Photoshop Quicktip 3: Selecting Type

Ok so here’s a really quick one to reduce the workflow process in phtoshop if you aren’t familiar with it already.  Rather than going to the type tool, clicking onto the text you want to edit and highlighting it all before you can change anything.  A simpler way to do it is jut to double click the ‘T’ icon of the text in the layers panel, indicated in the image below.

Be careful not to click the actual layer name and only the icon, and in doing this you’ll have saved a couple of clicks in the workflow process.

Photoshop Quicktip 2: Preview Shortcut

 
Ok so as these are really speedy to publish here’s another quick tip which may be of use if you don’t know it already. Being sat near the door of a busy office I get a lot of people wanting to look at what I’m working on, using a 24″ cinema screen is great but I end up with a load of windows all open at the same time and when I’m showing people a design, surrounding windows can distract from the designs overall appearance. 

To get around this when in Photoshop I simply hit ‘F’ + ‘F’ + ‘Tab’ on the keyboard and hey presto the design I’m working on is showcased  beautifully full screen with a deep black surround, and I can talk someone through it without any distraction from other windows, and I can still zoom in and also move around with the space bar.

 

Once I’ve talked them through it, hitting ‘F’ again looses my black surround and hitting ‘Tab’ again brings back all my toolbars. So there you have it a simple way of showcasing your work on the fly. The image below demonstrates how much better a design looks when showcased properly.

Photoshop Quicktip 1: Opacity Slider

Well my initial thoughts of making a blog entry on a weekly basis have been blown out of the water with a busy end to 2007 and a flat out 2008 already. I was hoping to write a good solid photoshop tutorial to start the new year however being a bit frantic thought I would start a little section called Quicktips, most of tips will be simple nuggets of info that can improve work flow. Some of these may be obvious to you and you may use them on a daily basis, others you may not know and once tried will make you wonder how you lived without them.

I like everyone use transparencies in some of my projects and often use them just to see an item hiding on the layer below, to do this I used to use the little drop down arrow next to the ‘100%’ in the layers palette, slide down then go change it again.

Whilst this isn’t the most time consuming process in the world there is a quicker way, simply click on the word ‘opacity’ highlighted in the image above and whilst holding the mouse down slide left and right to increase/decrease the opacity.Simple as that, you’ve reduced your workflow by one whole click, this works on other features of photoshop as well that use slider bars for values. Apologies if this was blindingly obvious to you and you’ve wasted 30 seconds of your life, but if you’re just starting out in Photoshop it could be a useful little tip.