Photoshop Ninja » Photoshop Troubleshooting

Photoshop troubleshooting – why is my type all in capitals or italics or a weird style?

Photoshop Ninja — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:03:36 +0000

There is some great little features for handling and manipulating type in Photoshop that can be both a blessing and a curse… if you don’t know they are there!

Have you ever found yourself typing in Photoshop and everything is in capitals? You check your Cpas Lock is off, keep on typing, even maybe copy and paste some text into Photoshop AND IT’S STILL IN CAPITALS?!

This is where most people really start scratching their heads and wondering what’s gone wrong with their computer and Photoshop!

You will be pleased to hear there is a simple solution – check out the buttons that run along the caracter palette – there are a number of buttons that control advanced text formatting – hover your mouse over them for the descriptions. Simply check that none are pressed – in particular the caps button!

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Photoshop troubleshooting – why have I got a gap around my background when I enlarged my canvas?

Photoshop Ninja — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:40:42 +0000

Sometimes when you enlarge the canvas in Photoshop you will end up with a gap around the edge of you image – and you have to go through the process of filling your background over and over each time with colour each time you enlarge the canvas.

There is a really easy fix for this senario – simply use a solid colour adjustment layer and remove layer mask. Now every time you enlarge the canvas your adjustment layer will automatically fill the area perfectly!

This is much easier than keep on going through the steps of selecting all and filling a layer full of colour to fill up that background, becuase you only have to double click the adjustment layer to change the background colour!

I am also lead to believe that this takes up less memory in your working file, which is a nice little bonus!

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Photoshop troubleshooting – why is my Photoshop layer style or effect not working?

Photoshop Ninja — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:18:02 +0000

Sometimes you flick through different layer styles/effects and nothing seems to happen – there is a couple of reasons for this.

Firstly, check the blending options for your layer style/effect – having a light yellow outer glow set on screen blending mode (default options) is not going to show up on a white background! Experiment with different blending options to change this.

Next, check the colours of your layer effect and the colours in the layers below – for the same reasons above! Often just experimenting with different colours in your layer styles/effects and different blending options will allow these effects to be visible.

Oh – and one final point… it goes without saying that the final thing to check your layer AND layer style/effect is opacity… but that’s the first thing you checked, right?!

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Photoshop troubleshooting – why are some of my menu items not visible?

Photoshop Ninja — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:34:33 +0000

Since Photoshop CS3 you have been able to customise what appears on the main drop-down menus in Photoshop. This allows users to de-clutter menus and just show the commands they use. This is especially useful for training purposes, as you can even highlight certain menu commands in colours in addition to hiding away confusing commands for people just learning Photoshop.

However, a problem you can have a situation where you start searching for menu command and it’s not there! This is unlikely to happen if you are the only person that uses Photoshop on the computer, but if it is a shared resource with multiple users (for instance, a spare freelance Mac in a studio or in a college/university) if that menu item has disappeared it’s more than likley the case that someone has been customising the menus!

It’s simple to get all the commands back, just go to Window>Workspace>Reset Menus and confirm you wish to perform this command. This will reset the menus back to default – showing all the normal commands available.

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Photoshop troubleshooting – opening Photoshop layered files as merged files

Photoshop Ninja — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:29:00 +0000

Complex, high resolution files can take a long time to open in Photoshop – but sometimes you just need to open it to check the file out or show it to someone… and as they say, time is money!

Simply hold down shift+alt (option) as you open a file and you will be asked if you want to read the composite data. Click ok and your layered file will open as a merged file (no layers) – and much quicker too!

I’m pretty sure this shortcut only works if you have the ‘maximise compatibility’ option selected when you save your PSD file, I will check this out and update this post.

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