2 Minute Photoshop Tricks

2 Minute Tricks # 16 – Time Savers

November 18th, 2005

Instead of one big tricks this week, we will take a look at a few time saving tricks that will let you fly through your photoshop workflow at top speed.

Note: If you are downloading directly from the web page click here to download.

Thanks to the Hijiyama Project for our closing theme.

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Step-by-Step Guide

Keyboard Shortcuts

Photoshop has keyboard shortcuts for all of its tools and most of the menu options as well. You can quickly see what the shortcut is for a tool is by hovering your mouse over a tool in the tool pallet, and all menu keyboard shortcuts are listed next to the item in the menu itself .

A good way to learn these shortcuts is to pick 3 or 4 of your most used menu options or tools and learn their keyboard shortcuts. Then commit 2 or 3 more to memory as you get comfortable with the first 3 or 4. Soon you will know all the shortcuts for tools and menus you use regularly and be able to fly through your editing at top speed.

If you have Photoshop CS or CS 2 you can take keyboard shortcuts a step farther by customizing them by going to the edit menu then selecting the “keyboard shortcuts” option.

Common Shortcuts

Description	Key(s)
Crop Tool	C
Hand Tool	Space Bar (hold down)
Move Tool	Command or Control (hold down)
Levels	Command or Control + L
Hue/Saturation	Command or Control + U
New Layer	Command or Control + Shift + N
Zoom In	Command or Control + “+”
Zoom Out	Command or Control + “-”

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Quick Prints

Step 1: Set up a folder or directory full of images you would like to make small prints of.

Step 2: Launch Photoshop and go to the file menu. Then select the automate option, then the contact sheet option.

Step 3: A dialog box will pop open with a bunch of different options. Select the folder of images you set up in the first step in the source images section of the dialog. Then, in the document section set the width and height options to 8.5 and 11 respectively. Then in the thumbnails section change the columns and rows options both to 2 and click the rotate for best fit check box. Unclick the use filenames as captions box at the bottom of the dialog box then hit ok.

Step 4: When Photoshop has finished making your contact sheets just click print from the file menu on each document. Trim your pictures and enjoy.

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Quick Value Change

To demonstrate how this technique works create a new photoshop document and select the text tool and type something in your document. Then select all of your text and go up to the text options bar at the top of the screen. You should see a little icon of small “T” next to a big “T” with a drop down menu next to it showing your text’s font size. Instead of using this drop down menu to change your text size click and hold on the icon of the two Ts to the left of the menu. Now drag your mouse slowly to the left and right. You should see your text get bigger and smaller as you drag each direction. This trick works almost everywhere in photoshop where you can adjust a value in a dialog box. Often times the part you need to click and hold on is the text near the value you are trying to change. For example you click and drag on the word saturation to change the saturation of your image in the hue saturation dialog box.

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