Post your photoshop tricks

Marketcake

Marketcake

God of Leisure
Dec 6, 2009
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I use photoshop extensively for design, and while I consider myself pretty damn good I know the sky is the fuggin limit. I know there are probably 1000 little tricks that I don't know about.

First and foremost, heres the most awesome tutorial site I have found: Psdtuts+ | Adobe Photoshop tutorials, from beginner to advanced. . A lot of times I will watch/read tutorials that I'm not really interested in only so I can hope to glimpse at some tool or function he does

ie

1. Using "Place..." .. somehow I never fucking knew this and I feel like a douche now. Instead of going to file > open, opening the 5 or 6 images you want to combine into your logo or whatever, then selecting all, copying, then pasting all into the main document, and going back and closing all the shits 5 seconds later wasting tons of time... file>place just puts it right on the canvas in a smart object so it can be resized. when youre ready to use it you just right click and rasterize the layer.

2. Kerning.. Not really an efficiency trick but put your letter spacing to -60 on long sentences/slogans in headers and it looks much better

3. I work with print-screen exclusively. Often times when im designing webpages.. I have the already existing page up and I need to design something that looks good there. I will print screen the browser window, paste it into a new document. work directly on there doing everything I need to make it look all gravy, then i open up the original files and place them on top.. so I can CTRL+Click (select only whats on that layer). from there you can crop and you will have a perfectly "improved" version of the original image that was in the template or design.
 
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Learning all of the keyboard shortcuts for the tools and most used menu options sped up my photoshop skills by at least 25%...

also, when in text edit mode, press ctrl+enter (or cmd+enter for apple boys) and you'll exit text edit mode

Select a bunch of layers and press ctrl+g and it groups them all.

I'm tapped for now, a lot of it depends on workflow. I know a good one for making repeating patterns really easily, but I'd rather show it in like a 30 second video than try and explain it in words
 
For drawing lines and erasing, holding the shift key forces a straight line, great for making crisp edges.
 
Here is my photoshop trick:

118q4cm.jpg
 
paste INTO

incredibly helpful - just learned this

on a mac it's command+shift v once you have the area you're trying to paste into selected.

Imagine a rectangle with slightly rounded edges and you're just trying to throw multiple images in there to export the slices out for an a/b/c test of the images. Instead of screwing around this will paste it "into" the masked layer thus your rounded corners (or whatever) are preserved and you can just free transform it into place.


Probably old news, however i've been using photoshop for years and haven't figured this out.

What I DO want to know how to do is this:

apply a text style (think gradient overlay) to EACH individual line (row) of text instead of the whole thing.


Think of something like this:

GET THIS PRODUCT!
SPECIAL SAVINGS TODAY ONLY
ACT NOW

instead of a gradient overlay from white to black starting w/ the top row and ending w/ the 3rd- I want it to apply the white to black on each row.

Can this be done short of painstakingly (as I do) creating 3 separate text elements of one line each and copying the layer style over?

There's gotta be a better way no?
 
Type up one line of text and apply your style. then duplicate the layer for each new line and then just edit the text. Once you duplicate the layer, it keeps the style you want, so you won't have to redo it for each one, just change your text.
There should be a way of doing what you want, I've run into the same issue and feel the same way.

Sonny Forelli said:
What I DO want to know how to do is this:

apply a text style (think gradient overlay) to EACH individual line (row) of text instead of the whole thing.


Think of something like this:

GET THIS PRODUCT!
SPECIAL SAVINGS TODAY ONLY
ACT NOW

instead of a gradient overlay from white to black starting w/ the top row and ending w/ the 3rd- I want it to apply the white to black on each row.

Can this be done short of painstakingly (as I do) creating 3 separate text elements of one line each and copying the layer style over?

There's gotta be a better way no?
Click to expand...
 
medicalhumor said:
Type up one line of text and apply your style. then duplicate the layer for each new line and then just edit the text. Once you duplicate the layer, it keeps the style you want, so you won't have to redo it for each one, just change your text.
There should be a way of doing what you want, I've run into the same issue and feel the same way.
Click to expand...

You try creating custom gradients? Might not be exact... but close
 
I'm really liking dropshadow.

Basically on a layer you go to Layer - Layer Style - Dropshadow. You can even adjust how dark it is. Nice.
 
I learned everything I need to know about photoshop from this guy.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_X5uR7VC4M"]YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.[/ame]
 
I've always hated using guides - so when I go to design a new site, I start with a document size of 964px X 1000px (width/height).. then create a new layer, call it blanket.. use the bucket tool to fill in the layer 100% with a random color, set opacity to 10%, then resize the width of the canvas to 22inches (I use 1920x resolution, so it fills out the entire screen without scrolling).. Then whenever I want to be sure the layout I design isn't exceeding the 964px width, I show/hide the blanket layer.
 
As many keyboard shortcuts as your brain can handle FTW.

Not sure if this is common knowledge, but say you're working with a couple layers and just can't select one of the layers for some reason. Put the cursor as close to over the layer you want, and then right click and then left click right away. Usually selects the layer you want, instead of going to your layer explorer and going through a list of 100 layers.

Also as Marketcake mentioned, kerning is hugely helpful. Instead of adjusting the font to have your text fit inside whatever, use the kerning percentages to change widths or heights to force it to fit without overly distorting your text.
 
Spliffic said:
As many keyboard shortcuts as your brain can handle FTW.

Not sure if this is common knowledge, but say you're working with a couple layers and just can't select one of the layers for some reason. Put the cursor as close to over the layer you want, and then right click and then left click right away. Usually selects the layer you want, instead of going to your layer explorer and going through a list of 100 layers.

Also as Marketcake mentioned, kerning is hugely helpful. Instead of adjusting the font to have your text fit inside whatever, use the kerning percentages to change widths or heights to force it to fit without overly distorting your text.
Click to expand...

or, select the move tool (v on the keyboard) and deselect auto-select. Then, whenever you want to select a layer in the work area, hold ctrl and click the layer.

That tip right there has saved me probably months in design time collectively
 
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