Top 10 Awesome Photoshop Tricks For Beginners
In this tutorial, I’m teaching you Top 10 Awesome Photoshop Tricks For Beginners that you aren’t using. If you see a tips and tricks that you find useful, and it will help you with your creative process. Okay, let’s get started.
No 01: Switching Brush Tool
When painting, compositing, or retouching you may need to use more than one brush often switching back and forth from two or more brushes. This can become a tedious process if you have to keep going back up to the brushes panel to select the new brush. But did you know that you can press the less (< or >) than or greater than keys to cycle between brushes? The less than key allows you to move backwards on the brushes list while the greater than key allows you to move forward on the list. You can also visit this Top 5 Amazing Photoshop Tips And Tricks – Save Time In Photoshop Work
No 02: Save Time In Photoshop Work
Another way in which you can save time in Photoshop is by reducing the time that you spend clicking on the layer thumbnail, or the layer mask thumbnail. When you’re working a layer, and you would like to switch over to the layer mask you don’t have to click it. All you need to do is press Ctrl + backslash (ctrl+\), that’s Command backslash (Command +\) on the Mac. Notice that the focus, the white outline, moved to the layer mask, and now you can continue painting and that will, of course, affect the layer mask and not the layer. To go back into the layer press Ctrl+2, that’s Command+2 on the Mac, and the focus will jump back to layer thumbnail, and you can keep working with the actual pixels of the layer.
No 03: Foreground And Background Color Fill
You probably already know that you can fill with your foreground color by pressing alt+Backspace, that’s Option+delete on the Mac, and that you can fill with the background color by pressing Ctrl+Backspace, Command+delete on the Mac. But did you know that there is a shortcut that allows to only fill opaque pixels so that you don’t effect transparent ones? If you add the Shift key to those fill shortcuts you will only fill over the nontransparent pixels. For example, if I press Shift+alt+Backspace on Windows and Shift+Option+delete on the Mac, I will fill with the foreground color, but only effect the opaque pixels and not the transparent ones. Shift+Ctrl+Backspace or Shift+Command+delete will fill with the background color only on nontransparent pixels.
No 04: Disables Selection Restore
When you have a selection active sometimes you may run a Command that disables it, or you simply disable it to do something else. If you want to bring back a selection remember that you can press Ctrl+Shift+D, that’s Command+Shift+D on the Mac, to restore the last active selection.
No 05: Change Brush Hardness
Fast and easy way to change the size and hardness off your brush is to hold Ctrl+alt on Windows, Command+Option on the Mac, then right-click and drag left and right to adjust the size of the brush. And drag up and down to adjust the hardness of the brush.
No 06: Revert
Sometimes when working with Photoshop you may get carried away and apply a bunch of adjustments, filters, or distortions that it’s best to simply start from scratch. When this happens you can press the F12 key to revert the file back to the last save point. If you haven’t saved the document since you opened it Photoshop will restore it back to the opening state. Another way of getting to the revert function is by going into the file menu and selecting revert.
No 07: Adjust The Spacing Between Two Letters
When working with text sometimes you may need to adjust the spacing between two letters. One fast and easy way of doing so is to place the cursor between the two letters that you would like to adjust then hold alt, Option on the Mac, and tap on the left arrow key to decrease the space between the two characters, or tap on the right arrow key to increase the space.
No 08: Color Selection Technic (Select A Color From Outside Of Photoshop?)
This next example is not really a keyboard shortcut Command, but it is a great time saver that I think qualifies as a shortcut. As you know with the eyedropper tool you can click on your image to select a color. But did you know that you could select a color from outside of Photoshop? If you drag the application window to the side to reveal any other application, you can click and hold inside of Photoshop to select the color then if you drag out of the Photoshop window without releasing the mouse button you will see that Photoshop will start selecting colors from outside the application. Once you find the color that you like, release the mouse button, and that color will be set to the foreground color inside of Photoshop.
No 09: Not Preview Brush Tool
This keyboard shortcut is one that everyone should know. If you have been using Photoshop for a while then you probably have run into this problem before. With a painting tool selected such as a brush tool, you can see the preview of the brush. If you tap on the caps lock key you will switch over to the crosshair cursor. This could be very useful in some cases, but if you inadvertently activate it can be extremely frustrating especially if you don’t know how to disable it. When I was just starting out in Photoshop, I actually uninstalled the app to try to fix this issue. Little did I know that all I needed to do to disable it was just to hit that caps lock key.
No 10: Toolbar Editor
This is a fun Easter Egg that you can use to play a funny prank on a friend or coworker. If you click on the three-dot icon in the toolbar and go into the toolbar editor you can hold Shift, and click on Done. Doing so will replace the three dots with a banana. The icon doesn’t do anything. It’s just a funny little icon that surely will freak out your friends. To remove it go back into the edit toolbar menu, and hold alt on Windows, Option on the Mac, and click on Done.
Let me know in the comments if this has ever happened to you. It will make me feel a whole lot better to know that I wasn’t the only one who ran into that problem.