Photoshop Tips and Tricks

[Moose]

Contribute any tricks you know from photoshop!  

As a formally trained user of Photoshop, I have a ton XD 

#1 DO NOT ERASE 

Use a layer mask or the equivalent in your program. It gives the same effect as erasing, but the original pixel data is always there if you want to go back. If you erase, and that eraser step disappears from the history panel, you are stuck. You don't want that.  

#2 Use the shift button

With any brush based tool like brushes, erasers, etc. click, hold shift, then click again to make a straight line. This makes removing annoying white halos a breeze and saves a ton of time.

[Duggs26]

Hold shift when using Free Transform to resize an image. This will stop the image from getting squashed horizontally or vertically.

When smudging, use the colour picker on the thing you're about to smudge first so you don't get bits of a random colour appearing.

[Jac]

I NEED MOAR.

[Moose]

If you're removing a white background but it's leaving a "halo" of white, go to Select - Modify - Expand to enlarge the selection by a few pixels. It'll take off the halo, but it might cause jagged edges.

(This is where you paint the edges back on that Layer Mask *wink wink nudge nudge*)

[Moose]

Move Tool- Used to move objects around the canvas. Holding shift and pressing + or - will cycle through the different blend modes.

Marquee Tool- Used to make rectangular selections. You can use this to measure elements by selecting around them and using the info panel to get dimensions of the selection.

Lasso tool- There are 2 main Lasso tools. The freeform and the magnetic. Freeform lets you hand draw any selection you want. The magnetic lasso attaches itself to sharp points of contrast as you go around the edge. It can help to trace objects out of backgrounds that the magic wand tool can't due to varying colors.

Magic Wand Tool- This selects pixels nearby of the same color. The Tolerance effects how many shades of difference it will still select. Underneath it will be the Quick Selection tool, which can select many similar colors in a larger area. It's faster, but not always as accurate. Shift adds to the selection, alt subtracts from it.

Slice Tool- Unless you plan on optimizing an image for a website, you won't use this.

Eyedropper- This can be used to sample colors from anywhere on the image for use with brushes or other tools.

Healing Brush / Patch Tool- The healing brush samples the surrounding pixels and "heals" the area you swipe over. This can be used to remove blemishes from photos and remove noise.

The Patch Tool selects an area, then you drag the selection to another part of the image. It copies the pixel data of the place you drag it to and replaces the initially selected area with it, then blending it automatically into the surrounding pixels.  

Brush Tool- This is pretty obvious. You use this to paint color onto an image. Painting Black onto a Layer Mask deletes pixels, painting White restore it. 

Clone Stamp Tool- This copies pixels from one area and allows you to paint it elsewhere onto the image. The sample is relative to where you paint. Meaning, if you sample the top of an eye and paint downward somewhere it will paint the eye and below it the further you paint. 

Eraser- DON'T DO IT! 



 

[Moose]

Made This Tut pic for any aspiring PS artists XD

[Duggs26]

Cool, I've never been good at drawing on photoshop as I don't have a drawing tablet but this could come in handy ^^