Archive for October, 2010

Photoshop selection shortcuts

Photoshop selection shortcuts

I love keyboard shortcuts! In fact, I use them so often that I actually don’t know where some of the options exist in menus, I just know the shortcut to get them. Anyway, here are a few of my favorite Adobe Photoshop keyboard shortcuts that I use when working with selections.

  • ⌘ D = drop current selection
  • Shift + Drag = add to current selection
  • Option + Drag = deselect specific area
  • ⌘ + Shift + D = reselect last selection
  • Option + Delete = fill selection with foreground color
  • ⌘ + Delete = fill selection with background color
  • Option + Click (with Lasso tool) = create selection with straight lines
  • ⌘ + Shift + i = inverse entire selection
  • Space bar (while drawing a selection with the marquee tool) = allows you to move your selection while you’re still drawing it. Let go of space bar when you’re done moving the selection and want to continue dragging it out.
10/27/2010 Read More
Cool art: Steve Jobs collage

Cool art: Steve Jobs collage

If you’re a fan of Apple’s Steve Jobs and cool artwork, you’ll most likely appreciate this collage of Apple images used to create a portrait of Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs collage

Click image to view the full size collage at Flickr by tsevis

You could do it by hand, but it’s far easier to use a mosaic app like the free MacOSaiX, which I mentioned way back in 2009.

10/26/2010 Read More
Rotate your InDesign page spreads for a better, more accurate view

Rotate your InDesign page spreads for a better, more accurate view

If you happen to be working on an a multi-page InDesign document with facing pages that requires a fold at the top of the page rather than the side, it can be a real pain in the neck (literally) trying to work on pages that are sideways. Fortunately, InDesign allows you to relieve the pain.

Normal spread view in Adobe InDesign

Normal spread view in Adobe InDesign

As you can see above, a normal spread setup places the pages side-by-side. But your pages appear on screen sideways, with the fold running vertically instead of horizontally the way you want it. That’s because there’s no way to set up facing pages vertically.

Rotated spread view in Adobe InDesign

Rotated spread view in Adobe InDesign

Fortunately, you can use InDesign CS5‘s Rotate Spread feature to turn the spread to make it much easier to work on those pages. You can do this by visiting View>Rotate Spread from the InDesign menus and choose the direction you wish to rotate your view.

10/25/2010 Read More
Quickly fix color cast in your Photoshop images

Quickly fix color cast in your Photoshop images

No matter how great digital cameras are, inevitably, you end up with a photo now and then that has a rather unpleasant color cast to it. You can use Levels, Curves, Selective Color or any number of other color correction tools found in Photoshop to fix it – but there is a quick one-click way that works fairly well.

Take the image below left. The photo turned out fairly decent, but had a nasty yellowish tint to it.

Photoshop's Auto Color

Photoshop's Auto Color yields pretty good results

Simply selecting Image>Auto Color or hitting Command + Shift + B tells Photoshop to automatically adjust the colors in your image based on the hidden colors it finds in the photo. As you can see on the image above right, the correction worked perfectly.

Of course you could use a plethora of tools to do the job, and you might even get better results. But for a quick fix, Auto Color works pretty darn well.

10/22/2010 Read More
Convert YouTube and Internet videos to iPod/iTunes format for free

Convert YouTube and Internet videos to iPod/iTunes format for free

EvomThere are plenty of browser plugins that allow you to download videos from websites like YouTube. A few of them even allow you to convert the video to a different format to suit your needs. However most of them are either complex, require further processing, or simply break every time the browser gets updated. Thankfully, there’s a free Mac OS X app that does it quickly and easily.

Evom from TheLittleAppFactory does just that. Evom allows you to convert online video to a number of formats, including iPod, Apple TV and HTML5.

Evom converts Internet videos easily

Evom converts Internet videos to a number of convenient formats easily

The easiest way I’ve found is to drag the Favicon of the YouTube page containing the video you wish to convert to the desktop, then to the Evom window. Evom does the rest for you. In my tests, it worked on YouTube and a number of other sites perfectly.

10/20/2010 Read More
Gorgeous iPad wallpapers

Gorgeous iPad wallpapers

iPad Wallpapers

Click for 50 Free high-quality iPad wallpapers

10/19/2010 Read More
Three great utilities that should be built-in to Mac OS X

Three great utilities that should be built-in to Mac OS X

Mac OS X FinderWith all the cool features found in Mac OS X, it’s hard to believe that there are a few obvious features still haven’t been added to OS X’s Finder. Finder tabs, window management, Dock enhancements, and a more robust dialog box have been shortcomings of Mac OS X for a long time.

Perhaps someday soon Apple will finally get around to enhancing the Finder with the features mentioned above, but until then you can have them now via three fantastic add-ons; Default Folder X, HyperDock, and TotalFinder.

10/18/2010 Read More
Free Photoshop brushes: Glaring Sun

Free Photoshop brushes: Glaring Sun

Photoshop Sun Brushes

Add a little sunlight to your sky images with these Photoshop brushes (Click image)

10/15/2010 Read More
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