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Photoshop Tips & Tricks — Variety Pack Volume 3
Here is a collection of useful tips and tricks to improve your Photoshop skills.
The Amazing File Browser
Photoshop CS has an excellent file browser built into the application. You can access it from the File menu or by pressing Apple(Cmd)-Shift-O. It can do all a regular functions Finder does and much more.
Many don't realize that you can actually delete/rename and move images, create/delete folders, etc. in this mini application with the benefit of having really big preview icons for your images to help your navigation.
But don't you miss the old times, when you could mark the transparencies on your lightbox and easily arrange them for a selection?
Well, in file browser you still can do that. You can annotate and than sort your images by enabling Show Rank under the View Menu. Just under the images you will have a Rank field that can be used to annotate your images. Then, you can just sort the images by rank if you select the Sort menu and select Rank. Very powerful if you have to sort through hundreds of images.
Finding The Correct Layer Blending Mode
Most of the time when I'm trying to find a specific desired effect I would go through several layer blending modes.
This can mean a lot of clicking if done from the tiny drop down menu. I would have to focus to the menu to remember where I was.
The fastest and most convenient way to cycle through all the options without touching the drop down menu is by pressing Shift-Alt and + or -. To instantly jump back to normal I'd press Shift-Alt-N (Shift-Option-N). This way I can focus on the image and pay no attention to the drop down menu.
Radial Blur Center Adjustment
Radial blur is a great tool in Photoshop to dramatize speed, but what if your subject matter is not in the center of your image? If you apply the radial blur filter the speed lines will be incorrect (left image).
You may have noticed the little window in the Radial blur options panel, which demonstrates the type and amount of Radial Blur.
You may however never tried to click and drag the center of the effect in this window.
Just today a colleague of mine showed this feature to me, so I thought I'll share it with you
Shift Drag A Layer
In Photoshop you can drag a layer from one document's layer palette to another document window. However it will land in an accidental position. If you hold shift while dragging it will do two different things depending on the document size.
If the source and target document sizes are the same shift dragging will make sure your new layer in the target document is positioned in the same place as it was in the source. See the window in the middle as an example for dragging the Fleur De Lis symbol.
If the source and target document sizes are different the same operation will make your new layer positioned right in the middle of your target document. The right window demonstrates it.
Quick Layer Effect Duplication
We already talked about how to copy sets of layer effects from one layer to several other layers.
But, what if you want to copy just one carefully composed layer effect to another layer without affecting the existing layer effects on the source (Layer 1 copy) or target layers (Layer 1)?
Simply drag the layer effect name from the source layer to just under the target layer.
The effect of this operation is not moving the layer effect as dragging without Alt (Option) would suggest, but instead it creates a copy.
Switch Horizontal And Vertical Guides
We've talked about how to make guides snap. Here is another quick bit to remember about guides. When you drag a guide and want to change it from horizontal to vertical or vice versa you can press the Option key (Windows= Start/Alt Option) to alternate between them.
Expand Canvas With The Crop Tool
Hold the Command key to prevent the Crop tool from snapping to the edge of your document.
Turn on full screen mode (by typing "F") and then pull the cropping rectangle beyond the edge of your image to add space to your document (it will be filled with the current background color).
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Adjusting Exposure in Adobe Camera Raw CS3
Photoshop CS3 Tutorial High Dynamic Range
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