Dodge/Burn
These tools are a lot easier to use if you know that opt-clicking on Mac, or alt-clicking on PC, will toggle to the opposite tool while you have that key depressed. That is, if you are using the burn tool and you opt/alt-click, it will dodge, and vise-versa. (This trick works for the sharpen and blur tools, too!)
Brush Shortcuts
Here’s a basic one. As you probably know if you have a Wacom or other tablet, you can set the size and opacity of your brush to be affected by how hard you press. But you still need to grab brushes of different sizes, and you always need to change the opacity setting. Any command that keeps me from having to grab a new brush, or type in numbers in a dialog box, is a big time saver. Try these:
Change brush: < and > will take you to the previous and next brushes in your current brush set.
Change brush size: [ and ] increase and decrease the size of the current brush.
(From 1 pixel to 10 pixels, it changes the brush by 1 pixel. If your brush is 10 pixels or bigger, it changes in 10 pixel increments. Over 100, it’s 25 pixels, and over 300 it just gives up and jumps by 100… )
Change opacity: 1 – 9, and 0 change the current opacity (or strength or exposure, depending on the tool) to the percentage that corresponds to the number you enter. So 1 = 10% opacity, 2 = 20% and so on… until you get to 0, which is 100%. There’s no “0%”, which makes sense if you think about it!
Can I assume everyone knows that option-clicking (or alt-clicking for PC users) turns your brush into an eyedropper? Did you know that it can pick up color from ANY document currently open in PhotoShop, without switching to that document? Very handy.
Selections
When using the selection tools, there are several helpful modifiers that will help make your life easier.
Add to a previous selection: shift-select
(You’ll see a “+” next to the cursor when you do this.)
Subtract from a previous selection: opt (Mac); alt (PC)
(You’ll see a “-” next to the cursor for this one.)
Intersect with a previous selection: shift-opt (Mac); shift-alt (PC)
(This one has an “x” next to the cursor.)
Invert current selection: shift-cmd-i (Mac); shift-ctrl-i (PC)
(this selects the opposite of what you have selected currently).
Lasso – change to straight lines (”polygon” mode) while you are in the middle of creating a selection: opt-click (Mac); alt-click (PC)
Drag the lasso around as normal, then with the opt/alt key pressed, each time you click (or tap) it does a straight selection between clicks. This alone is one of the best selection features PhotoShop has!
More to come!
Well, I’ve gotten this far, and I still have several more choice items to share. So join me next month for a few more. Also, if you have a favorite trick that you think might be fun to share with your fellow artists, feel free to drop me an email so I can share your tip with the Epitome readers. Find my email here: http://megaflow.epilogue.net, go to the bottom of the page and click “email the artist”.
Article by Patrick McEvoy.
