If you’ve followed this site for any amount of time, you no doubt noticed that I have a great fondness for Photoshop brushes. I download every decent brush set I come across. My custom brushes folder has hundreds upon hundreds of brush files. One thing that has always bugged me is that in most cases, I have no idea what ALL the brushes look like before I bother loading them into Photoshop to preview. Most sites that offer brushes create a preview image that shows off only one or two of the brushes in the set, and typically they apply other Photoshop effects to make them look better in the preview. Thankfully, the options I’ve covered below make previewing your brushes easier. (more…)
Category: Photoshop
Layer Opacity vs. Layer Fill in Photoshop
You probably know how and why you adjust Layer Opacity of a layer in Adobe Photoshop – so that the layer is transparent enough to have the pixels on the layer below show though. But sometimes you want to keep the Layer Styles you’ve applied, such as drop shadows, glows, or bevels, completely visible. 
This is where the Layer Fill option comes into play. The Layer Fill only affects the actual pixels on the layer, but leaves any Layer Styles you’ve applied to the layer intact. As you can see in the image above. The white box on the Shape layer has a few Layer Effects applied to it. I want those effects to be remain fully visible, but I want to hide the box. Using the Fill slider, I set the Fill opacity to 0%, which hides the white shape completely, but leaves the Layer Effects visible.
Learning new techniques with free layered Photoshop files
10Steps has put together a list of 40 high-quality layered Photoshop files that you can download from various sources. While all of the files are of stunning quality, the real value in these files is seeing how they’re constructed by looking at all the individual layers & settings. It’s a great way to learn new techniques. I really liked the DVD Plastic Case by Manicho, in particular.
Rearrange the Photoshop brushes panel
If you use brushes in Adobe Photoshop as much as I do, you no doubt have a few favorite brushes you use often. It can be a real pain if you have several (or in my case, dozens) of brush sets loaded, scrolling through them looking for your faves. Thankfully, you can change the order your favorites appear at in the brushes panel – possibly saving you lots of scrolling each time you use the brush. To rearrange the order the brushes appear, simply go under Edit>Preset Manager and choose Brushes from the pop-up menu. Then click on your favorite brush and drag it to anywhere in the panel you prefer. To move more than one brush, shift + click on multiple brushes to move them all at once.
Creating straight selection lines with the Photoshop lasso tool
Did you know that if you want to make a selection in Photoshop with the regular Lasso tool (instead of the freeform ones you normally get using the tool), you just hit the Shift + L key combo, which gives you the Polygon Lasso tool? The lines you get will be straight and connected to each other. This is perfect for selecting straight edged objects in your photos, such as buidings, cars, etc. Hitting the key combo again gives you the Magnetic Lasso tool.
Using multiple windows with one image in Photoshop
Having multiple windows with the same image open in Photoshop can be quite handy. Here are a few ways I use the feature. First, open an image you wish to edit. Next, go to the menubar and select Window>Arrange>New Window for [filename]. A new window will open containing the same image. Now switch back to the first window (if you’re using CS4, you may have to drag the new image window tab out to create a full window). 
Because many filters require an image to be in RGB in order to work, I always color correct images in RGB mode. But I still want to see the image as it will appear in CMYK. So I click on the second window and hit Command + Y to set the preview of the image to CMYK. Now when I switch back to the first window, I can edit away in RGB and see the edits updated instantly in CMYK in the second window. Another way I use the multiple window feature of Photoshop is when I’m editing a zoomed-in area of a large image and I want to see the overall results of my editing on the entire image. I can zoom way in on image window one to do my edits, and keep image window two zoomed out to view the entire image.
Free photo-fix Photoshop action
Design Live has an Adobe Photoshop Action file available for download that aims at fixing your photos without hassle. The Quick Fix Photoshop Action boosts Color and Contrast using Curves, extends the Dynamic range of your photo using Shadows/Highlights and Sharpens your image using the High Pass filter. The edits applied to your photo are non-destructive because they’re made on separate layers, making it easy to go back and adjust the opacity of the effects on your original image. This is especially nice because you can duplicate the layers for even more enhancement, or change blend modes if you’re in the mood for experimenting. The Quick Fix Photoshop Action is available absolutely free and can be used without any restrictions.
Painting color onto a grayscale image
Adding color to a grayscale image is a great effect that offers a lot of visual impact with little effort. Many digital cameras can actually do it automatically. But the results are often less than optimal. Lesa Snider at The Graphic Reporter wrote a brief tutorial a few years ago that illustrates this simple technique that creates a central point of interest in your image. The tutorial involves the use of layers and layer blending modes, as well as the brush tool. Once you master the effect doing it as described in the tutorial, you can move on to using Masks and Channels for more accurate results. One bit of advice though, less is more. In other words, pick and choose the areas of your image you want to draw attention to the most. Colorizing most of the image defeats the purpose of the effect entirely. In the sample image above, I probably would have left the hat, gloves and purse in grayscale, drawing more attention to the purse. But that’s just my opinion.
Zoom all Photoshop documents at once
Did you know that when you’re working with multiple Photoshop documents open at once that you can zoom them all to 100% with a simple keystroke? By holding down the Shift key and double-clicking the Zoom tool in the Toolbox, all your document views will be set to 100%. Pretty handy when you’re evaluating several images at once. Of course, this assumes you have each image open in its own window, rather than CS4’s tabbed window mode.
How to accurately straighten an image in Photoshop
Following up on an earlier post about using the Measure/Ruler tool in Photoshop, I’ve got a quick tip on how to accurately straighten an image. Let’s say you have an image of buildings, trees or other objects that are tilted in your image, or the scanned image is tilted. You want them to be straight, but making the image a layer and using the rotate tool doesn’t always produce accurate results, requiring you to undo and try again. 
The easiest way to straighten the image accurately is is to select the Measure/Ruler tool as described in the earlier post (Shift + i three times), then draw a line with the tool at the exact same angle as the building, tree or other object you wish to straighten out. Once the line is drawn, go to Image>Image Rotation>Arbitrary and take a look at the Angle field in the Rotate Canvas dialog box. You’ll notice that the angle is already set. In the sample image above, you can see that I’ve drawn the line with the Measure tool along the edge of the white box and invoked the dialog box. The white box is at an angle of 2.21. If I hit OK, the image is automatically straightened perfectly (provided the line you’ve drawn is accurate).