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23 February 2010
Tips and tricks for Photoshop’s 20th
TORONTO—This month the design community celebrates the 20th anniversary of one of the most influential tools in the industry, Photoshop.
The program, which is now produced by Adobe, was created by Thomas and John Knoll in the ‘80s and was known as Barney Scan, says Adobe solutions developer Colin Smith. “They were selling the product with scanners and it was having a lot of success at the time,” he says. “It sold about 500 copies.” Adobe noticed the product’s popularity and acquired it.
Photoshop started out mimicking a dark room, says Smith, but moved beyond that when people started using it to create layers and combine photos and imagery. “We have seen it go beyond what can be done in the dark room,” he says. “When that happened it started to influence design. It revolutionized advertising, helped them to realize things that were previously visually impossible.”
Smith says he can’t travel with the Adobe logo on his laptop bag without being stopped for Photoshop tips from everyone from designers and bell hops to taxi drivers. So, in honour of Photoshop’s 20th birthday, Smith is giving Design Edge readers his top 20 Photoshop tips:
1. Save as PSD and share as JPEG
When editing images it’s best to save your files as native Photoshop documents, or PSD’s instead of JPEG’s. PSD’s contain all the original, rich information like Layers and Smart Objects which allows the user to make changes long after the image is finished. JPEG’s do not have this functionality so as a result you must first “flatten” the file and loose all the Layers, Effects, etc. If you need to make a change later, it’s going to be nearly impossible as a JPEG.
2. Work at the highest resolution possible
Most digital cameras today capture images at very high resolution (also called megapixels). Hi-res images contain millions of pixels that make up the quality of the image. If you take a photograph of someone from two feet away, you’ll be able to see individual hairs and freckles on their face, but if you move back 10 feet and take the picture, the person is smaller and all the details are lost. It’s the same when you save a smaller version of a file; from say a five megapixel camera to a small web graphic that you might post on facebook. So it’s best to keep the five megapixel version, open that in Photoshop and add edit with Layers and Masks, etc. Then, when you’re ready to post it online or send it in email, Export it as a smaller JPEG to share.
3. Email programs have a mind of their own
Sometimes you do want to share a hi-res photo with someone so they can print it. If you send them the best quality image (see tip 2) their results with be fantastic. The problem is, many email programs today will automatically resize (or make an image smaller) an image before you send it. Most times, this makes sense, but in this example it’s going to cause problems and if it’s automatic you’ll never know.
If that’s the case you need to turn off that resizing capability in your email program or use an online file sharing service like Photoshop.com or Acrobat.com
4. Use the Shape Tools
Many times I see images that people have placed on the web where they use a simple paint brush-type tool to highlight an area in a photo. The problem with this is, it’s difficult to have a steady hand so the brush stroke looks doesn’t look smooth and can be quite distracting. Instead, if you use the Shape tools you can draw perfect circles, squares and more.
5. Load more Styles
Photoshop comes with great styles like Drop Shadows and Glows, but there are many useful styles like Stroke. If you’re trying to draw a simple ellipse with a red line around the outside and nothing on the inside, try loading the Style “Clear with medium stroke” from the Text styles and you will instantly be able to apply that to any shape you create.
6. Layer Masks are like an infinite undo
Most new users to Photoshop grab the Eraser tool to correct mistakes but that’s not always the best tool. If you use a Layer Mask and paint with a Brush with black as the foreground colour, it acts like the Eraser tool. But, if you switch to the colour white, then you can us it to restore the original layer! If you’re trying to carefully erase around someone’s face but you go to close, now all you have to do is switch the colour and paint it back in.
7. User Adjustment Layers
Photoshop gives you many ways to edit images but they fall into two categories; destructive and non-destructive. You want as many non-destructive edits as possible and one way to achieve this is by using Adjustment Layers. If you need to change the colour, then apply a Color Balance, or Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. The final results are the same but you’ll be able to make changes to the Adjustment Layers long after you’ve closed the file.
8. Select the Hand tool when you’re not editing
It’s common when working on large images to zoom in and pan around while you work. One of the issues that can occur, especially if you’re used to using keyboard shortcuts like the Spacebar to pan, is you can accidentally paint with a tool instead of panning around. This usually happens when a Photoshop user has become confident enough to quickly grab a tool, zoom into an area, pan around and zoom out. If you don’t press the Spacebar at the right time before you pan, you may end up painting line across your image but you can easily miss that because you’ve just panned away to a different area. I suggest, if you’re not editing, to select the Hand tool (or press H) because the Hand tool does not edit the image so if you’re careless like me, you’ll never damage your work.
9. Name your layers
If you’re working with more than four or five layers, it’s a great practice to name them. You can do this by easily double-clicking on the current name and typing in a new one. Now you can easily see what layers is a face and what layer is a background etc.
10. Turn on Resize Image during Paste/Place
If you’re combining images of various resolution, there may be times when the image you imported is larger that the background layer. Most users will zoom all the way out to grab the edges of the image to scale it down to the correct size. If you turn on this preference in the General Preferences, Photoshop will automatically resize the placed image to fit the canvas.
11. Shadow/Highlights is smarter than Einstein
Historically Photoshop has mimicked darkroom techniques which are based on the laws of physics and optical cameras, lenses and chemicals. But with Photoshop you can break out from these rules and process an image in away that goes beyond anything you could do in a darkroom or in a camera and that’s Shadow/Highlights. What Shadow/Highlights does is it automatically detects what is a shadow and what is a highlight and it allows you to edit each one separately. Think of a picture of someone standing in front of a window with the sun behind them. A photo like this usually results in a silhouette with no recognizable features. If you apply Shadow/Highlights, you’ll instantly see that the person can be made lighter but the windows remains untouched.
12. Rotate your view for easier painting
Photoshop has the capability to allow the user to work in a mode similar to the way an artist draws or sketches. The human hand works well with certain movements but awkward in others. Artists have long identified this and as a result they will compensate by turning their sketchpad to a more comfortable position. We all do this when we sign a document; first turning it to where we feel comfortable before beginning to write. Well that’s exactly what the Rotate View tool does.
13. Don’t forget the “D key”
Many functions in Photoshop require painting with black and white colours so to make selecting those colour easier, Photoshop uses the D key on the keyboard to reset the foreground and background colours to their “Default” setting which is black for the foreground and white for the background. As an added bonus, you can switch between those colours by pressing the “X key”.
14. B + D + X = zero
This is my formula for resetting your paintbrush before painting a mask. Because we can use the paintbrush to paint colours as well as masks, sometimes we end up with a less than satisfactory masking brush; which should be 100% Black and White at full Opacity. By pressing these keys in this order you do the following: B - selects the Paintbrush tool, D - Defaults the colours (see #13), X - flips the masking colours so that black (to hide) is ready to paint, and 0 (zero key at the top of the keyboard) sets the Opacity of the brush to 100%.
15. Make your canvas larger by using the Crop tool
I’ve been using this tip for decades. If you have a document and you need to make the overall canvas larger without disturbing the pixels in any layer just do the following: (First, make sure you have the Application frame selected from the Window menu on Mac) then choose the Crop tool and drag around the outside of the image on the gray area. When you let go of the mouse, you’ll see that the crop is now exactly around the outside of the image. Now all you have to do is grab the handles and pull the away from the centre to make the canvas bigger. If you hold Shift while you drag, you’ll keep the same aspect ratio, if you add Option (Mac) or Alt (Win) you’ll resize from the exact centre.
16. Shift + cycles Blend modes
Blend modes are a great creative tool and they’re non-destructive to boot! An easy way to think of Blend modes is to think of what happens when you mix blue paint with yellow - you get green. The blend mode that corresponds to this is called “Multiply”. There are several blend modes that use different math to blend an image and the results are fun to try. You have to have at least two layers and have the top one selected, now just hold down the Shift key and keep pressing the + key and you’ll automatically cycle though all the modes and instantly see their results.
17. Slice a little off the edge please
Sometimes when removing backgrounds and layering different images together, you can end up with the dreaded “fringe”. This usually happens when someone did not make an accurate selection before removing a background or copying a layer. Photoshop has great tools to contract this but sometimes I find that the fringe is only on one small area and for that I use the following technique. First hold down Cmd (Mac) Ctrl (Win) and click on the name of the layer. This loads the transparency of the image as a selection. Next, from the Selection menu choose Modify> Contract and enter a value that corresponds to the fringe size. What this does is it “chokes” the selection inward. The selection is the area that can be edited so next you have to inverse the selection. To accomplish that, from the Select menu choose Inverse. You have have a small sliver around the whole image exposed and ready to edit. If the fringe exists around the whole image just hit the Delete key and it’s gone. If it’s just in one area, then grab the Erase brush and paint it away.
18. Change the default eyedropper settings
By default the Eyedropper tool is set to sample colours form only a one pixel area. This causes a problem in most images as natural colours are made up of thousands of slightly different pixel colours. To remedy this, Photoshop allows you to sample a larger area therefore the colours you pick are more accurate instead of accidentally selecting one stray light pixel in a dark coloured area.
19. Copy and Paste when Cloning is hard
The Clone Stamp tool is used to copy areas of and image and paint them somewhere else. This works well for a lot of things like grass, or clouds, etc. This can be a problem when working on very large areas as continuous cloning can sometimes look quite fake. So to help take care of those problem areas, use a selection tool, like the Lasso tool with a large feather setting, and make a selection of an area you want to copy and from the Layer menu choose New> Layer via Copy. What this does is to copy that area to a new layer with a soft edge. Now grab the Selection tool and move that layer so it covers the area you need to clone. It may not be perfect but sometimes it can get you 80% closer to your goal. From there you can clone the edges to use a Layer Mask to blend in where needed.
20. Be smart, use Smart Objects
Working with layers can be a lot of fun but one problem when working with pixel (raster) art is that resizing can cause problems. If you place an image into a layer and resize it so it’s very small, then later, make it larger, you’ll notice that all the original detail has vanished. You can bypass pixel shortcoming by converting any layer into a Smart Object. (Right-click on a layer and choose Convert to Smart Object) Now you can freely resize up and down, rotate and warp without every hurting the original layer. If you need to do any pixel manipulation, like paining or cloning, just double-click on the layer Thumbnail and it will open the Smart Object into a new window. From there, just edit and save and your updates will show up in the Smart Object after you close the window. Contact: Adobe.com
The program, which is now produced by Adobe, was created by Thomas and John Knoll in the ‘80s and was known as Barney Scan, says Adobe solutions developer Colin Smith. “They were selling the product with scanners and it was having a lot of success at the time,” he says. “It sold about 500 copies.” Adobe noticed the product’s popularity and acquired it.
Photoshop started out mimicking a dark room, says Smith, but moved beyond that when people started using it to create layers and combine photos and imagery. “We have seen it go beyond what can be done in the dark room,” he says. “When that happened it started to influence design. It revolutionized advertising, helped them to realize things that were previously visually impossible.”
Smith says he can’t travel with the Adobe logo on his laptop bag without being stopped for Photoshop tips from everyone from designers and bell hops to taxi drivers. So, in honour of Photoshop’s 20th birthday, Smith is giving Design Edge readers his top 20 Photoshop tips:
1. Save as PSD and share as JPEG
When editing images it’s best to save your files as native Photoshop documents, or PSD’s instead of JPEG’s. PSD’s contain all the original, rich information like Layers and Smart Objects which allows the user to make changes long after the image is finished. JPEG’s do not have this functionality so as a result you must first “flatten” the file and loose all the Layers, Effects, etc. If you need to make a change later, it’s going to be nearly impossible as a JPEG.
2. Work at the highest resolution possible
Most digital cameras today capture images at very high resolution (also called megapixels). Hi-res images contain millions of pixels that make up the quality of the image. If you take a photograph of someone from two feet away, you’ll be able to see individual hairs and freckles on their face, but if you move back 10 feet and take the picture, the person is smaller and all the details are lost. It’s the same when you save a smaller version of a file; from say a five megapixel camera to a small web graphic that you might post on facebook. So it’s best to keep the five megapixel version, open that in Photoshop and add edit with Layers and Masks, etc. Then, when you’re ready to post it online or send it in email, Export it as a smaller JPEG to share.
3. Email programs have a mind of their own
Sometimes you do want to share a hi-res photo with someone so they can print it. If you send them the best quality image (see tip 2) their results with be fantastic. The problem is, many email programs today will automatically resize (or make an image smaller) an image before you send it. Most times, this makes sense, but in this example it’s going to cause problems and if it’s automatic you’ll never know.
If that’s the case you need to turn off that resizing capability in your email program or use an online file sharing service like Photoshop.com or Acrobat.com
4. Use the Shape Tools
Many times I see images that people have placed on the web where they use a simple paint brush-type tool to highlight an area in a photo. The problem with this is, it’s difficult to have a steady hand so the brush stroke looks doesn’t look smooth and can be quite distracting. Instead, if you use the Shape tools you can draw perfect circles, squares and more.
5. Load more Styles
Photoshop comes with great styles like Drop Shadows and Glows, but there are many useful styles like Stroke. If you’re trying to draw a simple ellipse with a red line around the outside and nothing on the inside, try loading the Style “Clear with medium stroke” from the Text styles and you will instantly be able to apply that to any shape you create.
6. Layer Masks are like an infinite undo
Most new users to Photoshop grab the Eraser tool to correct mistakes but that’s not always the best tool. If you use a Layer Mask and paint with a Brush with black as the foreground colour, it acts like the Eraser tool. But, if you switch to the colour white, then you can us it to restore the original layer! If you’re trying to carefully erase around someone’s face but you go to close, now all you have to do is switch the colour and paint it back in.
7. User Adjustment Layers
Photoshop gives you many ways to edit images but they fall into two categories; destructive and non-destructive. You want as many non-destructive edits as possible and one way to achieve this is by using Adjustment Layers. If you need to change the colour, then apply a Color Balance, or Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. The final results are the same but you’ll be able to make changes to the Adjustment Layers long after you’ve closed the file.
8. Select the Hand tool when you’re not editing
It’s common when working on large images to zoom in and pan around while you work. One of the issues that can occur, especially if you’re used to using keyboard shortcuts like the Spacebar to pan, is you can accidentally paint with a tool instead of panning around. This usually happens when a Photoshop user has become confident enough to quickly grab a tool, zoom into an area, pan around and zoom out. If you don’t press the Spacebar at the right time before you pan, you may end up painting line across your image but you can easily miss that because you’ve just panned away to a different area. I suggest, if you’re not editing, to select the Hand tool (or press H) because the Hand tool does not edit the image so if you’re careless like me, you’ll never damage your work.
9. Name your layers
If you’re working with more than four or five layers, it’s a great practice to name them. You can do this by easily double-clicking on the current name and typing in a new one. Now you can easily see what layers is a face and what layer is a background etc.
10. Turn on Resize Image during Paste/Place
If you’re combining images of various resolution, there may be times when the image you imported is larger that the background layer. Most users will zoom all the way out to grab the edges of the image to scale it down to the correct size. If you turn on this preference in the General Preferences, Photoshop will automatically resize the placed image to fit the canvas.
11. Shadow/Highlights is smarter than Einstein
Historically Photoshop has mimicked darkroom techniques which are based on the laws of physics and optical cameras, lenses and chemicals. But with Photoshop you can break out from these rules and process an image in away that goes beyond anything you could do in a darkroom or in a camera and that’s Shadow/Highlights. What Shadow/Highlights does is it automatically detects what is a shadow and what is a highlight and it allows you to edit each one separately. Think of a picture of someone standing in front of a window with the sun behind them. A photo like this usually results in a silhouette with no recognizable features. If you apply Shadow/Highlights, you’ll instantly see that the person can be made lighter but the windows remains untouched.
12. Rotate your view for easier painting
Photoshop has the capability to allow the user to work in a mode similar to the way an artist draws or sketches. The human hand works well with certain movements but awkward in others. Artists have long identified this and as a result they will compensate by turning their sketchpad to a more comfortable position. We all do this when we sign a document; first turning it to where we feel comfortable before beginning to write. Well that’s exactly what the Rotate View tool does.
13. Don’t forget the “D key”
Many functions in Photoshop require painting with black and white colours so to make selecting those colour easier, Photoshop uses the D key on the keyboard to reset the foreground and background colours to their “Default” setting which is black for the foreground and white for the background. As an added bonus, you can switch between those colours by pressing the “X key”.
14. B + D + X = zero
This is my formula for resetting your paintbrush before painting a mask. Because we can use the paintbrush to paint colours as well as masks, sometimes we end up with a less than satisfactory masking brush; which should be 100% Black and White at full Opacity. By pressing these keys in this order you do the following: B - selects the Paintbrush tool, D - Defaults the colours (see #13), X - flips the masking colours so that black (to hide) is ready to paint, and 0 (zero key at the top of the keyboard) sets the Opacity of the brush to 100%.
15. Make your canvas larger by using the Crop tool
I’ve been using this tip for decades. If you have a document and you need to make the overall canvas larger without disturbing the pixels in any layer just do the following: (First, make sure you have the Application frame selected from the Window menu on Mac) then choose the Crop tool and drag around the outside of the image on the gray area. When you let go of the mouse, you’ll see that the crop is now exactly around the outside of the image. Now all you have to do is grab the handles and pull the away from the centre to make the canvas bigger. If you hold Shift while you drag, you’ll keep the same aspect ratio, if you add Option (Mac) or Alt (Win) you’ll resize from the exact centre.
16. Shift + cycles Blend modes
Blend modes are a great creative tool and they’re non-destructive to boot! An easy way to think of Blend modes is to think of what happens when you mix blue paint with yellow - you get green. The blend mode that corresponds to this is called “Multiply”. There are several blend modes that use different math to blend an image and the results are fun to try. You have to have at least two layers and have the top one selected, now just hold down the Shift key and keep pressing the + key and you’ll automatically cycle though all the modes and instantly see their results.
17. Slice a little off the edge please
Sometimes when removing backgrounds and layering different images together, you can end up with the dreaded “fringe”. This usually happens when someone did not make an accurate selection before removing a background or copying a layer. Photoshop has great tools to contract this but sometimes I find that the fringe is only on one small area and for that I use the following technique. First hold down Cmd (Mac) Ctrl (Win) and click on the name of the layer. This loads the transparency of the image as a selection. Next, from the Selection menu choose Modify> Contract and enter a value that corresponds to the fringe size. What this does is it “chokes” the selection inward. The selection is the area that can be edited so next you have to inverse the selection. To accomplish that, from the Select menu choose Inverse. You have have a small sliver around the whole image exposed and ready to edit. If the fringe exists around the whole image just hit the Delete key and it’s gone. If it’s just in one area, then grab the Erase brush and paint it away.
18. Change the default eyedropper settings
By default the Eyedropper tool is set to sample colours form only a one pixel area. This causes a problem in most images as natural colours are made up of thousands of slightly different pixel colours. To remedy this, Photoshop allows you to sample a larger area therefore the colours you pick are more accurate instead of accidentally selecting one stray light pixel in a dark coloured area.
19. Copy and Paste when Cloning is hard
The Clone Stamp tool is used to copy areas of and image and paint them somewhere else. This works well for a lot of things like grass, or clouds, etc. This can be a problem when working on very large areas as continuous cloning can sometimes look quite fake. So to help take care of those problem areas, use a selection tool, like the Lasso tool with a large feather setting, and make a selection of an area you want to copy and from the Layer menu choose New> Layer via Copy. What this does is to copy that area to a new layer with a soft edge. Now grab the Selection tool and move that layer so it covers the area you need to clone. It may not be perfect but sometimes it can get you 80% closer to your goal. From there you can clone the edges to use a Layer Mask to blend in where needed.
20. Be smart, use Smart Objects
Working with layers can be a lot of fun but one problem when working with pixel (raster) art is that resizing can cause problems. If you place an image into a layer and resize it so it’s very small, then later, make it larger, you’ll notice that all the original detail has vanished. You can bypass pixel shortcoming by converting any layer into a Smart Object. (Right-click on a layer and choose Convert to Smart Object) Now you can freely resize up and down, rotate and warp without every hurting the original layer. If you need to do any pixel manipulation, like paining or cloning, just double-click on the layer Thumbnail and it will open the Smart Object into a new window. From there, just edit and save and your updates will show up in the Smart Object after you close the window. Contact: Adobe.com
— Val Maloney
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