Photoshop Ninja

There are quite a few shortcuts for the layers palette, the most important ‘everyday’ ones are to change layer opacity without using the slider at the top.

Changing layer opacity quickly is important when using Photoshop - but it’s really annoying having to go over to the slider at the top of the layers palette. It’s so much better to just keep an eye on the image and use keyboard shortcuts!

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There are times when you need to merge certain layers together in your Photoshop composition and there are a number of ways to do this quickly and easily.
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It is not currently possible to apply effects like drop shadow and outer glow to a group of individual layers, for instance a shape that is made up of a number of a number of layers. Many people would merge their layers, then apply the layer effect. Well, you know we like to keep maximum edibility in our files, so we can employ this little trick to get round this!

Firstly, make a selection around the boundaries of all the layers you want to apply the effect to. There are a number of ways to do this, but I find the quickest way is to Apple click on the first layer in the layers palette to select its visible content, then Shift+Apple Click on the other layers to add to this selection.

Once you have completed this, create a new layer and fill it with colour - it doesn’t matter what colour you use. Now double check that this shape matches up with the outer edge of your group of layers you want to apply the layer effect to. It may be useful to lower the opacity of this new layer to check.

Next we use the Fill Slider on the Layers Palette to hide our filled shape, slide this down to 0. Many people confuse this with the Opacity slider, as it seems to do much the same. However, as it says on the tin, this controls the fill opacity - leaving the opacity of layer effects intact. Finally, just apply your desired layer effect to this new layer and there you go - for instance an outer glow… Magic! Also perfect for editable layer effects on flattened images!!

For more precise control you could use a vector shape layer, but drawing the path would take much longer to create compared to the quick method above. It very much depends on the shape of the object you are applying the effect to.

Photoshop will save out your images in a huge variety of formats. It can seem very complicated, but the fact of the matter is that you will only ever need a small handful of these formats - and you can forget the rest! (more…)

This is not so much an Easter Egg in the traditional sense, more of a little known hidden feature - as this one may actually be occasionally useful, especially for web designers! When you are working in full screen mode you can change the default surrounding canvas colour (the area around the image) of neutral gray (more…)

Using guides in Photoshop is a core principle that is essential for any precise work. (more…)

Creating your own brushes in Photoshop is simpler than you might think, and once you have created them they can always remain in your Photoshop arsenal ready to use at any time, ready to share with your fellow designers! (more…)

When you have a very large layered file open and you want to save out a flattened file it can take a while, especially when you are working in a DTP/layout application (outside InDesign). Endless tweaks to the position of layers can add up to a long time waiting for files to save. This is also a great trick for producing low res approval images for clients. (more…)

All web developers have been through the painful and slow process of cutting up images into sections, individually optimising them for the web and then constructing a table to hold them all together in a HTML design application. Fortunately Adobe have realised that this is a common task and have given us a quick and easy way to perform boring job! (more…)

There are times when an image is beyond rescue with Unsharp Mask, when its so out of focus it is bordering on creative, but your client insists that you use it! (more…)