pssssst! brainfag is retired! i'm now at natebeaty.com

 

Photoshop Discoveries

posted in Geek Talk on January 19, 2005

I perpetually run into key commands or techniques that weren't immediately apparent. Photoshop is one of those programs that is so powerful it allows you to do things in a million different ways. Here's a few things I've blundered into.

 

I was really excited (well, pleased, maybe) to realize Enter (not Return, Enter) will commit changes while editing a text box, allowing you to then use another key-command (such as V for the layer tool, or Tab to bring the tools back into visibility -- two I always need to switch back and forth with the text editing..)

Layers

First off, if anyone knows how to marquee-select a group of layers, please write me. I've been unsuccessful in googling this, and it would be immensely useful.

The Auto Select Layer option is really handy for quick design layouts. You can shift-click a layer to link it to the currently selected layer(s). If you shift-click a layer in a group of linked layers, it will separate it from the group and allow you to move it around individually. (You can also do this by alt-clicking the link icon in the layer palette.)

I'm going to add to this article periodically -- I'll bump it up as I remember/find things that were of interest...

3 comments on this entry

Have you heard of anyone using mouse-strokes for starting commands in Photoshop? I do cad-esque layout umpteen hours a day at work, and have all kinds of shortcuts where I hold down the left mousebutton and draw a line which will make a command happen, and I find myself trying to do it in photoshop. But meh... my design program works in a UNIX-like environment,and can be command-line driven... much easier to get at than photoshop.

If you ever get the hankering, it would be cool to read more details about how you color stuff in photoshop.

Stink Stankstunk 2/16/05
 

i just had a great idea... ya know when you see "view thumbnails" on a web page to see a bunch of pictures? you should make a page like that, but only have pictures of thumb nails.

yobro 2/16/05
 

There are a few mouse gesture utilities for OSX - xGestures and CocoaGestures. I thought I had read about more of them, but I haven't had a need for em.

I'm just waiting for Tiger's Automator, which looks to be incredibly cool & useful.

Ain't too much to my Photoshop coloring -- the main trick is to scan at 600dpi grayscale, then Select Color the black, paste in a new layer, *then* reduce and color in a layer between the white bg and linework. This way you don't get the white fuzz around the linework.

If anyone else cares for a tutorial, I'll put some effort behind it.

nate 2/18/05
 
 

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