Load
Any Saved Selection Without The Channels Palette
If you’re working on an RGB image and you’ve saved a selection
(by drawing a selection and choosing Save Selection from the Select
menu), you can instantly reload that selection at any time, without
going to the Channels palette. If you have only one saved selection,
just press Command-Option-4 (PC: Control-Alt-4), and the selection will
instantly appear onscreen. If you have a second saved selection, press
Command-Option-5 (PC: Control-Alt-5), and so on. The key to remember
is that the RGB channels take up the 1, 2, and 3 spots, so always start
with 4 to load your first Alpha channel. Note: If you’re working
with CMYK images, remember to always start with 5, because the CMYK
channels take up the first four spots
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Let
Photoshop Tell You The Highlight And Shadow
We use this tip to have Photoshop help us determine which are the darkest
(shadow) points and which are the lightest (highlight) points in an
image when we’re color-correcting. We start by choosing a Threshold
adjustment layer from the Create New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu at
the bottom of the Layers palette. When the Threshold dialog appears,
we drag the slider all the way to the left and the image turns completely
white. We then slowly drag the slider back to the right, and the first
black pixels that appear onscreen are the shadow areas. We make a mental
note of that area as our shadow point. Then we drag the slider all the
way to the far right (the image turns black). As we drag slowly back
toward the left, the first white pixels that appear are the highlight
points in the image. We note them as well. We now know where the shadow
and highlight points are in the image, and we can use them, along with
the Eyedropper tools in the Curves dialog (Command-M [PC: Control[M]),
to set the proper shadow and highlight areas to remove any color casts.
Note: When you’ve determined where the shadow and highlight areas
are, you can then delete the Threshold adjustment layer by dragging
it into the Trash icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.
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No
More Creating Type In Channels
If you’ve ever tried to create and format type in a channel, you
know what a pain it can be. Especially because, when you’re working
in a channel, it doesn’t create an editable Type layer, so you’re
really limited to how you can format and, of course, edit your type.
So instead of creating type in a channel (which many special channel-type
effects call for), just create your type on a layer as usual. In fact,
don’t go to the Channels palette at all—just pretend you’re
not using channels. Once you’ve got your type formatted and adjusted
just the way you want it on your regular Type layer, Command-click (PC:
Control-click) on your Type layer’s thumbnail in the Layers palette.
This puts a selection around your type. Now you can go under the Select
menu and choose Save Selection. When the dialog appears, click OK, and
it saves your perfectly formatted type as (you guessed it) a channel.
Now you can delete your Type layer, and you’re left with an Alpha
channel with perfectly formatted type.
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Saving
Your Actions As Printable Text Files
This is a totally undocumented actions tip, and if you need it, it’s
a real lifesaver. Once you’ve created an action, you can actually
save a text document with all the action steps so you can have a printed
hard copy of your action. Here’s how: In the Actions palette,
click on the action set containing the action that you want to save
as a text document. Hold Command-Option (PC: Control-Alt) and from the
Actions palette’s flyout menu, choose Save Actions. When the Save
dialog appears, you’ll notice that the three-letter file extension
is TXT (indicating it’s a text file) rather than ATN (which is
the Photoshop action format). Click OK and you’ve got a text file
you can open in any word processor to print out your steps.
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Applying
Multiple Filters? Not On My Layer!
Thinking of applying a number of different filters to a particular layer?
Don’t do it. Instead, make a copy of your layer by pressing Command-J
(PC: Control-J), then apply the first filter. Make another copy of the
layer and apply the second filter; make another copy, apply the third
filter, and so on. You can use Photoshop’s layer blend modes in
the Layers palette to get the effect that one filter is applied on top
of the others, and now you’ve got full control over each individual
filter applied. If you don’t like one of the filters, just drag
that layer into the Trash. Better yet, you’ve got blend and opacity
control you wouldn’t have by simply applying filter over filter.
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Have
Photoshop Select The Shadows And Highlights
This is a trick we use for prepress and for photo retouching because
it instantly lets you select all the shadow areas (or highlight areas
if you wish) for a particular image, and it’s so easy because
Photoshop does all the work. To have Photoshop select just the shadow
areas in your image, go under the Select menu and choose Color Range.
When the dialog appears, in the Select pop-up menu, choose Shadows (or
Highlights), and click OK. The shadow areas are instantly selected.
This is ideal for situations where your scanner has plugged up the detail
in the shadow areas (pretty common in most sub-£500 desktop scanners).
Once the shadows are selected, you can “open them up” by
going to the Levels dialog (under the Image menu, under Adjustments)
and moving the midtones Input Levels slider to the left to bring back
some of the shadow detail lost in the scan.
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Power
Up Your Layer Styles
Here’s a little-known tip for controlling the intensity of your
layer styles. This is particularly helpful if you’ve applied a
number of different layer styles to a layer, and want to affect them
all at the same time, rather than tweaking each one individually. It’s
called Scale Effects, and it’s buried in the Layer menu, at the
bottom of the Layer Style submenu. Choose it, and a dialog appears with
a slider set to 100% by default. As you increase the amount (up to 1000%
maximum), it increases the “scale” of all your effects.
For example, if you increased the scale of a Drop Shadow layer style,
the shadow would become blurrier and its distance from the object would
become greater. If you adjusted a Stroke Layer Style, the stroke would
become thicker, etc. Pretty powerful stuff.
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How
To Combine Two Paths Into One
If you’re using the Pen tool (P), and you’ve created multiple
paths within your document, these paths are totally separate, and are
moved independently of one another. However, if you want these paths
to move as one unit—combine them. Just switch to the Path Selection
tool (Shift-A until it comes up), then go up to the Options Bar and
click on the Combine button. Now when you move one path, all the combined
paths move right along with it.
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Seeing
Your Full-Color Image While Editing A Channel
When you’re working on an individual channel in the Channels palette
(under the Window menu), by default Photoshop displays your current
channel onscreen in grayscale. If you make changes to that channel,
you only see how the change affects that channel. However, there is
a little-known trick that lets you see the full-color image, while editing
the currently selected channel. While you’re editing the channel,
just press the Tilde key (~), which is right above the Tab key on your
keyboard, and you’ll see the full RGB preview as you edit.
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Lets
Do The Text Warp Again
If you go to use Photoshop's Warped Text function, you might get a warning
that states, “Could not complete your request because the type
layer uses a faux bold style.” A faux bold style? What in the
wide world of sports is that? Actually, it's a feature of Photoshop
(that was introduced back in version 5.0) that lets you create a fake
(faux) bold or italic type style for fonts that don't really have a
bold or italic type style. It's toggled on/off in the Character palette's
flyout menu. In Photoshop 7.0, Adobe added the option in the warning
dialog to “Remove attribute and continue.” All you have
to do is click OK to remove the faux bold and now you can warp your
text. Life is good.
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