20 Photoshop Tips

1. Shift Key for Accuracy-When you want to keep things straight or constant, use the
Shift key. Hold Shift when drawing a line will keep it straight. Rectangles and ellipses will stay square or round. In transform, it will keep the aspect ratio. Use while dropping one image onto another and it will center.

2. Fix Blow Outs-Ensure your blown highlights don’t print paper white by reducing the output in Levels adjustment to 245 from 255.

3. Fade a Fix-If you want slightly less of your last action, go to Edit>Fade to reduce the amount without using an opacity change.

4. Cool Double Exposure-drag one image on top of another and change the blending
mode to Screen. To darken, try Multiply.

5. Pick a color from anywhere-Click on the foreground color to bring up the color picker. Then click anywhere on the picture to pic that color. Pick from anywhere on the screen by holding down the mouse button and moving the picker around. The new color will change on release.

6. Resize Smart-Use resampling choices; Bicubic Smoother for enlargements, Bicubic Sharper for reductions, Nearest Neighbor for Hard edged shapes.

7. Combine Layers-Don’t want to flatten? Highlight the top layer, select all, then Control Shift C to copy, then Control Shift V to make a new layer with all the layers merged.

8. See the Whole Image-Tab to hide panels, then Control 0 to enlarge. Double clicking the hand tool will do the same. For a black border click F several times.

9. Contrasty Images-Use the shadow/highlight tool to adjust the tones.

10. Selective Color – Make a B&W adjustment layer, click on the mask, paint with black to reveal the color beneath.

11. Quick Change Brushes (CS4)- Hold down ALT and hold right click and push or pull mouse to size your brush. Shift-ALT and hold right click to change hardness.

12. Better Contrast-Using curves to fix contrast, set blend mod to luminosity to avoid color and saturation shifts.

13. Soft Skin-On a duplicate layer, Filter>Other>Highpass radius 5. Image>Adjustments>desaturate – blend mode Softlight. This will sharpen the image, now choose Image>Adjustments>Invert for a wonderful softness. Control with a layer mask.

14. Repair Right-Before cloning make a new layer. From the pulldown menu in the options bar pick Sample>Current and Below or Sample all. Your cloning will be on this hovering layer.

15. Quick B&W- Hold Cntrl and type 1, 2, 3 to see the red green and blue channels. Like one best? Goto channel mixer and make it 100%, the others at 0, check monochrome.

16. Great Eyes-use the Lasso set slightly feathered to select the eyes. Ctrl J to copy them to a new layer. Use levels or curves and sharpen here, control with opacity.

17. Fix Color- Image>Adjustments>Variations find the best and correct using curves.

18. See your type-Ctrl H will hide your highlight on your text or hide marching ants.

19. Print Size (CS4)-Find the width of your screen in pixels divide by the width of your screen (Pixels/inch) Open Preferences>Units and Rulers and enter the value in the screen resolution field. Choose View>Print size to see your photo as it will print.

20. Best Zoom-Use Ctrl+Spacebar and draw a rectangle around your zoom area.