Do you feel intimidated when you are trying to learn Photoshop? Are you getting frustrated every time you open Photoshop and try to do something?
Here are the top ten tips to help you feel like a pro, Fast.
- Double-click to open documents: To open a document in Photoshop, just double-click on the grey Photoshop window background and hey presto.
- Hiding the Palettes with the Tab key: Need more room on the screen? Hide the palettes by pressing the Tab key. Get them back by pressing Tab again.
- Full screen mode: Need even more space? You can toggle between a full screen mode with and without menu bar, and normal editing mode just by clicking the F key.
- Nudging: Want more precision on your moves?. Hold down the Control key and use the up, down, left and right arrows to move the layer 1 pixel at a time. To move the layer by 10 pixels at a time, hold down the Shift key as well.
- Moving whole layers: An easy way to move a whole layer is to simply hold down the Control key and click and drag on your layer with the mouse
- Copy layers between documents: You can copy a layer from one document to another simply by clicking on it in the Layers palette and dragging it across to the second document window
- Use Layer Sets: Layer sets let you organize your layers into folders - very useful if you have lots of layers in a document! An example of this may be a vector background with a complex foreground mosaic. You could make a folder for each the background and the foreground. To create a new Layer Set, click on the folder icon at the bottom of the Layers palette, then drag layers on top of a layer set to add them to the set
- Choosing colors quickly: Press I to bring up the Eyedropper tool, then click on a colour in your image to make that colour the foreground colour. Press the ALT key and click to make the color the background color instead.You can also press the D key to reset the foreground and background colours to the default (black and white), and the X key to swap the foreground and background colours.
- How to get straight lines: Constrain movement of the mouse to the nearest 45-degree or 90-degree angle just by holding down the Shift key while you click and drag with the mouse.
- I Made a Mistake, What do I do: Try pressing CTRL, Z to undo the last command. If its older than the last then open the History Window from the Windows menu. From here you can see all the changes you have made. Highlight the change you want to undo and then click on the rubbish bin.
OK so now you should be a little bit more comfortable with using Photoshop. So get going and create.