Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Viewing

MMPST 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 another Photoshop Tip!

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Cycling Through Layer Blend Modes

 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.

Don’t forget to sign up for Cilenia's newsletter to get exclusive subscriber freebie coupons. Reminder that the coupons are only good for Monday and Tuesday so don’t wait to redeem yours!  You can sign up  for the newsletter at the top right of the Digital Designer Blog.

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

I hope you signed up for Cilenia's newsletter because this week's freebie is adorable! You can get coupons for freebies and see all the new products by signing up for the newsletter at the top right of the Digital Designer Blog. 

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Function Keys Shortcuts

March 28, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Function Keys Shortcuts

It's been awhile since I posted keyboard shortcuts so here is a list of useful Photoshop shortcuts using the Function Keys. 

Function Keys Shortcuts

Function	Windows	Macintosh
Start Help	F1	Help Key
Cut	F2	F2
Copy	F3	F3
Paste	F4	F4
Show/Hide Brush Panel	F5	F5
Show/Hide Color Panel	F6	F6
Show/Hide Layers Panel	F7	F7
Show/Hide Info Panel	F8	F8
Show/Hide Actions Panel	F9	Option +F9
Revert	F12	F12

Oh, be sure to sign up for the DDS newsletter to get your exclusive subscriber freebie coupon! 

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Delete All Empty Layers

March 21, 2011

Have you ever been working on a large Photoshop project with lots of layers and wanted a quick way to delete all the empty layers? Sure you can go through and delete them manually one by one but that could take a long time. Instead go to File Menu, then Scripts and choose Delete All Empty Layers. Viola! All the empty layers are gone as simple as that. 

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Accessing Tools In A Group

March 14, 2011

Have you ever  been working in Photoshop using the Rectangular Marquee tool and wanted a quick way to switch to the Elliptical Marquee tool without having to go back to the tool bar. Well, I’ve got the solution! Just press and hold the SHIFT key while pressing the group’s keyboard shortcut (in this example M is the shortcut for the marquee tools) and you can access all the tools within that tool group. 

See you back here next Monday with another Photoshop Tip,

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Changing the Photoshop Document Background Color

Monday, March 7, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Changing the Photoshop Document Background Color

Today’s tip is the direct result of me typing to fast and crazy and suddenly watching my Photoshop document background change from neutral gray to black. At first I thought  hmmm no big deal I’ll just click ctrl z to undo it but that had no affect except to undo my last move. Okay, I’m beginning to panic because I’m in the middle of a this project and I really hate that black background and I want to just go back to gray and get back to work so what now? A quick Google search and I find the answer and today’s tip: How to change your Photoshop document background—right click anywhere on the empty document background then choose from gray, black or custom color. Once you click the change is automatic. I’m so glad it was an easy fix. It is important to note that the reason Photoshop has the neutral gray as the default background is that it makes it easy to see the true colors in your document so take that into consideration if you decide to go with the neon green background. ;-)

Be sure to stop by the Digital Designer Shop and check out all of the new Spring products!

Manic Monday Photoshop Tip: Layer Selection Shortcut

February 28, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tip: Layer Selection Shortcut

Are you a fan of using the Auto Select feature but hate having to toggle it on and off? Then you’ll love today’s tip! With the move tool (V) selected simply ctrl click (command for a Mac) on the object and it automatically selects the layer. That’s it! I might actually use this feature now that it’s so handy to activate. 

Manic Monday Photoshop Tip: Keyboard Shortcuts For Changing Brush Size

Hopefully,  following along with these Manic Monday Photoshop tips is helping you become more efficient in Photoshop and therefore giving you more time to scrapbook! Try to work the tips into your daily workflow and before you know it you will have them all memorized.  Special thanks to Kathleen for sharing  today’s tip about changing the size of the brush!

For review here are the basic brush tool commands that we previously covered:

• B (Brush Tool) — I’m constantly using this command along with the hand and zoom tools.
• [ (Decrease Brush Size) — Quickly decrease your brush size to get into those tighter spots.
• ] (Increase Brush Size) — Quickly increase your brush size for the larger areas.

With any painting or brush tool active you can use the shortcuts below to easily and precisely change the brush size by dragging the mouse or pen tool.  This is super cool because you'll see an immediate, interactive on-screen visual as you drag your mouse or pen tool. 

Notes:

The commands for Mac and PC are different so be sure to use the correct one for your machine.

Hint hold down the alt/option key and then drag to the right to increase or drag to the left to decrease.

Macintosh:

Change brush size: option-ctrl-drag
Change brush edge softness: command-option-ctrl-drag

Windows:
Change brush size: alt-right mouse button drag
Change brush edge softness: shift-alt-right mouse button drag

That’s it for this week. See you back here next Monday with another Photoshop Tip.

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Reset Dialog

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Reset Dialog

Have you ever canceled a dialog menu so that you could start over?  If so this shortcut is sure to make your day! When working with any dialog menu that uses the OK or Cancel option simply press and hold the Alt (Mac: Option) key when you are in the dialog menu and the Cancel button will turn into a Reset button. This will allow you to try the effect again without having to leave the panel.

Be sure to check back here tomorrow because Cilenia is going to give a sneak peek of her new kits with a chance to win a kit before it’s released on Friday! Here’s a sneak peek of the sneak peek. 

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Mask Clean-up

January 31, 2011

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Mask Clean-up

I love using layer mask to hide portions of a layer in Photoshop but sometimes it can be tricky to locate stray bits of the layer accidently left behind. Today’s tip will show you how to use a temporary layer effect to quickly find and clean-up those random pixels.  With your layer mask selected click on FX > Stroke to bring up the Layer Style Stroke Menu. In the stroke menu choose a contrasting color and make the stroke size around 10 px. The stroke will now appear around any small areas of the mask that need clean-up. Click okay to exit out of the menu. Now simply use your brush set on black to quickly brush away the stray bits. When you’re done just drag the FX stroke style into the trash and admire your finished creation!

Manic Monday Photoshop & Photoshop Elements Tips: Zoom Shortcuts

24 January 2011

Hello and welcome to this week’s Manic Monday Photoshop Tip--Zoom Shortcuts.

They say necessity is the mother of all inventions and that is so true. I searched out shortcuts for today’s tip specifically to improve my workflow since my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. ;-) When I work in Photoshop I like to see the fine details of what I’m doing so I’m constantly zooming in and out of my document which can be a little time consuming. You can zoom into an open Photoshop document by using this keyboard shortcut: control + (plus key). To zoom even more just keep pressing the + key. Regardless of how far you zoomed in, you’ll just need one command to return to the original size. The keyboard shortcut for quick zoom out is control 0 (zero). Control 0 is one of my new favorite commands. I hope you'll try using these keyboard shortcuts when working on your next document and I’m sure they’ll be added to your favorites too. See you back here next week with more Photoshop Tips.

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Help Resources

January 17, 2011

Welcome to Manic Monday Photoshop Tips and Happy MLK Day! Today’s tip is about getting help with your Photoshop products.

Photoshop is a fantastic program but it’s also very complex. Fortunately, Adobe has a vast amount of help related documents and tutorials to get you started and to cover just about any Photoshop related question or problem you might have. As an added benefit the Adobe help related resources are specific to the version of Photoshop that you are using. Some of the things you'll find at Adobe include: getting started tutorials and videos, support, forums and frequently asked questions list.  I love browsing through the table of contents until I find something interesting and then just following the links. Remember to bookmark this post so that you can refer back to the links later.

Be sure to stop by the Digital Designer Shop January 18-22 and help us celebrate our one year anniversary with store wide sales! 

See you back here next Monday with another Photoshop tip. 

Links to Adobe.com resources

Adobe Photoshop CS5 Resources 

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Resources 

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Resources 

Adobe Photoshop Elements Resources 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 

Paid Photoshop subscription resources

Kelby Training 

NAPP  (includes a subscription to Photoshop User Magazine) 

Lynda.com 

Free Photoshop Resources

Tip Squirrel 

Corey Barker/Planet Photoshop 

Photoshop Killer Tips 

PSLover 

Photoshop Roadmap 

PSHero 

Layers Magazine 

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Quick Change Using the Alt Key

January, 10, 2010

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Quick Change Using the Alt Key

Hello, and welcome to Manic Monday Photoshop Tips. Today’s tip is sure to speed up your selection workflow!  When working with the Quick Select tool and making adjustments using the add and subtract function you can quickly toggle between the add and subtract buttons  by pressing and holding the alt (option on a Mac) key. This is especially useful when working on complex extractions. Have fun and I’ll see you back here next week with another Photoshop Tip. 

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Organizing Your Digital Supplies

January 3, 2011

Happy New Year and welcome to this week’s edition of Manic Monday Photoshop Tips. This week’s tip is isn’t specifically about using Photoshop but about organizing your digi stash so that you are more organized and efficient when you use Photoshop. I’m going to share my system with you and also give you links to some popular organizing software and tutorials for setting up your own organizing system.

Having a defined system is a key part of organizing your digital supplies. Your system needs to be set up for the way you think and scrapbook. It can be simple or complex but the main thing is that it needs to be something that works for you and that you can keep up with. I personally use ACDSee Pro 3 for all my tagging and organizing and love it. Other popular organizing software include Adobe Bride and Picassa (free Google program).

My system has evolved over the 4 years I’ve been digi scrapping and it works well for me. Feel free to adapt it to your scrapping style.

Set Up

• My basic system has 5 folders: Download Folder, Unzipped Folder, Digital Files Folder, Toolbox Folder, Digital Library Folder.  
• Download Folder: all downloads go here and are moved out to appropriate folders
• Unzipped Folder: I extract all files to this folder for processing.
• Digital Files Folder: this folder has subfolders for classes I’ve taken, pdf’s, and tutorials.
• Toolbox Folder: this folder contains subfolders with things I use frequently in Photoshop and scrapbooking. I have subfolders for my favorite brushes, textures, stock photographs, my digital designs and a folder for all my layouts.
• Digital Library: this is the final folder where all digital scrapbooking kits live. Within the Digital Library folder I have folders for my favorite designers and shops plus a miscellaneous folder.

Workflow

• All downloads go into one download folder
• Downloads are extracted to the Unzipped File Folder and then the original zip file is moved to a monthly archive folder. At the end of each month I move that folder off of my hard drive to a back up EHD.
• While in the Unzipped File Folder I perform 3 basic task with each kit:
• Kits with multiple folders are combined into one single folder (with the exception of alphabets which are kept in their own folder).
• File names are cleaned up. Example: Cilenia_BlueWinter Part 1 will be changed to Cilenia_BlueWinter Kit.
• Next each kit is tagged by keyword in ACDSee.
• Finally once the kits are cleaned up and tagged I move them to the appropriate folder within Digital Library and I’m done.

Software and Tutorial Links

ACDSee Pro 3 (Sorry it’s Windows only but a Mac Beta is in the works)

Heidi Vanyo is an ACDSee guru and instructor. Her website, DigiScrapInfo,  features ACDSee information and she teaches an excellent ACDSee class on  Jessica Sprague’s website.  

Adobe Bridge (part of Photoshop)

Here is a fantastic tutorial for using Bridge to organize and tag your supplies. Bridge is my 2^nd choice for organizing after ACDSee.

Picasa (free Google program)

Here is an awesome tutorial about using Picasa for organizing from The Daily Digi

http://thedailydigi.com/picasa-a-free-useful-tool-in-your-digi-scrap-toolbox/

I hope this information helps you get organized. I’d love to hear your organization suggestions and ideas. 

See you next week

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Cycle through all open documents

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Cycle through all open documents    

      

Hello! Can you believe it’s only 5 days until Christmas? Today’s tips is a simple but powerful keyboard shortcut to help you cycle through your open documents. Just press control-tab (on both PC and a Mac) multiple times to cycle through all of the documents that are currently open in Photoshop.  That’s it!

I'm taking next week off so there won't be a blog post next Monday but I’ll see you back here on Monday, January 3, 2011!

Have a very Merry Christmas,

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Scrubber Controls

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Scrubber Controls

Have you ever used the scrubber control in Photoshop? What? You don’t know what a scrubber control is? Well, let me tell you about this awesome option that is hidden in many tools throughout Photoshop. To find out if the tool you want to use has the scrubber control just hover over the tool name and you will see a little hand image like the one below. 

To use the scrubber control click on the tool name and slide your mouse or pen left and right. You will see the little hand image as you adjust the tool settings. As an added benefit you can also use the Shift key to make the scrubber jump more quickly to larger or smaller numbers and the Alt key to slow it down and change just one number at a time.

Here are just a few of the tools that use the scrubber controls:

• Layers palette--fill and opacity
• Various tools--feather option
• Magic wand tool--tolerance
• Crop tool--width, height, resolution
• Brush tool--opacity and flow

That’s it for today but I’ll see you back here next Monday with another Photoshop Tip.

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop: 5 Tips for Photoshop Beginners

5 Tips for Photoshop Beginners

Getting started in Photoshop can be overwhelming and require lots of time to mater. Today we’ll look at 5 tips to help you get more comfortable working in the Photoshop environment.

• Select all pixels on a layer
• To select everything on a layer press the CTRL Key and then click on the layer in the palette. You should see "marching ants" around your selection now. To de-select press CTRL D. 
• Change your Screen Mode         
• It’s easy to rotate between the various screen modes by pressing the “F” key. Pressing the “F” key repeatedly will cycle  through the default screen,  full screen,  and full screen without menu/editing bar.
• Drawing a straight line
• Draw a straight line with the paintbrush, line and move tools by simply holding down the “Shift” key while dragging the mouse to draw the line.
• Open file shortcut          
• Want to use the ope file menu without having to go to the file menu bar? Simply double click anywhere in the gray Photoshop background and the file open menu box instantly pops up.
• Use TAB to hide palettes
• Want to hide those palettes from your workspace? Simply click on the TAB button to hide and then click it again and they reappear.

I hope you enjoyed these helpful instructions and I’ll see you back here next Monday with another Photoshop tip.

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Type Tool Shortcuts

By special request from Weezer... today we’re going to look at keyboard shortcuts for working with type in Photoshop. Adding and editing type in your Photoshop documents will be a breeze when you add these keyboard commands to your workflow.

A couple of things to note when using the type tool.

• First, don’t press enter/return when you’re done typing since that just moves you to the next line.  Instead, if you have an extended keyboard with a number pad press the enter/return key on the number pad and your text will be entered. Or you can also use your mouse to click on  the icon on the type layer and your text will be entered.
• Second, keyboard shortcuts don't work while typing. This is one of those funny things that should be obvious but sometimes isn’t. So, to use the keyboard shortcuts below add your type to the document, enter it using one of the above methods, select the type and then use the keyboard shortcut with the type selected.

Type Tool Shortcuts:

Keyboard shortcuts listed with PC commands. For MAC’s use cmnd for ctrl and opt for alt.

Type Tool	T
Select all	Ctrl A
Select a word	Double click a word
Select a line	Triple click a word
Select paragraph	Quadruple click a word
Horizontal type tool + Ctrl + Shft + L, C, or R	Align left, center, or right
Vertical type tool + Ctrl + Shft + L, C, or R	Align top, center, or bottom
Ctrl + Shft + Y	Return to default font style
Ctrl + Shft + J	Justify paragraph, left aligns last line
Ctrl + Shft + F	Justify paragraph, justifies all
Ctrl + Ctrl + Shft + Optn + H	Toggle paragraph hyphenation on/off
Ctrl Shft < or >	Decrease or increase Photoshop type size of selected text 2 points or pixels (Hold down Option key to decrease/increase by 10)
Alt + Down Arrow or Up Arrow	Decrease or increase leading 2 points or pixels (Hold down Control key to decrease/increase by 10)
Shft + Alt + Down Arrow or Up Arrow	Decrease or increase baseline shift 2 points or pixels (Hold down Control key to decrease/increase by 10)
Alt Left Arrow or Right Arrow	Decrease or increase Photoshop kerning/tracking 20/1000 ems (Hold down Command key to decrease/increase by 10)

I’m looking forward to using the command to change the baseline ^UP or _DOWN! See you back here next Monday with another Photshop Tip. Any request? 

Marcie

Manic Monday Photoshop Tips: Alt Codes

Good morning and welcome to Manic Monday Photoshop Tips! 

Don’t you love it when someone shares a really useful tip? I know I do and I want to give a shout out to my friend Laurie M. for sharing tips and links about using alt codes. Thanks Laurie!!

While these tips aren’t specific to Photoshop they will be very useful additions to your journaling.  So what are alt codes? Alt codes are made using the alt key and a number. For instance alt plus the number 1 equals ☺. Alt plus 2 ☻. The alt 0169 © copyright symbol code is another useful  alt combination. Two more codes alt 0150 – en–dash and the longer alt 0151 — em–dash are codes that definitely get added to my list. These codes make my ♥ ♫. ☺

Here are some links to alt codes list.

For PC’s

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/international/accents/codealt.html

http://alt-codes.org/

The alt codes work differently on Mac's so here is a link for Mac specific information.

http://alt-codes.org/mac/

Can you believe it’s Thanksgiving week already? I'm looking forward to my brothers and their families being in town today through Friday.  I’m expecting lots of fun, laughter and picture taking.

Have a wonderful week and I’ll see you back here next Monday.

Marcie