15 Helpful Photoshop Tips

By David Peters

1. "Paint away" color with the Paint Brush in selected areas to go from color to black and white in a color image to make a portion of the image stand out. Change the blend mode to Color in the Paint Brush options palette to paint in the black and white sections.

2. Press the Shift to add more to the selection, or press the Alt to take away from the selection when using your magic wand tool.

3) Photoshop's image gallery will build a webpage of thumbnailed images for you should you have a large number of images to display. To do this follow steps: FILE > Automate > Web Images Gallery

4. Double click on the 'T' on a Type layer in the Layers Palette to automatically select the entire text layer.

There are at least two ways to switch between the different measurement units that Photoshop displays.

5. One is to change them in your Preferences by going to the Photoshop menu under Preferences and choosing Units & Rulers (in Photoshop 7 under Mac OS 9, Preferences is found under the Edit menu). From here you can change the ruler units and click OK.

6) The second way is to open the Info Palette (go to the Window menu and choose Info) and click on the small triangle next to the cross in the lower left quadrant to pull up a menu that will allow you to change units.

7. To cycle through different screen modes, simply press the F key

8) You can select just the pixels without the transparency area of the layer by holding the Cmd/Ctrl key and clicking the mouse on that layer in the Layers palette.

9) If you have a particular layer style that you use often you can have that style saved to be displayed in your layers palette. In the Blending Options, find "Save Style" located just under OK and Cancel. Name your style, save it and now notice how it will be found in the Styles palette. One note however, the style must be in its own layer.

10. From time to time when you combine multiple images, there can be a bit of fringe around the edges of the composite images. Hide this with steps: Layers > Matting > Defringe. At the dialogue box, pick the default setting; should that not work, undo it, and try Defringe again at a setting of 2.

11. If you have too many layers, simply select the right layer by using the move tool ( V ) Right click the mouse over the layer and a drop down list will come up.

On the other hand, you can allocate your layers into layer sets. On the bottom of your layers palette, click the 'create new layers set' (looks like a folder), name the new layer set, and just drag the layers you like in that set. Highlight the set right click and choose copy to copy your sets with ease.

12) Press Shift-Command-M (Mac)/ Shift-Control-M (PC) to toggle between Photoshop and ImageReady.

13. To access the Save for Web dialogue quickly, press Shift-Command-Option-S (Mac)/ Shift-Control-Alt-S (PC).

14. If you want to duplicate your current layer, press Cmd/Ctrl J.

15) To bring up the Extract dialogue box, press Command-Option-X (Mac)/ Control-Alt-X (PC). Within the Extract dialogue box, switch to the Extract Edge Highlighter tool by pressing the letter "b.", the Fill tool by pressing the letter "k.", and change the Edge Highlighter's brush size by holding the ] key to make it larger and the [ to make it smaller.

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