Five more Photoshop tips you might not know
Chris Tingom has a short list of Photoshop tips you might not know. He’s obviously been using Photoshop for a while and it’s a pretty handy list of tips to know. Always trying to help others out I thought I’d add a couple more to his list.
- Holding down the Space key will move a selection while you’re making it. When you’re drawing an area with the marque selection tool hold down the Space bar and you can move the entire selection. This even works if you are holding down the Shift key (to constrain the selection or add to a selection) and/or the Option key (to remove an area of the selection). Don’t worry, when you release the Space bar you can continue drawing your selection.
- Command + Delete/Backspace fills a selection with the background colour. If there is no selection it will fill the entire canvas with the background colour. The benefit of using this key combination is that there is no dialogue box to click through, the fill just happens.
- Option + Delete/Backspace fills a selection with the foreground colour. Pretty self-explanatory really. It’s just the same as #2 but it fills with the foreground colour instead.
- Right/Control click on the ruler to change measurement units. This is much quicker and much more convenient then having to go through the preferences each time you want to change the measurement units.
- Command + J copies creates a new layer from the selected portion of the current layer. This is probably more useful to people when they want to make small adjustments to certain areas of an image without destroying it. It’s also very handy when you want to play around with blend modes between different layers.
I also have one correction slash adjustment to Chris’ list. While Shift + Backspace fills a selection is technically true what it really does is bring up the fill dialogue box. I find it a little more clumsy than the tips I’ve mentioned above simply because it brings up the dialogue box.
That’s all I have to say about that for now. What are your 5 Photoshop tips?
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Wow! I’m so impressed. I learned a few things from your list as well. Thanks for the plug.
Chris Tingom on December 1st, 2005 3:56 pm
No worries. I’ve only been using Photoshop since ‘95 or so but I’m big on finding shortcuts and experimenting with key combinations. It gets really fun when we start talking about productivity actions and workflows. Hmmm, do I smell another Photoshop post being cooked up?
Mike Stickel on December 1st, 2005 4:50 pm
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Yay! I love #2 and 3! I, too, have been using Photoshop since ‘95, but I have never read through the manual. These were new to me. Especially not having to use Edit -> Fill is good, I always found that dialog needlessly cumbersome.
#5 is kind of needless, since Cmd-C then Cmd-V has the same effect and is easier, at least to me, since I have my left hand down in that corner most of the time anyway.
Great tips, though, and better than Mr. Tingom’s, in my opinion!
Travholt on December 1st, 2005 6:03 pm
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Cmd+New Layer creates a layer beneath the currently selected layer.
Cmd+Click with the move tool selects the object directly under the cursor, and moves it, despite current layer selection
Thomas Madrid on December 1st, 2005 8:32 pm
One way around having to hold the Command key down is to select “Auto Select Layer” in the option toolbar for the move tool. This will allow you to simply click on whatever object you want to move and move it. There are good reasons for both techniques.
Here’s another one related to layers:
Control/right click anywhere on the canvas with the move tool. This will bring up a list of all the layers that currently have elements at the position of the cursor. As long as the cursor is over any part of any element on any layer, it’s layer name will show up in the list. Clicking on the layers name will select that layer for you.
Mike Stickel on December 2nd, 2005 10:42 am
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Here are a few more that I find useful (PC)
1. Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E - This will make a new layer which is a merge or all visible layers. Handy way to create a snapshot.
2. Alt + click on color to delete a swatch
3. Alt + Ctrl + T - Free transform with copy
4. Alt + Ctrl + Shift + T - Reapply transform with copy
counterjumper.com
Karmadude on December 2nd, 2005 1:43 pm