Jan 04
Quick Photoshop tips
2005 at 06.58 am posted by Veerle Pieters
Sometimes small tips can make a difference and make life of a designer easier. Here are some of my (frequently used) Photoshop tips:
Selecting a color from anywhere
Select the Eyedropper tool, hold down the mouse key when you go outside your Photoshop document. Now you pick up any color your mouse comes across.
Switch quickly between Foreground and Background
Press the “x” key to switch quickly between Foreground and Background color. Very handy during painting.
Quickly fill a selection with the Foreground or Background color
Press the Alt/Option+backspace key to fill the selection with the Foreground color. Press Command/Control+backspace key to fill it with the background color.
Find the center of the content of a Layer
Make sure you have the Rulers visible (View > Show Rulers). Select the Layer, hit Command/Control + T. Now you can drag guides out of the Rulers that will snap to the grabber handles and center point of the bounding box. Hit the Escape key to be sure you didn’t transform your content.
Now that we’re talking Photoshop, here’s an article on the Think Secret website about the new Photoshop CS 2.0, code-named Space Monkey. One of the new features is the ability to select multiple layers and perform manipulations across all of them at the same time. Want to know more about the new Photoshop and Illustrator? Read the article.
12served
1
For that last tip, I’d like to note that you don’t even have to be in transform mode, it’ll snap anyway. Transform mode might give you a better idea of where the center is though, if you’re unclear about that.
2
Hi Marten, you are right, if Snap is checked on, but if not then my method might be handy ;-) I mostly work with Snap disabled. It is handy but it’s sometimes annoying (especially for pixel precision work).
3
“Switch quickly between Foreground and Background”
Just to add to this one: pressing the “d” key will reset your foreground color to black and your background color to white.
4
“Selecting a color from anywhere”
No way! You have no idea how long I’ve wanted that one to be added, and its been there all along…:)
5
I’ve tried out a dozen shareware color samplers, all in the hopes of doing something that Photoshop does on its own. [sigh] How do you find out about this stuff? I’ve been using Photoshop since version 5.5 and didn’t know any of the shortcuts you wrote about today.
6
Is anyone else annoyed that you can’t use the old Command-` hotkey to cycle windows in Photoshop ? (for Macs). Is there some other way of doing it? It’s driving me nuts.
7
@Olly I’ve found this one just a few days ago by accident.
@feaverish, some by accident (like the first one), most were found from various sources on the web.
@nerdcool, I just use Exposé ;-)
8
nerdcool, i’ve heard you can cycle between windows using command-~ (tilde). I can’t check it because my stupid azerty keyboard has alt-n for a tilde.
It annoys me that I can’t use many standard shortcuts in Photoshop an especially Illustrator because of my retarded azerty keyboard. :-(
9
@pjtr: my thoughts exactly, sometimes I hate the fact that we have azerty keyboards in Belgium. Maybe the new Photoshop will let you change every shortcut like you can in Final Cut Pro.
10
304 Photoshop tips.pdf
11
@pjtr: thanks, but ~ and ` are the on same key (for my macs anyway). photoshop is about the only app i have that doesn’t support this (although i’m also annoyed that you can’t hide InDesign using Command-H. What is it with Adobe and standard Mac shortcuts?).
You can alter the keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop but Command-` (or Command-~) are already in use.
I guess I’m left with Exposé.
12
If you play with keys randomly, you’re bound to run into Easter Eggs.