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PhotoShop users have complained for years that PhotoShop can be quirky, unyielding, stubborn and generally difficult. Here are just a few tips and tricks that which you might not be able to locate in the Adobe PhotoShop manual when you need them. These will definitely make the Adobe PhotoShop work more easily for you. Most of these ideas will work on many versions of PhotoShop.
By and large, these same tips and tricks work on PhotoShop for a Mac as well. The difference is that instead of using the Control key, Mac users will be using their Command key.
Layers Palette
When you start to work on an image in PhotoShop, check your Layers Palette first!
Don’t see the Layers Palette? No problem. Click on WINDOW (at the top of the PhotoShop screen, towards the right hand side) then click on Layers. The Layers Palette will appear on the screen.
If your Layers Palette has one layer, and the title of that layer is “Background,” you will need to change the title. As long as it says “Background,” quite a few options will be “grayed out” and will not allow you to use them when you click on them. This has been a huge source of frustration to new PhotoShop users for years now.
The solution is to double-click on the word “Background.” A new window will pop up which is called “New Layer.”
Look for ” Name: Layer 0” …fFind it? Good! Highlight “Layer 0” with your mouse and type the letter “a” (or any other letter or number key you prefer) and hit OK (After this, whenever you double click on a layer title to change it, you will not get the pop-up window anymore. The title will simply become highlighted allowing you to type in a new name for that layer).
“Layer 0” has been replaced by “a.” (or whatever key you designated). You can name this just about anything, so find a key that is easy to hit. Yeah, you could give this layer a descriptive name if you wanted to, however you will often be working on many layers, knowing that they are going to be flattened eventually so you can save your work as a .jpg.
Only take the time to name your layers descriptive things if you plan on saving this file as a PhotoShop (.psd) file, or have confusingly similar layers that you would otherwise have a tough time keeping separated. It is important to remember that .psd files are larger and take up a lot more file space than .jpg, .tiff or .png files.
Now, if you want to click on EDIT, then Transform or Free Transform, those options are now available to you. Transform gives you options like scale, rotate, skew, distort, perspective, warp, rotation, flip horizontal and flip vertical.
Rotating Your Entire Picture
While Transform will allow you to change selected pieces of a layer, you will need to use IMAGE, Rotate Canvas to turn your entire picture. If you download a digital image from your camera, it might appear sideways if you turned the camera to get a long horizontal shot. Now’s the time to flip the image using IMAGE, Rotate Canvas. By using this option, the image doesn’t spill off the canvas. Sometimes, if you use EDIT, Transform, Rotate to turn a selection, that selection could end up partially off your canvas. You can only see what is on your canvas. So if you want to turn an entire picture, rather than just the selected part, use IMAGE, Rotate Canvas.
Beware of the Tools Palette Crop Icon!
Speaking of changing the picture drastically, if you use the Tools Palette’s Crop icon to crop your picture down to a smaller size, it will crop the entire file! Not just the layer you may be on at the moment.
Sizing Your Graphic
If you are fooling around with sizing, use the Marquee icon on the Tools Palette to copy the part of the picture you think you might like to keep. Copy and Paste that to a new layer. Don’t worry about creating a new layer. When you give PhotoShop the “paste” command, it will automatically paste that selection into a new layer for you. It is better to try out sizes with a new layer than it is to use the crop feature, then have to get into the History Palette to back up to where you were when you decide that you don’t like the cropped file.
Making a New Layer - Combining Several Merged Layers
Sometimes you have 5, 10 or 15 layers that you’d like to merge into one convenient layer. Perhaps you’d like to copy your work, at least those layers which are turned on and visible. But you might not want to merge all the layers. If you simply click on Merge Down, Merge Visible or Flatten Image, you will never be able to go back and “un-merge” them again after the file has been saved as one layer.
Why is this helpful? Sometimes I will have layers that change the look of the file and will turn on some layers for one use, and turn on others for another use. For instance, if the graphic is a woman with her hands outstretched, one layer may have her holding chocolate cake and a dish of ice cream. Another layer may put a pot roast and steaming hot mashed potatoes in her hands, and a third layer may contain a salad and bread. The same file can be used to illustrate different chapters in a cookbook, by simply making visible the food layer that is currently desired.
You can create a new layer which incorporates all the layers currently visible. BE SURE THAT ALL LAYERS YOU WANT TO HAVE INCLUDED IN THIS NEW LAYER ARE TURNED ON, that is, the little eyeball icon at the left of the layer title is showing. If not, click in the blank space where the eyeball should be and it will appear, and your layer will show on the canvas also. Then hold down all of these keys: Control, [Command instead of Control on a Mac] Alt, Shift and e.
If you clicked on your top layer before making a merged layer of visible layers, then the new merged layer will appear above that, at the top of your list of layers. The new merged layer always appears above the last layer that you clicked on, which is highlighted in the Layer Palette and is referred to as your “active layer.”
Cutting and Copying a Layer
Let’s say you want to copy a layer. You’d find that command under EDIT. But wait! It is grayed out. Regardless of whether your layer is called “Background” or something else, you will need to select what is to be cut or copied before that command will let you use it! If you will select the layer by either clicking on SELECT and ALL, or holding down both the Control key [Command instead of Control on a Mac] and the A key, then the layer will be selected and you can then go to EDIT and will see that CUT and COPY are now usable.
Hot Keys
Starting to use “hot keys” on the keyboard to activate commands, instead of clicking within PhotoShop itself, will save you a lot of time in the long run. Many people who are accustomed to using Microsoft programs will find it second nature to use the hot keys for Cut, Copy, Paste, Select All, etc. And those hot keys are the same in PhotoShop! When you put your mouse over an icon in the Tools Palette, the hot key equivalent will appear along with the name of the icon. The selections in toolbar at the top of PhotoShop (such as Image Size under IMAGE) show you the hot keys, when one is available. Not every command comes with its own hot key combination.
Drawing Around An Image With the Lasso Tool
This tip has saved me hours of aggravation! There are three lasso tools available for your use within the Tools Palette. Only one of the lasso tool icons will be visible on your Tools Palette at any given time. If you click on that lasso icon and continue to hold the mouse button down, the three lasso icons will appear and you can click on the one you want to use.
The regular lasso tool (the one at the far left) is a free-form way to draw borders. However, if you will hold down the ALT key while you use this tool, the lines that it draws will all be straight lines. This is very useful when you are outlining something! Increase the viewing magnification until the outline becomes a jagged edge of pixels. Then draw along the edge with the lasso tool, holding down the ALT key so that you go from point to point. When the magnification is high, you will find that just about anything you want to draw around is easier if you use straight lines. Some of those lines will be very short though. When you have completely enclosed what you are outlining so that the starting and ending points meet, reduce the magnification and you will see the entire outline. At this point, it is very helpful to save what you have just drawn. You'd hate to have to go through all that all over again!
Saving Your Lasso Outline or “Selection”
Click SELECT and Save Selection. The pop-up window gives you a place to name your outline. Next to “Name:” type in the name of the outline you just created. You can save quite a few outlines in there and go back to them when you need them. This function will not allow you to access an outline in any file, only the one you were working with it in. When you re-save the file, the outlines that you saved will be included.
The next time you go into PhotoShop, give these tips and tricks a try. They will make using PhotoShop easier, you’ll notice less grayed-out options and you may find you are working faster and with less frustration.
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They certainly couldn't push such a viewer silently through a required Windows Update — and alter our file associations so that PDF files opened with this new tool. Good lord, can you imagine the outcry if Microsoft was found to be messing with our preferences without our say so?! We'd never hear the end of it.
Make it an optional update, and you're leaving it up to users to make the switch. Based on what I've seen from the users I've supported over the past 16 years, good luck getting someone to switch applications when they already have one that works. We can shout security and common sense all day long, but at the end of the day, it likely wouldn't matter. Average users are much more numerous than power users like you and me, and they've been OK with Reader all along — even when you and I complained about sluggish start times and bloat. They simply aren't concerned.
On top of that, the problem isn't really Reader or PDF files in the first place.
The real problem is unwary users who don't know when they're being phished or misled. PDF currently provides a convenient attack vector but you can bet that the bad guys would simply find another way to ensnare users if Microsoft added a less-exploitable PDF viewer.
Yes, Reader exploits have been steadily rising. No, there isn't really a compelling reason for Reader to be able to launch external executables from a PDF. Yes, Adobe needs to overhaul the program's security features. Ultimately, though, computer users need to take more responsibility for their own security.
Pay attention to who's sending you email. Ask yourself, “is there any reason this person would need to send me a document?” Don't click Yes, OK, or Next without first understanding what's going on.
The best defense against malicious software, exploits, and scammers, isn't software — it's an alert, educated user who understands risks and takes the appropriate steps to mitigate them.
The new Updater is designed to keep end users up to date in an automated way.
With the activation of the new Updater, Windows users will have the option to download and install updates for Adobe Reader and Acrobat automatically, without user interaction. This is an important evolution in the distribution of updates.
If you would like to activate the new feature. Go to Edit, Preferences (Ctrl-K), and then select Updater to chose your preferred update method.
For more information visit Steve Gotwalls' or Brad Arkin's blog postings.
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