By David Peters
Selecting Colors from an Image Quickly To take a color from your image and turn it into the foreground color Press I to activate the Eyedropper Tool and then click on any color in your image. To take that color and turn it into the background color, press the ALT Key and click on any color in your image.
Change Brush Tip Sizes Quickly With a brush selected, simply Press the Right Bracket Key "]" to increase the size of your brush tip, or Press the Left Bracket Key "[" to decrease the size of your brush tip.
The Move Tool & the Arrow Keys You will want to get in the habit of activating the Move Tool with the keyboard shortcut, "V". Once the Move Tool is active you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge a layer or selection in 1 pixel increments. If you want to speed things up, press Shift along with an arrow key to nudge in 10 pixel increments.
Hide Your Palettes Press Tab once to hide all your palettes. Press Tab again to bring them back. Press Shift Tab to hide all your palettes except the toolbar.
Zooming In & Zooming Out To use the zoom tool press CTRL and the plus sign " " (Mac: Command and the " " sign). To zoom out press CTRL and the minus sign "-" (Mac: Command and the "-"sign).
Navigating In Magnified Images If you have lost your bearings when zooming in on a large image you can jump quickly to specific views using the following shortcuts: To set the view to the top left hand corner of your image press the Home Key. Press the End Key to set the view to the bottom right hand corner of your image. To move the view one full screen down press the Page Down Key. Press CTRL Page Down (Mac: Command Page Down) to move the screen view one full screen to the right. Press CTRL Page Up (Mac: Command Page Up) to move the screen view one full screen to the left.
Selecting Just The Pixels On A Layer An easy way to select an object that is on a transparent layer is to Press the Command Key (PC: Control key) and click on the layer with the object in the Layers Palette. This makes sure that only the opaque pixels (the pixels that are visible) will be selected with the marching ants, instead of the entire layer.
Tile Images for Better Visibility When you simultaneously open a bunch of files in Photoshop they automatically cascade, and it can be difficult to select individual windows within all the overlapping files. To eliminate this problem choose Window Arrange Tile and all of your open files will rearrange themselves to be visible all at once. When you're ready to close the windows you don't have to spend time closing them individually, instead use the Close All shortcut Control Option W (Mac: Command Alt W).
Getting Rid Of the Welcome Screen - And Bringing It Back I am sure you are familiar with the Welcome screen that faces you when you first open Photoshop. If you are like me, at some point you might want to stop this screen from coming up. If you look you will see a check box at the bottom of the screen that you can click to hide the screen at startup. If, at some point down the road, you change your mind and decide that you want to have it show up again, you can temporarily bring the screen back by clicking under the Help menu
Hide Your Palettes Press Tab once to hide all your palettes. Press Tab again to bring them back. Press Shift Tab to hide all your palettes except the toolbar.
Zooming In & Zooming Out To use the zoom tool press CTRL and the plus sign " " (Mac: Command and the " " sign). To zoom out press CTRL and the minus sign "-" (Mac: Command and the "-"sign).
Navigating In Magnified Images If you have lost your bearings when zooming in on a large image you can jump quickly to specific views using the following shortcuts: To set the view to the top left hand corner of your image press the Home Key. Press the End Key to set the view to the bottom right hand corner of your image. To move the view one full screen down press the Page Down Key. Press CTRL Page Down (Mac: Command Page Down) to move the screen view one full screen to the right. Press CTRL Page Up (Mac: Command Page Up) to move the screen view one full screen to the left.
Selecting Just The Pixels On A Layer An easy way to select an object that is on a transparent layer is to Press the Command Key (PC: Control key) and click on the layer with the object in the Layers Palette. This makes sure that only the opaque pixels (the pixels that are visible) will be selected with the marching ants, instead of the entire layer.
Tile Images for Better Visibility When you simultaneously open a bunch of files in Photoshop they automatically cascade, and it can be difficult to select individual windows within all the overlapping files. To eliminate this problem choose Window Arrange Tile and all of your open files will rearrange themselves to be visible all at once. When you're ready to close the windows you don't have to spend time closing them individually, instead use the Close All shortcut Control Option W (Mac: Command Alt W).
Getting Rid Of the Welcome Screen - And Bringing It Back I am sure you are familiar with the Welcome screen that faces you when you first open Photoshop. If you are like me, at some point you might want to stop this screen from coming up. If you look you will see a check box at the bottom of the screen that you can click to hide the screen at startup. If, at some point down the road, you change your mind and decide that you want to have it show up again, you can temporarily bring the screen back by clicking under the Help menu
Selecting Just The Pixels On A Layer An easy way to select an object that is on a transparent layer is to Press the Command Key (PC: Control key) and click on the layer with the object in the Layers Palette. This makes sure that only the opaque pixels (the pixels that are visible) will be selected with the marching ants, instead of the entire layer.
Tile Images for Better Visibility When you simultaneously open a bunch of files in Photoshop they automatically cascade, and it can be difficult to select individual windows within all the overlapping files. To eliminate this problem choose Window Arrange Tile and all of your open files will rearrange themselves to be visible all at once. When you're ready to close the windows you don't have to spend time closing them individually, instead use the Close All shortcut Control Option W (Mac: Command Alt W).
Getting Rid Of the Welcome Screen - And Bringing It Back I am sure you are familiar with the Welcome screen that faces you when you first open Photoshop. If you are like me, at some point you might want to stop this screen from coming up. If you look you will see a check box at the bottom of the screen that you can click to hide the screen at startup. If, at some point down the road, you change your mind and decide that you want to have it show up again, you can temporarily bring the screen back by clicking under the Help menu and choosing Welcome Screen.
Cycle through All of Your Open Documents At some point you may want to find one of your open documents that are hidden on your toolbar. You can easily press Control-Tab repeatedly (MAC and PC) to cycle through all of your open documents and switch between them.
About the Author:
Tile Images for Better Visibility When you simultaneously open a bunch of files in Photoshop they automatically cascade, and it can be difficult to select individual windows within all the overlapping files. To eliminate this problem choose Window Arrange Tile and all of your open files will rearrange themselves to be visible all at once. When you're ready to close the windows you don't have to spend time closing them individually, instead use the Close All shortcut Control Option W (Mac: Command Alt W).
Getting Rid Of the Welcome Screen - And Bringing It Back I am sure you are familiar with the Welcome screen that faces you when you first open Photoshop. If you are like me, at some point you might want to stop this screen from coming up. If you look you will see a check box at the bottom of the screen that you can click to hide the screen at startup. If, at some point down the road, you change your mind and decide that you want to have it show up again, you can temporarily bring the screen back by clicking under the Help menu and choosing Welcome Screen.
Cycle through All of Your Open Documents At some point you may want to find one of your open documents that are hidden on your toolbar. You can easily press Control-Tab repeatedly (MAC and PC) to cycle through all of your open documents and switch between them.
About the Author:
Interested in getting professionally made Photoshop CS5 Tips Read this FREE 179 page Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book. Discover how to master Photoshop in under 2 hours by watching the sample Photoshop CS5 video tutorial for newbies.