Photoshop tips
mod
Hey guys
We used to have a thread on a previous iteration of Polycount where people shared little hidden or hard to find tricks for working with Photoshop. I learned so much from that back then, I thought I'd resurrect it. To share the old information again, but also to see if anything new shows up!
Some tips that were shared back then that I can remember:
-How to change the colour of Photoshop's background, which has now been simplified to just rightclicking on it.
-You can click-drag on the layer visibility icons to toggle multiple ones at once.
One I just discovered is when you're dragging something and hit the sides of the screen and it scrolls, you can hold shift to go faster. I believe the fast behaviour used to be standard (and ridiculously annoying), so I'm glad to see this new behaviour. It makes working zoomed in a lot easier.
We used to have a thread on a previous iteration of Polycount where people shared little hidden or hard to find tricks for working with Photoshop. I learned so much from that back then, I thought I'd resurrect it. To share the old information again, but also to see if anything new shows up!
Some tips that were shared back then that I can remember:
-How to change the colour of Photoshop's background, which has now been simplified to just rightclicking on it.
-You can click-drag on the layer visibility icons to toggle multiple ones at once.
One I just discovered is when you're dragging something and hit the sides of the screen and it scrolls, you can hold shift to go faster. I believe the fast behaviour used to be standard (and ridiculously annoying), so I'm glad to see this new behaviour. It makes working zoomed in a lot easier.
Replies
Should prove handy for those of us who do UI work.
alt clicking on the eye next to a layer hides everything else and only shows that specific layer, alt clicking on it again, unhides everything back to exactly what it was before (leaving hidden layers etc unchanged). similar to an isolate action in a 3d app.
but be careful not to start hiding/unhiding layers when in "isolation" mode, since this will break the memory and you wont be able to restore it by alt clicking the eye again.
- alt+click between 2 layers to set up a clipping mask between the,
- You can alt+click+drag a mask to another layer and it copy that mask to that layer. Alternately, if you drag on top of another mask, the dragged mask will replace it.
Layer visibility: Alt-clicking on the visibility symbol on a layer gives you visibility only on this layer. Be careful: When in "alt-click mode" if you don't toggle back this by alt-clicking again, and change the visibility of layers, they stay this way. If you go back with alt-click, Photoshop remembers the visibility as it was before the soloing and restores it to each layer.
It saves all your layers as separate images. Can be set for only the visible layers as well.
That's just pure gold. No more copy/paste alpha channels to new layers
As for the alt click and clipping mask though, that's rather the layer only affecting the underlying one, no? Which at that can be done in succession. Say you have a hue modifier and one contrast etc. underneath, followed by a layer.. Alt-clicking between the first two, followed by the second and the third will link them down so that they only affect the third layer and nothing else.
/edit: nvm! Apparently that's referred to as a clipping mask indeed.
Edit > Preferences > General > Performance > History States
ctrl+alt+shift+e on a blank layer to make a combined flat image of all visible layers
Thanks for this.. I was using an action that duplicated the BG layer, selected all layers, grouped them, duplicated the grouped layers and merged the duplicate group. >_>
Pretty useful when Snap is disabled and you want to combine an AO, Nomral map and so one...
You can find an exact rotational angle by dragging the measure tool along a line (say brick morter) and then going to image, rotate, arbitrary. It will fill in the exact degree for you.
So friggin' useful!
-You can ctrl+alt+t a layer or selection to transform it and then ctrl+alt+shift+t to repeat the transform multiple times, comes in handy sometimes...
-If you have a really messy layer stack and you want to hide some layers here and there one way(instead of looking for them in the stack) is to select the move tool, tick the 'Auto-Select' box, click and/or marque drag a selection in the canvas to select the layers visually and the go to the 'Layer' tab in the main menu and select 'Hide Layers'...(The option then turns to 'Show Layers')...
-One of the oldest trick in the book for quickly sharpening images is to duplicate your merged stack, go to the Filter tab>Other>High Pass, select a very small value in the dialog, usually 1~3(this depends on your image size) and then change the layer's blending mode to overlay(or soft light for a more subtle effect) and adjust the opacity of the layer to your taste...
I believe it's not just the center, but it saves the origin placement. When you want to copy just a part of another picture to your workfile then it's hard to place it at the correct position. With holding shift it will be placed at the same position as it's in the origin file.
Another small Feature (that most might know) is Alt+F to use the last applied Filter and Alt+Ctrl+F to open the last applied filter, so you can edit the values before re-applying it.
Ctrl+Shift+I inverts the selection. Holding Alt while clicking on the layer visible icon will hide all other layers except the one you clicked at. You can unhide the others by doing the same step again.
1-0 top row keys will alter brush opacity- clicking them twice will get a double digit change (so 6 key pressed twice is 66% vs 60%).
Bracket keys [ and ] make your brush slightly smaller and larger (works with several tools).
"dab/click" one with the brush or eraser, then holding shift click another area to draw a straight line. Keep holding down shift to draw consecutive, connected straight lines. Good for simulating highlights for edge bevels when used on an additive layer mode layer IMHO.
This is easy to do in AI, and I always wondered how to do it in PS- thanks for the tip.
Yes it is, AI's cloning/array functions are on a different level, pity they refuse to implement at least some of them into PS...
Speaking of Brackets, you can navigate and rearrange your layer stack using them:
-alt+[ or ] to move up and down in the stack, add shift to that to select layers in your way
-ctrl+[ or ] to rearrange your layers , add shift to jump your layer to the top or the bottom of the stack (this is the most useful of them all, imo)
-also you can ctrl+alt+a to select all the layers in the stack (pretty useful)
You don't even need to create an empty layer, it'll put the flattened image on a new layer above the one you're currently on!
When importing hard edge graphics such as a vector file into PS, don't use the import dialog to resize smaller and import the file. This will use PS normal default sampling AFAIK, and result in a blurry image. It's often better to import it at a high resolution, and then inside photoshop downsize it using Image->Image Size- then under resampling, selecting either Nearest Neighbor or Bicubic Sharper (sometimes another method).
If the graphic contains easily isolated elements that are hard edge and soft, or small and large pixel areas, it is often worth while to import it twice with different sampling settings, then copy one version on top of the other, and then mask out the area that the sample is best for that area of the graphic.
This can be handy for if you're using files like this to make brushes, graphics that will go on low res products like items that might line a shelf, graffiti, or any other image that might be lower res but require hard, to semi hard edges. The larger the down size difference (like a 4k-128 ) the effectiveness is more pronounced, and can mean less manual clean up.
*Minato*
Yeah, do find it frustrating that it takes adobe something like 15 years to cross cross pollinate some obvious features. I understand they want people to buy 3+ apps instead of one, but I agree that programs like illustrator and PS serve enough of a different purpose that things like cloning should be in both and just as robust.
You can do text Kerning between letters while pressing alt+arrow keys
Refine Selection is amazing and should be known, also you can refine masks without having a selection under Selection>Refine mask
Also if you are using CS6, if you go to the Workspace dropdown at the top right of the window and switch from Essentials to New in CS6, all the menu items will be colored to indicate a new addition or change to that tool.
Speaking of colors, you can color any menu item you want for quick identification (as well as hide the ones you never use!) in the Edit > Menus... window.
Whilst using the Move (V) tool, change your selection mode in the top bar from "Group" to "Layer", then use CTRL + LMB on your canvas to select any layer underneath your cursor*.
Use Shift + CTRL + LMB to add/remove a layer to your layer selection.
Now you have the speed benefits of Auto-Select, without the weird behaviour of Auto-Select.
Also, RMB only for a list.
*It will select semi-transparent layers, too.
It adds a filter to filter>other called HSB/HSL. If you run it with RGB as the Input Mode and HSB as the Row Order it will comvert your image's RGB channels into Hue Saturation and Brightness channels. You can use these greyscale images as masks, try out the saturation mask on a gradient map adjustment layer.