Post your photoshop tricks

Ctrl left click to select whatever layer your cursor is directly over.

Right click should simply bring up a dialogue of all the layers directly under your cursor. Select the layer you are trying to target if it's underneath another layer.

The pasteboard is by default grey. If you choose a colour and then select the paint bucket and ctrl left click you can change it to any colour you like. Or you can right click it to bring up a dialogue to change it as well.

Styles are an incredible time saver. Apply a series of effects to an object, then choose new style, and save that package of effects to apply to other objects (like the multiple text rows talked about earlier).

Use gradient overlays, repeated background patterns and other time savers instead of manually creating these effects by hand. Also makes editing a breeze.
 


dchuk said:
or, select the move tool (v on the keyboard) and deselect auto-select. Then, whenever you want to select a layer in the work area, hold ctrl and click the layer.

That tip right there has saved me probably months in design time collectively
Click to expand...

holy shittt!!!
 
Nice fellas, keep the tips coming...

Great idea for a thread btw, much easier to read rather than boring PS sites +rep
 
hold shift as you are pressing a tool's keyboard shortcut to rotate through the different versions of that tool. For example, hold shift and press I, you can flip through the eyedropper, the ruler, etc.

press D to reset the color palette to black and white. Press X to flip the active and background color in the palette.

Don't use the eraser tool anymore, it's rarely the right thing to do. Instead, select a layer you want to erase parts of, click "add layer mask" (square with circle in it at bottom of layers panel) and then use a black or white brush to erase and add to the layer. You can also use grays to do some cool color fading shit.

Hold ctrl and click the thumbnail next to the layer's name in the layer panel and it selects all non-transparent elements of that layer. (combine this with the top one and you can do some good masking shit...for instance, get a dirt image, type text on top, ctrl click the text layer, then click the dirt layer and click add layer mask. Boom, you have dirt text)

I'll be here all week
 
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- Pen tool FTW, get ready to learn it or close ps immediately
- Create your own keyboard layouts (ex. F1 -> copy selection to new layer, F2 -> create new layer etc.)
- While using the brush tool hit ALT to use the eyedroper and select any color
- Hit ALT key while using the move tool to duplicate the actual layer
- CTRL+J creates new layer out of your selection

Get my colors:

colors.jpg


Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?cnwnzndzyqm
 
Here's an old one of mine that people tend to love: Building your packaging/boxes/dvd cases etc. basics.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsamSEiwkm0"]YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.[/ame]
 
I'll kick in a few.

To deselect text you can also click any layer in the layers pallette.

Shift + < = set brush to 1 pixel 100% hardness.

Command + shit + u = desaturate

command + ; = hide/show guides command + ' = show/hide grid

drag the corner of the ruler to any point on your image to set that point to 0,0 on the ruler. Double click corner to reset.

pretty basic, but command + t = transform, rotates, scale (shift for proportional).

creating straight selections with lasso. Not a lot of people I know are aware of the adding/subtracting of this. Option-click, then release mouse button with lasso to select with straight lines. You can use the normal lasso to draw selection, then press the option key when you want a straight segment. To add to a selection using straight lines hold down shift, then click, then click, press option, release mouse then move mouse. Subtracting from a selection using straight lines like this hold down option key, left click, release and then press option key, release mouse button, now you can deselect using straight lines.

right-click ruler to change units, i.e. inches to pixels, etc.

To straighten a crooked photo, select the ruler tool, drag it along your horizon, a light pole or whatever should be straight. Try to use as long of a line as you can. Now, go to image menu and select rotate, arbitrary. You now have a straight photo.

Sharpening, you can often get better results if you switch to LAB mode and sharpen the lightness channel, then switch back.

Use image duplicate if you want to work on an image and have an original to look at for reference.

If your working on a photo and need to tweak curve/levels/etc settings apply them as a layer by using the day/night icon at the bottom of the layers palette, you can go back and adjust them at any time.

If you have a photo with under-exposed areas create a layer above the photo, use a soft white brush and paint over the underexposed areas, then set the layer mode to lighten, soft light, etc and adjust the opacity. Quick and dirty method, duplicate layer, desaturate, invert, change mode to lighten and reduce opacity.

Never sharpen until you are ready to save the file at the finished size.

Save for web makes smaller jpegs than save as jpeg, but you will lose EXIF data if your file has it.

Party on.
 
a lot of times when im designing for webpages, I will print screen as I said, then edit the image and then crop it.

many times I will need to know the exact size of the image in photoshop so I can immediately make a div with a width and height exactly the same.

so go to window > info, then whenever you need to know the dimensions of an image youre working on hit Ctrl+A and look in the info palette and you will see px dimensions. a lot easier than trying to right click and view properties to see the dimensions

IE right now im converting a PSD into wordpress, and i constantly need to know the margins-padding, width of divs, etc. all i do is use marquee tool to drag it in PS, check dimensions, and put it right in CSS file.

if your 'info' tab is in inches, go to preferences>units and changes inches to px
 
I recently learned a pretty cool trick, not necessarily relevant to photoshop but whatever.

Basically you highlight some text, hold ctrl+c then go into photoshop and hold ctrl+v.

Shits saved me so much time.
 
I didn't read everyone's responses, so I'm likely repeating...

- Learn all the keyboard shortcuts you can, especially for the stuff that you do all the time.

- Use and reuse layer styles (paste layer style) as much as possible. When I'm doing layout, almost everything is in a layer style - fills, gradients etc etc. That makes doing multiple color schemes easy as fuck. Only thing I don't use layer styles for is drop shadows, but thats just because I think I can get a better result with filling, blur and brushes.
 
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