Manic Monday Photoshop & Photoshop Elements Tips: Resetting Preferences

Monday, April 25, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Resetting Preferences

Ever have one of those days when Photoshop just doesn’t seem to be working right? Today’s tips will help you clear up those pesky quirks and reset Photoshop’s default preferences. If you’re having problems with a single tool try resetting that tool preference by clicking on the little button on the upper left menu bar. You can choose to reset the current tool or all tools. Usually just resetting the tools works for me but if the Photoshop program itself seems quirky you can reset your preferences by pressing and holding Ctrl-Alt-Shift (Mac: Command-Option-Shift) while you start Photoshop. As you start the program you will get a pop-up dialog asking if you would like to delete the settings file. Deleting the file will create a new set of preferences from scratch. 

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Viewing

April 18, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Viewing

Here’s a quick tip for those times when you want to turn off one or more layers for quick viewing in Photoshop.  To turn off one layer just click the eye icon next to the layer you want to hide. If you alt + click (opt + click on a Mac) on the eye icon it will hide or show all other layers except the one you clicked on.

I used this tip to make the previews below. I put all the screenshots, type layers and the arrow shape into  one psd file and turned the layers off and off to make the two different previews. This allowed me to just make one file and to use the same arrow for both previews which saves time and space.

See you next Monday with a new Photoshop Tip!

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Cycling Through Layer Blend Mode

 April 11, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Cycling Through Layer Blend Modes

I love to use blend modes when working in Photoshop but I’m often not certain which one I want to use and I spend a lot of time manually cycling through the list. Fortunately Photoshop has a shortcut for this! Click on the Blend Mode list from the top of the Layers panel and select a blend mode. Now press Shift and + to cycle through the list (Shift and - cycles in reverse). Note: don’t select (highlight) a blend mode or the keyboard shortcuts won’t work; to deselect the highlighted blend mode just click anywhere on the Photoshop background.

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Manic Monday Photoshop & Photoshop Elements Tips: Quick Fill Commands

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Quick Fill Commands

April 4, 2011

Today’s tips will have you using the Quick Fill commands like a pro. Here are a few ways to access and use the Fill tool:

• The Fill tool keyboard shortcut is (G)
• To access the Fill menu use Shift + F5
• To bypass the menu use 
• alt + backspace to fill with the foreground color, 
• command + backspace to fill with the background color
• Using these shorts cuts you can quickly fill a selection or set the color for type and shape layers
• If you want to preserve the transparency of your selection you should first lock the transparency layer by pressing / (backslash) and then the fill command
• Or an even simpler option is to press alt + shift + backspace or ctrl + shift + backspace to fill the foreground or background with color and preserve the transparency

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Marcie