Photoshop: Creative Use of the Measure Tool

Photoshop's 'Measure' tool, located on the Eyedropper toolbar fly-out (Keyboard Shortcut: 'I'), has more usefulness than first meets the eye. Drawing a measurement line not only provides the length of the line drawn, but also provides the angle of the line on the options palette.

As an added bonus, Photoshop pre-enters this angle value into the 'Rotate Arbitrary' command (Image->Rotate Canvas->Arbitrary...), saving the added step of entering this value into the dialog when you need to straighten an image.

Photoshop: Reset Dialog Values

The next time you're adjusting values in a Photoshop dialog, take a second to hold down the 'Alt' Key ('Option' on a Mac) and keep an eye on the 'Cancel' button in the dialog. You'll notice it changes from a 'Cancel' button to a 'Reset' button, allowing you to start over in the dialog without have to close and reopen it.

Photoshop: Precision Cursor

Need to see exactly where the center of the active tool is? Pressing the 'CAPS LOCK' key toggles between 'Standard' and 'Precision' cursor mode. HINT: Also helpful for those time you can't figure out where your normal brush cursor went.

Photoshop: Quick Access to Brush Properties

For quick access to brush properties such as 'Size' and 'Hardness', right click while using any tool that uses a brush ('Brush' and 'Erase' in particular) to display a popup dialog to modify the current brush. This, coupled with the brush opacity control on the toolbar, makes changing brush properties a breeze.

Photoshop: Image Navigation

When zoomed in to an image beyond the available screen real-estate, pausing to use scroll bars or switch to the pan tool can be a pain. Photoshop provides a keyboard shortcut for just this occasion. Pressing and holding the spacebar switches the current tool to the pan tool, allowing grabbing the canvas and moving it as nessecary. Releasing the spacebar returns to the previous tool.

Photoshop: Fill vs. Opacity

Everyone understands the effect of the Opacity control in Photoshop, but directly below the Opacity control lies the fairly misunderstood Fill control. Stated in words, the Opacity control affects the overall opacity of all elements on a layer including layer effects, while the Fill control affects only elements on a layer, leaving layer effects untouched. Lets look at an example. The image above contains a simple layer with several layer effects applied. Lowering the value of the Opacity control produces an expected result:

However, if instead the Fill value is lowered, the layer contents are modified differently:

In this example, only the elliptical shape in the center is effected while the layer effects applied to the layer are unchanged. Understanding Fill values provides another facet of layer control. Specifically it allows using layer contents to control the shape of layer effects; setting the fill value to 0% hides the layer contents while still leaving the layer effects fully visible.

Photoshop: Making the Most of the Workspace

When working in Photoshop, two keyboard shortcuts can make it easier to work on smaller screens without all those distracting tool palettes and information windows.

• The 'F' Key cycles between the various full screen modes ('Standard Screen Mode', 'Full Screen Mode with Menubar', 'Full Screen Mode'). These modes are also accessible via the three buttons at the bottom of the tool palette.
  
• Pressing the 'TAB' key hides and unhides all tool palettes and information windows, affording a clean workspace to manipulate your image.

Photoshop: Match Color

Often finding a research image that also matches the palette you're working in can be a daunting task. Luckily however, Photoshop offers a tool tailored very well to that specific situation. In this example, we'll be using two images. The first image:

represents the color palette we'll be trying to match. The second image:

represents the image that doesn't quite fit into the palette we've decided upon. First, we'll open both images in Photoshop, and selecting the image we want to modify start the Match Color command (Image->Adjustments->Match Color). Near the bottom of the Match Color dialog we'll drop-down the Source option and select the image that represents the palette we're looking to match (in this case 'referenceimage.jpg').

Photoshop will display a preview of what the resulting image modification will be. Modifying the 'Color Intensity', 'Luminance', and 'Fade' options will vary the effect until the desired result can be achieved. You can also select a portion of the source image using whatever selection method you prefer and select 'Use Selection in Source to calculate colors' in the match dialog to restrict the source colors to a selection set in the source image.