wand will select an average of a much larger of pixels in the sample area. This is important to know, because with one of those two other Sample Sizes chosen, if you were set to the Magic Wand Tolerance to zero, it wouldn’t just select all of the pixels that match any of the pixels in the sample.

The next time your Magic Wand isn’t behaving the way it used to, check and see if you have changed the Eyedropper tool Sample Size.

#59: Text Warping and Something You Might Ask About

2008-01-31T19:57:00.000+07:00

Warp. It sounds like Mr. Spock is talking inside The Enterprise starship. What I want to say in here is one of Photoshop Type feature. The warp feature allows you to bend all of your text into certain type of waving shape. You will be provided with a lot of shaped so you can put a more realistic look on any of your type layers quickly.

You can have the Text warp menus on the type tool Option bar under the Menu bar. It seems I don’t have to tell you more detail about how to make it works since it’s just a piece of cake action. And sometimes when it goes to a warning that states "Could not complete your request because the type layer uses a faux bold style. Remove attribute and continue?", simply you can just click continue, and the Text warp menu is already to access. But you might ask for instance, why such warning comes up before you can get the Text warp options?

You may have notice about the Faux styles which I have described here. But if you feel quite not worthy enough to look back on the post, I’m gonna give a short description about this stuff [again]. Faux bold style is a feature of Photoshop [that was introdueced back in Photoshop 5.0] that lets you create fake [faux] bold or italic type style for fonts that don’t really have a bold or italic type. It’s toggled on/off in the Character’s palette pop-up menu. If you turn off the Faux bold on the pop-down menu in the Characters palette, you won’t see the warning again.

#58: Navigating While Dealing With Tonal Adjustment Dialog Box

2008-01-31T19:32:00.000+07:00

Here’s another handy tip. When you’re working in one of Photoshop’s tonal adjustment dialogs such as Curves, Levels, and so on, you will notice tht most of the menus in the Menu bar are grayed out. That means you cannot access them while you are in these dialog boxes.

But hey, you will also find that two of them are still active: View and Window menu. This means you can still access them while keeping your Curves dialog box open. Does it handy enough? Of course. Under the view menu, you can set and change your magnification, toggle on/off the guides, rulers, snap, and more. And under the Window menu, you will able to close or open Photoshop’s floating palettes.

#57 Photoshop Tips: More Curve Point

2008-01-31T18:09:00.000+07:00

When you’re working in Curves, once you’ve plotted a Curve point, you can rotate over to the next point in your curve by doing Right-Click+Tab [Mac: Control+Tab]. To rotate back to the previous point, add the Shift key so you make it Shift+Right-Click+Tab [Mac: Shift+Control+Tab]. If you’ve got one or more points selected and want to deselect all your points, just press Ctrl+D [Mac: Command+D] to release all your points.

#56 Photoshop Trick: Give Me A Half or Quarter Undo

2008-01-31T18:04:00.000+07:00

Sounds a little weird, huh. As we know when we already put a command on our work, sometimes we want to roll it back to the previous state. And pressing Ctrl+Z would have solved that for an instant. But, how then if you want to go back just a half way backward. For example, when I apply a Gaussian Blur over a layer, I think it was too intense, so I need to go back and do the the filter once more but at a lower value.

By hitting Ctrl+Z you will have twice the work, but when you scroll through Edit > Fade menu, you will be half way from your Undo. Drag the slider to the left, and you will have a less intense effect. Drag all the way to the left, and the effect is undone.

#55 Photoshop Tips: Enhance Your Filter Effects

2008-01-31T17:52:00.000+07:00

This is how to take control over cool filter that you apply to your images. If you used to select some areas and start to apply filters on it, from now on I suggest you to make that process on a new fresh layer. Press Ctrl+J [Mac: Command+J] after you do a selection and it will put the selected area up on its own layer. By the Photoshop words, it’s a Layer via Copy.

You will have the advantages from this trick because as you put the area on its own area, you have more control over the images. For example, you can change the Blend Modes of the layer after you applied filters on it. By multiplying it, screening it, or overlaying it, you will be astonished with more visual effects that may never thought before.

Also, you will have control of your filter "after the fact". This means after you applied the filter, you felt it too intense, you can always lower the opacity of the layer to calm it down a bit.

#54 Photoshop Trick: Find the Center of Any Object on A Layer

2008-01-28T20:15:00.000+07:00

It’s a great tip for you to quickly find the exact center of any object on a layer. You can start it by pressing Ctrl+T to bring up the Free Transform handles. Notice that you can see the handle in the center of both sides: left and right, above and below.

The next thing you have to do is make Photoshop’s ruler visible by pressing Ctrl+R, and drag out a horizontal and a vertical ruler guide to those handles to mark the center.

#53 Photoshop Tips: Where Are My Menus?

2008-01-28T19:50:00.000+07:00

I have told you about the Photoshop screen modes previously, and later I will tell you about some problems which might occur when you’re working on Full Screen Mode. Since the mode left you only your image, toolbox, and some palettes, I figured it’s a kind of difficult when you need to bring up the menus to your view.

The first tip is notice the tiny right-facing triangle on the top-right of the toolbox. That’s where you’ll find them. Bingo! Another way? Ummm... press the Alt+F and it will bring you the Files menu. Use the left and right arrow on your keyboard to move the menus back and forward.

#52 Photoshop Tips: The Triple Screen Modes

2008-01-28T19:35:00.000+07:00

Talking about workspace, Photoshop is a pack of easiness which you can rely on every time and every way you want it. Just tell me how I can stick the Navigation palette right below the Layers palette, hiding some of the palettes, and if I got stuck and need to reverse, I just can do it quickly without hassle. And here, we’re gonna talk about the screen modes which Photoshop provides for us.

So, did you notice the toolbox recently? At a glance you will find the three horizontally ruled icons which first I haven’t any idea about what it is and what for. Then I found out that the icons provide three screen modes for you to discover.

Standard Screen Mode: This mode is the default screen mode as you start up Adobe Photoshop. All elements are displayed from the Photoshop header, menu bar, toolbox, and palettes. And your canvasses are somewhere between them.
Full Screen Mode with Menu Bar: At this mode your canvas will disappear and referred with a large gray area around your image. Notice that the Photoshop header had disappeared and the menu bar is taking the most upper part of your screen.
Full Screen Mode: This is the last mode which will provide you larger areas since the menu bar is out of the screen and firmly left the options bar, the toolbox, and the palettes. The gray area had also turned into black. And also notice that your Windows taskbar below is also disappear.

And here is the ultimate mode. While you’re in Full Screen Mode, press the Tab key and whoosh... all the elements are gone leaving your only image on the screen. Remember it’s only you and your images right now. No palettes, no toolbox, no taskbar, no menus. And how you supposed to bring them back? Press the Tab once again and they’ll be on your screen again.

Quick tip:
Toggling between the three modes is also can be done by pressing the letter F on your keyboard instead of clicking the icons in the toolbox.

#50 Photoshop Trick: How Do I Change the Measurement Units Quickly?

2008-01-28T18:36:00.000+07:00

Using measurement on working in Photoshop depends on what media you are projecting. Between the print and screen, there are basic units which comply with each media. The general measurement for screen media is pixels since user tend to count the size easier, rather than putting a ruler on the monitor and start figuring how much does it length which is usually done with papers.

And how do you toggle between those measurements in Photoshop? It’s a really quick step, buddy. Do you notice the ruler in your canvas, yet? If you haven’t, the try to hit Ctrl+R [Mac: Command+R] so you can instantly bring it up to your screen. Then give a right click [Mac: Control +R] on it until you see the pop-up menu, so you can toggle between them easily.

#50 Photoshop Trick: Get The Real 100% View

2008-01-23T21:08:00.000+07:00

If you’re creating web graphics, it’s almost important to preview your work at the same size your audience will view. Get your image at 100% view by giving double-click on the Zoom tool. If you find that the image is too big for your screen, then you can zoom out until the view of your image is the size you’d like to appear on the Web page, then look in the lower left corner of the image window and you’ll see the percentage of zoom.

Write that down, then go under the Image menu and choose Image Size. When the Image Size dialog box appear, in the height pop-up menu , choose percent. Enter the percentage amount that you wrote previously. By default, Photoshop will enter the Width when you enter the Height setting to keep your image proportional. Click OK and it will resize your image to the exact sie you want it to appear on the web page.

Quick Tips: You can use the combination of the key Ctrl + - [Mac: Command + -] to zoom it and Ctrl + + [Mac: Command + +] to zoom out. Another way, you can hold the Alt [Mac: Option] key to toggle between zoom-in and zoom-out in Zoom tool mode.

#49 Photoshop Tips: One Command For All Your Transforming Needs

2008-01-23T20:58:00.000+07:00

The free transform tool is almost like a one stop center for every transforming operations you need such as Rotate, Skew, Flip Horizontal, and other cool stuff like that. But it seems the stuff get in numbers so you feel it a little bit hard to remember.

Simply, press Ctrl+T [Mac: Command+T] to bring up the Free Transform handles around your object. Do that right-click [Mac: hold Control + click] inside the bounding box and a pop-up menu will appear with a list of all transformations you can choose from. You also get access to transformations such as Flip Horizontal/Vertical, Rotate 180°, and Rotate 90° Clockwise/Counterclockwise that don’t have keyboard shortcuts at all.

#48 Photoshop Tips: Count The Command Time

2008-01-23T20:52:00.001+07:00

If you want to know how long a particular Photoshop command takes, you can click on the right-facing triangle toward the bottom left-hand corner of the image window. Choose Timing from the pop-up menu that appears. This will start the equivalent of a stopwatch that times your Photoshop commands in seconds. Then, you can proudly ask your mates to challenge their computer for a speed test. Of course you’ll better sure if your computer is fast enough.

#47 Photoshop Trick: Getting Harder Clouds Contrast

2008-01-23T20:48:00.000+07:00

Played enough around with the Clouds filter? Sometimes you see that the clouds doesn’t look angry enough. To make the clouds more intense, hold down the Alt [Mac: Option] key, go under the Filter > Render menu, and before choosing Clouds. It will create darker and more intense clouds.

#46 Photoshop Trick: Selecting The Area For Your Pasted Image

2008-01-23T20:44:00.000+07:00

Whenever you paste an image into another document, Photoshop will usually place it on the center of the document. If don’t want to appear that way, you can make a selection in the area where you’d like the image to appear. Photoshop will center the pasted image in the selection.

#45 Photoshop Trick: Defringe Your Selection

2008-01-23T20:39:00.000+07:00

Whenever you create a collage, eventually you’ll add an image that has little white pixels around the edge of the object. That’s what we called "fringe". So how can we get rid of that?

Find your way to Layer > Matting > Defringe and try the default setting of 1 pixel and click OK. What this does is replace the edge pixels with a combination of the pixel colors in your object and the colors in the background. That usually does the trick. If it doesn’t, get the undo, and try to apply 2 or 3 pixels defringe.

#44 Photoshop Tips: Copying The Gradient Color Stops

2008-01-23T20:33:00.000+07:00

It’s wonderful to make my custom gradient colors, since the default styles sometimes don’t fit my heart content enough. And dealing with those color stops is one of my favorite part. I admit it. And I want to share this little trick with you.

If you need to duplicate on or more color stops, now here’s the trick. Once you’ve created one gradient Color Stop, you can make copies by hold Alt [Mac: Option] key and drag it. Keep hold the Alt [Mac: Option] key when dragging, and you can jump right over existing Stops. Sure you’ll gonna love these Color Stops play.

#43 Photoshop Trick: Maximizing The Move Tool Function

2008-01-23T20:20:00.000+07:00

The main function of Move tool is should be selelcting and moving. By default, the tool won’t automatically select the layer as you click in the document, instead there are two ways for you to do it: (1) click the layer in the Layers palette, and (2) right-click [Mac: hold Control + click] on any areas in the document and you’ll provided by a pop-up menu containing several layers which located exactly beneath the areas you clicked. Is there any other [simple] ways?

Yes, there are two more ways or you to select your layer even faster: (1) Check the “Automatically select layer” on the Option bar in Move tool mode, so you can select your layer with a single click, or (2) hold the Ctrl [Mac: Command] and click the object/layer in your document.

Another question: “how do I know that I have successfully select my layer? Of course I need to know what current layer is active.” Look at your canvas title, you’ll find the name of of your current active layer. Not sure enough? Put a stare at your Layers palette, naah.. there you go.

#42 Photoshop Trick: Let Photoshop Write The Code

2008-01-10T18:35:00.000+07:00

As Photoshop can tell you about the color’s hexa number, this stuff can also automatically write the code for you. More clever than I thought. Photoshop can extract the hexadecimal codes from an imageand paste them into your HTML code.

Switch to Eyedropper tool by pressing the letter "I" and right-click [Mac: Control + click] on a color within your image. A pop-up menu will appear where you can choose Copy Color as HTML. Now you can switch to your HTML editor and paste the code there.

#41: Merlin Lives! A Photoshop Easter Egg Mystery

2008-01-10T01:21:00.000+07:00

Easter Eggs are usually funny little messages hidden within an application and Photoshop has a few of its own. One of the lesser known Easter Eggs is "Merlin Lives". You can see this Easter Egg by going to the Paths palette, and hold the Alt [Mac: Option] key, and in the palettes drop down menu, choose Palette Options. Make sure you click and drag without releasing the mouse button or the menu will disappear as you release it.

A tiny floating palette will appear with a picture of Merlin and a button named "Begone", which closes the dialog. Whew... I’m wondering what else those engineers have beside this Merlin and that Dark Matter.

#40 Photoshop Tips: How To Change the Transparent Checkerboard Color

2008-01-10T01:18:00.000+07:00

At the very first time I was being introduced to Photoshop, all I gazed was that series of grey white boxes filling my brand new document canvas. Later I found that the grey checkerboard was to represent the transparent part of an object, rather than using flat white color. Interesting.

What makes me interested more is that we can change those checkerboard settings. Make it larger, smaller, or change the color sequences so it fit to our heart content. Go under "Edit > Preferences" menu and choose Transparency & Gamut from the upper-left drop down box. I’ve made a juicy orange checkerboard right there. What yours?

#39 Photoshop Quickies: Reset, Don’t Cancel

2008-01-10T01:14:00.000+07:00

Nobody’s perfect. So does your setting. What we’re gonna talk here is that time when you deal with those Photoshop dialog boxes: Levels, color balance, curves, etc. Since they’re visually adjusted by sliders and ticks, it’s so easy for us to change the settings as it would immediately previews the result in your document.

But sometimes your settings just went too far and you need to roll back to current settings. And I guess you will hit the cancel button and then [once again] opened the dialog box and restart the process, moving the sliders until you got the right value.

All my advice is keep those work with you, shift the slider, move the curves, but when you stumbled on unwanted result, don’t instantly hit the cancel. Press Alt [Mac: Option] on an opened dialog box and you’ll notice that Cancel will turn to Reset button. Now, you can start it all over again without closing your dialog box.

#38 Photoshop Quickies: Getting Back Your Background Layer

2008-01-08T18:06:00.000+07:00

Lost your Background layer? It hurts. If you suddenly find yourself staring at Layers palette and there’s no Background layer [chances are you accidentally converted your Background layer into a regular layer], here’s the tips how you can get that background layer back again.

Create a new blank layer and then scroll down to the Layer > Menu > Background From Layer menu, and Photoshop will take your new blank layer and create a solid white Background layer at the bottom of your layer stack.

#37 Photoshop Tips: Setting Up The Global Light Preferences

2008-01-08T18:04:00.001+07:00

You applied a drop shadow to an object on one layer, and later you applied a bevel on another layer but in the Bevel and Emboss dialog box, you notice that the position of your drop shadow just moved as well. This occur because Photoshop uses a feature called global light which might intended to help users to avoid doing the error in drawing light behavior. I surely will asked to somebody if I saw an image which have many shadows and casts to various directions. It’s like a silly failure.

It’s a great idea since all you need to do is move one shadow and all the other shadows on other layers would move to the exact same angle. But sometimes you don’t want to use this feature because you want to set the angle of your certain layer separately from the rest of your image. No worry, all you need to do is uncheck the Use Global Light box in the Layer style dialog box. It’s all done.

#36 Photoshop Tips: Locating The Free Transform Handles

2008-01-08T18:02:00.001+07:00

Here’s the story: you dragged an image from one document into another document but then you realize that the image you dragged is larger than the area of your original document. The problem arises when you try to resize-down the image by using the Free Transform. Naah, because your image is larger than your canvas size, you certainly can’t see the handles of the Free Transform. That’s the story and these are the solutions.

Press "F" for once and you’ll be displayed a large gray area around your document where now you can see and grab the handles of your Free transform tool. If after pressing "F" you can’t still the handles, then try to zoom out the document by pressing Ctrl+Num- [minus sign] or [Mac: Command+- [minus sign]] on your keyboard. There you go, I can see those handles around the image.

#35 Photoshop Tips: Turning Off the Photoshop Snap Feature

2008-01-08T17:59:00.000+07:00

This is what usually occur in default when you want to crop an image which one or more side of the crop is quite close to the edge of the document window. The cropping border tries to snap to it. This might also be happening when drawing large marquee selections as well.

Well, you don’t have to call somebody to get rid the behavior since you can do it yourself by pressing "Ctrl+Shift+;" [Mac: Command+Shift+;]. It’s the shortcut for turning off this snapping, include snap to guides, snap to guides, snap to rulers, etc. If you only want to turn off snapping to document bounds, you need to scroll down those View > Snap To > Document Bounds menu, and make sure you left it unchecked.

#34 Photoshop Tips: Keep the JPEG Images Quality

2008-01-08T17:47:00.001+07:00

JPEG is the most popular image format nowadays because it preserves the quality of an image while keep the file size from draining your disk space. But a useful tips is that you shouldn’t ignore when working JPEG images is don’t save them in JPEG for several times.

Don’t keep resaving images as JPEG’s, because each time you save an image as a JPEG, Photoshop recompress the file, trashing more data as it goes. Save the same image as a JPEG five or six times and you might tend to dump them into the recycle bin.

When you open the original JPEG and you think you need to edit it more in the future, better to save them in PSD or TIF. Both recent formats keep the pixel data not get dumped to East River.

#33 Photoshop Tips: Rendering Text In Two Clicks

2008-01-08T07:21:00.000+07:00

If you want to convert your type layer into an image layer, you can save some time by simply right-click [Mac: Control+click] directly to the corresponding layer that appears in the Layers palette. Choose "Rasterize Layer" from the pop up menu will and your Type will instantly rendered.

#32 Photoshop Trick: Placing Image Inside Text

2008-01-08T07:18:00.000+07:00

This is one of all Photoshop tricks I loved the most: putting my images inside text. It gives me a sense of movie around my design. Simply, the technique is more like masking image with text shape, but right now we’re gonna talk about the "Group" command. Here’s how you can do it.

At first, you should set your foreground color to black by pressing "D". Create your text with Type tool and stop, don’t render them because you can still do this trick process while they’re still in text mode.

Next is putting your image position to your text. Make sure the image layer is right above the type layer by looking inside the Layers palette; if it’s not, drag it immediately. Press "Ctrl+G" [Mac: Command+G] and have a look. It’s already there. Masked into your text. And you can still alter both position by using Move tool.

#31 Photoshop Trick: Switch to Type Tools and Select Text Simultaneously

2008-01-08T07:12:00.000+07:00

Again, it’s the power of double-click. If you want to switch to Type tools and at the same time select all text on the corresponding layer, double-click directly on the "T" icon in the Layers palette, next to the Type layer you want to edit. Your tool will instantly turn to Type tool and the text will be highlighted at once.

#30 Photoshop Tips: Converting Text to Path or Selection

2008-01-08T07:00:00.000+07:00

Text is certain object in Photoshop that you can modify its values such as color, warping, etc. But, sometimes you need to apply some filters to the type which is impossible to do on Type mode. Normally you can rasterize the Type layer, but today you want to edit them on the different layer so you’re not gonna ruin the original text. The choices are making them into paths or selections and modify them on a new layer.

If you want to convert your Type into paths, Photoshop provide your needs under the Layer > Type > Create Work Path menu. This is a lot simpler than trace the type itself, which I assume will costs you more time and effort. Before you do this, make sure you have copy the original Type layers by dragging it to the New Layers icon in the Layers palette.

To make selection based on the Type shape, simply hold the "Ctrl" [Mac: Command] and click on the Type layer in the Layers palette. Whoosh! Look at those marching ants around your type. A precise selection, isn’t it?

#29 Photoshop Trick: Palettes, Aahh... Kill Them!

2008-01-07T07:19:00.000+07:00

Next is another way to maximize and cleanup your workspace in Photoshop. I sometimes want to have all of those layers begone just for a while. Just to ease my mind and my eyes. All I have to do is say "Begone!" [while pressing the "Tab" key] and suddenly all the palettes disappear.

I feel like I’m Merlin right now as I hit that "Tab" key once again, those palettes are coming back to view. What a mighty magician I am...

#28 Photoshop Trick: Growing Your Selections

2008-01-07T07:18:00.000+07:00

If you have a selection and want to make it larger, you can tell Photoshop to do it for you. The keyword is “Grow”, you can find it under the "Select" menu. Your selection will expand to the next set of pixels based on the Tolerance setting in the Magic Wand tool. The Higher the tolerance, the more will grow.

#27 Photoshop Trick: Trash Those Layers Without Mercy

2008-01-07T07:16:00.000+07:00

Working on hundred layers might leave you to fatigue when you need to dump fifty of them out of the canvas. It must be a couple of work since you need to click the trash icon and click the "Yes" button on the warning dialog. Wanna cut the dialog warning? Hold Alt [Mac: Option] key while clicking on the trash icon. You shall never see them again.

#26 Photoshop Tips: How To Use One Key To Rotate Through Tools

2008-01-07T07:14:00.000+07:00

I calling you back in the old days where the tools weren’t so many as now. The best way to rotate through various tools is pressing the shortcut letter to corresponding tool until they made its way to the Toolbox. For instance you’ll only press "P" over and over to gain the Pen tool. But, since Photoshop 5.0 released, more tools did come, and users by default need to press Shift to rotate through the tools.

It’s default, means you can override the settings and put yourself back to the old days. Simply go to the “Edit > Preferences” menu. Choose the General Preferences. In the dialog, uncheck the box for "Use Shift Key for Tool Switch" and you’re done.

#25 Photoshop Tips: I’m Calling It Faux Bold Because It’s Fake Bold

2008-01-07T07:07:00.000+07:00

So I guess you’re a designer and have a huge pack of ideas to explore new things and put them into your design. Text is one of your design elements and rather than using that Arial text-book font for your design, you end up on those fancy fonts. You put the font as the body text, thus you need some of the text to bold or italic. Unfortunately, you don’t meet the option to make the text bold or italic which usually found beside the font type drop-down box.

Let me tell you, Photoshop had done this favor for you. You want it bold, you got it bold. These features are called Faux bold/ Faux italic. I suggest you to read it as “Faw” since it derived from French language which means “fake, imitation”.

Make selection on any of your type with any fonts, and then apply those "Faux" and they’ll be on their way. No hard efforts.

#24: Adding, Subtracting, Intersecting the Active Selection: Fast

2008-01-06T12:36:00.000+07:00

Selection. It’s the keyword that will occupy most of your activity when you’re working on Photoshop. Since Photoshop is the bitmap based image editor, the exact things you need to work with are those bunch of bitmaps. A group of digital boxes each contains value of certain color which gathered and forms the entire of your smile picture.

If you tend to make operation on the overall image, selection importance hasn’t come to its way. But if you want to change only certain part of your picture [i.e.: alter your lips or eyes color], then selection is the creature which you’re gonna deal with.

In every case of my Photoshop experience, I found out that I should make more than one selection to convince me that the selection has put itself on the right place. It helps me to avoid unwanted cropped hair or unusual finger shapes. Usually I put my trust to do the first selection on Magnetic lasso tool, and let the rest done with Polygonal lasso tool. And here’s how I do it fast.

Look at the Option bar when you activate the Lasso tool. You’ll find the four icons, each represents the tools habit: new, add, subtract, and intersect. Normally, you can click on it manually but since you have a keyboard on your computer, we’re gonna forget it for a while. Press and hold “Shift” to add selection, "Alt" [Mac: Option] to subtract, and "Shift+Alt" [Mac: Shift+Option] to intersect.

Maybe it’s quite hard for you which key to add, subtract, or intersect. Well, fortunately the cursor will give you a hint at this. When you press the "Shift" you’ll see the plus sign at the top right of the cursor. That means you’re gonna add some selection. This works for every key you press. And don’t forget to hold the space bar whenever you need to navigate while doing selection. It helps me a lot.

#23: I’m Done With the Type and I Need to Switch Tools

2008-01-05T06:37:00.000+07:00

As we know in the previous type, we can jump to another tool by pressing a single key on the keyboard. Unfortunately, when we press “V”, the cursor tend to type “V” letter in the text rather than switch to Move tool. It’s a kind of crazy, isn’t it?

An action is needed to tell Photoshop that you’re done with the type. You can click the check icon at the far right of the Options bar, or press the Enter [Mac: return] key on your numpad, or switch tools by clicking on it manually in the Toolbox. Any of these action will tell Photoshop that you’re done with the type, and now you can switch tools by using single-key shortcuts.
Switching like the pro.

#22: Do You Need Your Type Short or Tall?

2008-01-05T06:35:00.000+07:00

Words become more meaningful as they’re shaped to its specific form. For example, if I type the word “tall” I’d rather to make it stretched vertically rather than horizontally. Normally I can make it tall by using horizontal and vertical scaling through the Character palette.

But, now I can do it visually rather numerically. Set the type layer then switch to Move tool. Press “Ctrl+T” [Mac: Command+T] to bring up the Free Transform bounding box. To make it taller, drag the upper handle upward. That easy.

#21: I Need A Kerning, Tracking, and Leading Control, but Not With That Palette

2008-01-05T06:34:00.000+07:00

Kerning is the space between individual characters, and tracking is the space between a group of words or letters. Leading is the space between lines of your text [some of us called it line-height]. Normally you can control and change the value in the Character palette, but when it comes for you to control visually, this handy trick is a valuable thing.

First, highlight your text by using Type tool, and use the “Alt” [Mac: Option] and the arrow key to operate them. “Alt+right arrow” [Mac: Option+right arrow] adds more space between the characters, while “Alt+left arrow” [Mac: Option+left arrow] will tighten them.

#20: Use the Move tool to Edit Text Properties, Can I?

2008-01-05T06:32:00.000+07:00

No argue. I can tell you that you’re not always need Type tool to edit text properties. With your current Move tool, you can do any changes on your text.

Go under “Window > Show Character” menu, then click on your type layer [in the Layers palette]. The popped out Character palette will shows you the entire properties for the selected type layer. You can now freely set the font type and size, tracking, kerning, color, etc.

And now you know that Move tool isn’t always for moving objects.

#19: Need to Cut the File Size? Make It Transparent!

2008-01-05T06:30:00.000+07:00

Working on images for web might give you thinks twice harder, since you need to keep the file size as low as possible while enhance the quality of your image. GIF file is the right format for you in this case. There’s even more chance for you to reduce the file size.

Make transparent an area on your image will cut the size more than just a half. When you’re putting a logo over a white background and make the white area around the logo transparent, your file size will significantly smaller because the transparent area are virtually ignored when determining the file size.

You can’t count something, when that something doesn’t exist, can you?

#18 Photoshop Tips: The Text’s Color is All You Need To See, isn’t It?

2008-01-05T06:28:00.001+07:00

How do you change your text color? Highlight it and choose colors from the palette, isn’t it? Yes, but have you noticed that while your text highlighted, the text color isn’t supposed to be. For example, when you highlighted blue text, it turns into yellow on black background.

Introducing the “Hide Extras” shortcut for your comfort. Press “Ctrl+H” [Mac: Command+H] after you highlight your type, and the black highlight will disappear and bring your text color to the way it was. That simple.

#17 Photoshop Tips: Switch the Tools, but Don’t Switch It

2008-01-05T06:26:00.000+07:00

Want to save more of your time while formatting your type? Here you go. Once you type your text, if you need to move it somewhere, you don’t have to switch the Text tool to Move tool. “Then, how do I move it ?”, you asked.

Simply move your cursor away from the text, and the pointer will immediately change to the Move tool. You can now click-and-drag it anywhere you want. Need to edit your type again? Move the cursor near the type and it will come back to the vertical Type tool.

#16 Photoshop Features: Dark Matter, Have You Ever Seen It?

2008-01-05T06:22:00.000+07:00

We all familiar with the colorful feather on the splashing startup screen of Photoshop. Go under Help > About Photoshop menu and you’ll meet the feather once again with rolling text of acknowledgements within. But have you ever curious that they might hid another version of Photoshop startup screen?

Well, now the untold mystery is no longer hidden. Go check again on Help menu, but.. [here I told you] before you click on the About Photoshop menu, please hold down the Ctrl [Mac: Command]. Aahh... there goes the Dark Matter thing... It’s the beta version of Photoshop CS startup screen. The dark is rising. A kind of spooky I guess.

What do you think?

#15 Photoshop Tips: Navigate Document with the Navigator

2008-01-05T06:20:00.000+07:00

You can maximize the function of every instrument in Photoshop to enhance your work performance. For that some time, you might see the navigator palette as only an image box which views the entire canvas that you’re working on. But wait there are more to do with this stuff.

Remember when you zoom to your image, you’ll see a red box floating somewhere inside the navigator. It’s the indicator to exact location of your current view in your canvas from the entire image. Put your pointer some place on the red box, and you’ll find the pointer turn to hand-shaped tool. As you drag the hand, the image in your canvas will follow immediately. Now, why don’t you press the Ctrl [Mac: Command] from this point? Surely, you’ll meet the chance to zoom as much as you like.

Finally, the navigator is for navigation, isn’t it?

#14Photoshop Trick: When Your Screen Gone Wild, Use the Spacebar!

2008-01-05T06:14:00.000+07:00

Working on a detail image and making selection by using lasso tools would be a tough work to do. You usually zoom the image, make a start point click, trace and apply ticks on some corners. But when your pointer reaches the edge of the canvas, suddenly the image scrolls too far. It must be hard times since you can’t move pointer to scroll bar and bring back your view to the last check-point. The view becomes ‘wild’ as you move the pointer around the canvas. So how will you tame this ‘wild-buffalo’ lasso tool and get your job done with a fast and furious trick?

The answer lies on the long bar on your keyboard, which usually called: space-bar. This key is a total solution for most navigating problems which occurs in Photoshop. Hold the space-bar and your pointer will instantly turn into the hand-shaped tool that will help you grab the view and move it in any direction. Release the key and the pointer will return to the previous active tool; in this case the lasso tool.

Here’s another handy trick. While you hold the space-bar, press Ctrl [Mac: Command] at the same time, and the pointer will turn to “zoom in” tool that lets you enlarge the view of your image. Press Alt [Mac: Option] you will find the “zoom out” tool. What a trick, huh?

Doing A Hair Selection With Ease

2008-01-02T21:15:00.001+07:00

One day, you’ve been asked with my friend to take his photograph. He needs to submit his photo for the mid-exam so you should extract the result and place it into the new background. The process sounds easy but unfortunately it was not, since he has a jagged and wispy hair that is hard to select with your Photoshop.

But there’s always a technique to do the job. You can manually select the image area, but before you do that, you better separate the image between the head and the body. Since hair selection is the hardest part, you can easily select the body part and left the head for the main task. By separating the head, it also means that you are working on less area which requires less resource from your machine.

After separating the head section and put it on a new separated layer, you can start using the help of channel palette. I usually work within the RGB color mode and choose the green channel since it contains the contrast value of an image. The shortcut to load from channel is by holding the Ctrl [Mac: Command] key and clicking on the corresponding channel. You should have a more detailed hair selection by now and erase the outer part of your selection.

Using the Layer Blending modes is the next step to enhance your selection quality. You can have those blending modes right at the top of your layer palette. I usually choose the screen mode to do the work and the image will automatically blended with the new background. But if try to experiment with another mode, maybe you’ll find a more interesting result.

The last key is defringing your selection to wipe those white pixels around your selection. I think you have a better result for your hair selection right now.

By the way, you can also have experiment with any software instead of Adobe Photoshop, like Fluid Mask 3. It’s the professional’s choice for masking jobs, and could run both as a standalone application and a plu-in to Adobe Photoshop. While asking about how it works, why don’t you try it yourself by downloading it’s free trial. It’s free, at least for 14 days.

#13 Photoshop Trick: Let It Tells You What The Hexa Number of Your Color

2008-01-02T17:57:00.000+07:00

You are working on some CSS styles of your sites or maybe want to give another touch to your desktop view. You need to give a gold accent to your text, but unfortunately, your text editor don’t bring any clue about the color you want to use. I know it’s not a WYSIWIG platform so you must look for the hexa-number for your color.

Photoshop can show you details about the value of a color of your choice, right on its dialog box. You’’ll provided by ranges of value from RGB, Lab color, CMYK, HSB, and ahaa! Those six-digits hexa-number are filled under the RGB value.

#12 Photoshop Tips: It’s Time to Back to Nature; Reset Your Palettes

2008-01-02T17:47:00.000+07:00

It’s all comes to good times when you’re working on a good creative mood. Unnoticed, you have constantly moving your palettes all around until you realize that they’re messing up your workspace. Bring them back to its place manually? You don’t think so since it would spend you another minute arranging the palette.

Need to do it fast? Go under the Window menu and choose Reset Palette Locations and those littering palettes will automatically arranged on their exact position just like the first time you install Photoshop.

#11 Photoshop Trick: Snap the Palettes to Order

2008-01-02T17:43:00.000+07:00

As Photoshop being part of your life, somehow you want to have it look ordered and clean layout to cherish your world during the worktime. To do so, simply hold the Shift key and give a click on the topmost bar of your palette and they will snap immediately to the closest edge. Top, bottom, left, or right. How nice isn’t it?

#10 Photoshop Trick: Save More Space, Give Your Toolbox the Smallest Size

2008-01-02T17:39:00.000+07:00

So you think that your left-side toolbox is taking up more space than you need. But closing it is not a good option because you feel you need to switch tools a few seconds later. Rather than disable the toolbox, you only need to make double-click on the very top of it, and tadaa...

The toolbox isn’t disappearing but left a little tab. Quick enough for you to discover. Does that double-click on the tab again, and your toolbox will come back as the way it was.

#9 Photoshop Trick: Remember the Tools by the Letter

2008-01-02T17:36:00.001+07:00

I’m calling out at your childhood time when you used to call some of your mates with their first alphabet of their name. Didn’t you CJ? Fortunately, Photoshop did this to their feature, especially the tools.

You’ll find connections between the key and its corresponding tools like
L for “Lasso Tool”
T for “Type Tool”
M for “Marquee selection Tool”
P for “Pen Tool”
V for “Move Tool”
S for “Clone Stamp Tool”
C for “Crop Tool”

So has it called for you to maximize your keyboard utility?

#8 Photoshop Trick: Cut Those Unwanted Brushes

2008-01-02T17:34:00.000+07:00

There’s a something that might bother you when staring at those brushes variance inside the palette. Some of them just have size difference between others. A hard-rounded 8px side-by-side with hard-rounded 15px.

Since you understand how to increase and decrease the size of your brushes quickly from your keyboard, you think it’s quite necessary to get rid some of identical brushes from the palette. The first way to do that is by right-clicking the corresponding brush and selects the Delete Brush option.

The quicker tips: hold down the Alt [Mac: Option] key and the cursor will instantly into a scissor shaped tool. Click to your unwanted brushes, and they’ll get rid just in seconds.

#7 Photoshop Trick: Navigate the Brush Palette Like A Pro

2008-01-02T17:31:00.000+07:00

Still talking about that useful brush palette where you can handle anything on your drawing tool, you can use the arrow up, down, left, right to navigate around the brushes. When the brush palette dismissed, you can still navigate those brushes from your keyboard. Hmm, smells like a pro. Yup!

Press the comma and period key to switch backward and forward between different brushes. Wanna do the leap? Press Shift+comma to jump to the first brush, and Shift+period to jump to the last one. I think it’s just so easy to be a pro.

#6 Photoshop Tips: Finer Grid on your Curves Dialog Box

2008-01-02T17:19:00.000+07:00

As you open the Photoshop Curves dialog, the default state of its grid is set to 4 x 4 boxes. For default it seems you don't have more accuracy for what you gonna do. If you need a finer grid, then all you need is do the Alt+click [Mac: Option+click]on the grids. The grid density will increase up to 10 x 10 boxes. Click again and it will turn to its default grids.

#5 Photoshop Tips: Find, Load, and Save Your Brushes in an Instant

2008-01-02T17:05:00.000+07:00

While you’re working on brush tool, you can switch your brush type by using your right-click to pop out the brush palette directly under your cursor. Choose a brush and it will disappear automatically.

The ultimate key which will brought you a lot of stuff is that little triangle on the top right of the palette. Click and you’ll be on your way to save, load, delete, modify, and replace the brushes.

#4 Photoshop Quickies: Increase Your Brushes Instantly, Use the Keyboard

2008-01-02T06:08:00.000+07:00

How many times you spend yourself moving the slider on the brush palette in order to increase or decrease your brush size. Your keyboard will provide you a lot of help in this case. Pressing the right bracket key (]) will increase the brush size in 10-pixel increments. The left bracket key ([) will do the reverse. Once your brush goes over 100 pixels in size, the increments then moves every 25 pixels. If you go over 200 pixels it moves in 50-pixel increments.

#3 Photoshop Trick: Straighten Your Scanned Images in Seconds

2008-01-02T06:02:00.000+07:00

You know you can’t always put you photos or documents straight fully on the flatbed scanner. You also know you can always fix them in Photoshop by using the free transform tool, and then rotate them manually. But believe me, there’s other way even faster.

Simply you should get the measure tool [it should be look like a ruler] which is located on the eyedropper fly out menu in the toolbox. Drag a line which you consider as the horizontal line, then go under the Edit > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary menu. You’ll be provided with an angle dialogue box which already filled with certain number. Don’t change them, just hit OK. Your images will be straightened already.

#2: Creating New Document with Exact Properties from Opened Canvas

2008-01-02T05:52:00.000+07:00

Now here’s the scene. You are working on your girlfriend’s photo, making selections, smoothing edges, and applying filters. But it’s too risky for you to apply it on the original document, since you have lack of memory of what you’ve done to your images, and accidentally save them along with unwanted changes. So you tend to make a new document with the same size and resolution as your original image.

You do the best try with scrolling the Image > Image Size which will bring you to a dialogue box contains information about the image’s width, height, and resolution. You copy those numbers to notepad [or write them down on a paper] in case you have a lack of memory indeed. The next thing you do is go to the File > New menu, and fill the numbers to the boxes. It’s done, but you still have that question mark which asks “Is there anyway to do that faster?”

Well, the next tip is a time saving technique which will boost you Photoshop performance.

Here we go. The right thing for you to do is DON’T open the Image > Image Size menu, because you really DON’T have to. Just head straight to the File > New menu. When the new dialogue box opened, switch your mouse-pointer to Window menu, and look to the bottom of the menu where you will see lists of opened images. Click to one of those files and see what happened. Photoshop had just done it for you! The new dialog box are already filled with exact size and resolution. Just as what you want.

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2008-01-01T23:13:00.001+07:00

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#1: Two Clicks Will Open Your Image Even Faster

2008-01-01T12:21:00.000+07:00

If you’re a newbie to Photoshop stuffs, maybe this little dirty trick will help your performance to a more professional one. At least, you look like Photoshop professionals. Some time you want to open your last project on a specific folder. Rather than digging the File > Open menus, you can give two clicks on any area on Photoshop’s background [here enlightened with orange areas], and the ordinary open dialog box is popping out to your view. Sure it would saves you one second faster.