Photoshop is a heck of an amazing software. You can do all kinds of
things with images and go as far as your imagination can take you. Once
you are past the beginner level
and understand what the various options are for and how they work, then
you are ready for Photoshop tips and tricks like the ones that are the
topic of this 2 part article.
They will help
you in getting things done quickly, save you a lot of headache and steps
and overall inflate your Photoshop-fu! So here we go:
Change Brush Size On The Fly
If you are even the slightest bit serious about Photoshop or you have
used the Brush tool a couple of times, this single tip is worth at least
a dozen alone. While you are using the brush tool you do not have to go
back to the options palette to change the brush size or softness. Left
bracket key ‘[' decreases the brush size and Right bracket key ']‘ increases the brush size. Similarly Shift + [ decrease hardness (makes the brush soft) and Shift + ] increases the hardness of the brush.
Create Guides Easily
Guides can help you align objects in your composition. You can quickly
create guides using rulers that appear at the top and the side of the
document window. Click on the ruler and drag to create a guide. Release
the mouse button where you want to create the guide. Once created you
can quickly show/hide guides using Ctrl + ;
Don’t Cancel Just Reset
Photoshop can be pretty tough to get and even harder to master.
Moreover, the nature of work dictates that you must experiment and
things don’t always go the way you anticipate while experimentation. So
if you are inside curves, or hue saturation or perhaps levels and you
make a series of adjustments that didn’t turn out the way you wanted,
you would want to start over again.
But wait don’t hit cancel just yet. Instead
hold down the Alt key
and see how the cancel button changes to Reset. Now click reset and the
adjustments you made will be undone while sparing you the round trip to
open the same dialog again.
Scrub The Input Boxes
There are a lot of controls in Photoshop that let you enter a value
using the keyboard. Font size, brush size, opacity and who knows how
many others. Well a peculiar thing about these input boxes is that you
can increase or decrease the value that’s in them by just scrubbing with
the mouse pointer. As you move close to any such control the mouse
pointer changes to something like the one shown above. Now just click
and drag in the direction you want to change the value. Generally
dragging towards the right side increases the value and towards left
side decreases the value.
Adjust Opacity Quickly
The
opacity controls can be manipulated even faster! Just hit a number from
0-9 and opacity will be adjusted in increments of 10. This means that 1
would set the opacity to 10%, 7 will set it to 70% and 0 will set it to
100%. If you are looking for a definite value say 57% you can quickly
type 5 followed by 7 to set the opacity to 57%. The trick works with
layer opacity as well as for any tool that has an opacity setting.
Change Intensity Of Filters Without Dialog Boxes
Say
you just applied the Unsharpen Mask filter to sharpen your photo. If
you find you went a bit too far you can take back some of it by using
Shift + Ctrl + F. If you would like to intensify the effect further you can use
Ctrl + F
to do so. Remember these would work just after you have applied the
filter. If you performed other operations after applying the filter,
these might not work as expected.
Unlock Background Layer
You
might have noticed that the background layer has a little lock icon
besides it. This indicates that the layer is locked. You can quickly
unlock the background layer by
double clicking on it, or
Alt + clicking on the background layer or simply catch hold of the lock and drag it to the bin at the bottom of the layers palette.
Duplicate A Layer
Duplicating a layer can be very useful when saving selections or when
you are unsure about the sequence of adjustments that you will be
making. You can
drag any layer onto the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to duplicate the layer or you can select the layer and press
Ctrl + J.
Duplicate Layer Styles
More often than not, you want to apply the same layer styles to two or
more layers. You can remember the settings or trust your eye and go on
applying layer styles one by one or you can
hold down the Alt key, click and drag the “fx” icon onto the layer you want to duplicate the layer style on and you are done!
Multiple Undo(s)
So what is the universal shortcut for Undo? Ctrl + Z. Yeah right,
and you would expect that hitting Ctrl + Z multiple times would take you
back interatively. Only it works a little different in Photoshop. Ctrl +
Z toggles between undo(ing) and redo(ing) the most recent operation. So
if you want multiple undo(es) use
Ctrl + Alt + Z. Similarly for multiple redo(s) you can use
Shift + Ctrl + Z
Oh,
I remember a few more. However, let’s just save them for another time
in part two of our series. Meanwhile let us know if you have any
Photoshop tips & tricks of your own!
