Photoshop can help you walk on the right path to becoming a successful creative. It is one of the standard tools used in the design industry, when it comes to manipulating a layout or images. Photoshop is an amazing photo-editing tool that helps you give a shape to your creative imagination.
If you’re just a newbie designer, and not much exposed to the wonders of the Photoshop tool, then reading this post will learn you about some great tips that could make a difference: when you’re working with Photoshop layers and images.
1. Select a Layer Instantly
One of the most essential keys to learning Photoshop requires you to use layers. With layers, you can manipulate the images the way you want. When you’re having a document that contains plenty of layers, finding a specific layer from the sea of options will definitely make your head spin.
Trick:
Use the Auto-Select feature of Photoshop’s Move tool. This feature helps in selecting ‘layers’ or ‘groups’ once they’re clicked in the document window. For using it, select the Move Tool (using the V key). And then, you will find a checkbox “Auto-Select” in the option bar. Make sure that Auto-Select is selected, and then click on the element in the layer you’ve been searching for, and you will be automatically taken to that layer (in the Layers palette). Using this same trick, you can even find the group of the layer you’re searching; doing so requires you to select the Group from the Auto-Select.
2. Exporting Layers
If you’ve created some well-designed and impressive layers, then possibly you may want to save them to be used for future images. But, in case you want to explore a plethora of similar looking images (probably the ones with identical dimensions), going through all the layers one by one doesn’t make sense.
Trick:
Fortunately, you can export layers to a file using Photoshop’s script “Export Layers to Files”, giving you the ability to create a new file, which includes only the image objects (added to a particular layer). For doing so, choose File given on the top of your editor’s window and click on Scripts. Corresponding to the Scripts option, click on Export Layers to Files. And as a result, all your document layers will be stored as a separate file, having similar name just like your layer.
3. How to Scale Layer Styles?
Another possible thing that you would like to work upon when designing a layout is to shrink or enlarge your layer styles.
Trick:
In order to apply the scaling effect to your layer styles, simply right click on the layer you want to scale, and choose Scale Effects.
4. Viewing One Selection At a Time
When designing a layout occasionally you may find yourself wanting to view how an element looks like on their own or when using some elements. For example, while creating a layout you may want to ensure that your slider’s buttons are not transparent, and will appear in the exact same manner when used with or without an image to be used in the slider.
Trick:
A good trick is to turn off layers’ visibility, which will only let you view the buttons. In order to turn off visibility of each layer, all you need to do so is to hold down the “Alt key”, and then click on the eye icon next to the button group. Repeat the same trick to make those layers’ visible again.
5. Using Keyboard Shortcut to Sort Layers
If you have hundreds of layers in your layout, then sorting them using mouse may seem clumsy and time-consuming to you.
Trick:
Luckily, using a few shortcuts in Photoshop helps to boost workflow. When it comes to sorting layers, you can follow the below shortcuts:
“Command + [” – move the selected layer up
“Command + ]” – move the selected layer down
“Command + Shift + [ – move multiple layers to the top of its current layer group.
“Command + Shift + ]” – move multiple layers to the bottom of its current layer group.
6. Making Tweaks to Images
Images play a crucial role in making a document look visually enticing to reader’s eye. And so, as a web designer you’ll certainly look forward to making changes to the images used in your document – be it changing the color or improving image contrast and so on.
You can use Photoshop’s standard method for adjusting the balance of an image, but the problem is you can’t undo what you’ve done at a later date.
Trick:
An extremely useful trick is to use adjustment layer. The best aspect about this layer is that it doesn’t make changes directly on the image and instead uses a separate layer (where the changes are made). The adjustment layers are placed in the Layers Panel at the bottom.
7. Converting Point Type to Area Type
Photoshop help provide two type of text that we can add to a document: point (or character) type and area (or paragraph) type. The point type is the text that gets added to the “point” – that is clicked using the Photoshop Type tool. It helps to add larger blocks of text but in a clumsy manner.
Trick:
We can use area (or paragraph) type allowing us to place text within a pre-selected area. For this purpose, you will need to convert point type to area type. Click on the Layer and Type, and corresponding to it click on “Convert to Paragraph Text”.
8. Reset Things in Photoshop
Often after making plenty of changes to your layout design, you may want to reset everything.
Trick:
In order to reset everything, just hold down the “Alt+Shift+Ctrl” key at the time when you are opening your Photoshop editor.
9. How to Get the Color You Want?
We often come across some well-designed websites using good color schemes. and may even like to use exact same color used in it. You can use color picker for this purpose, but it can be pretty annoying (especially for beginners).
Trick:
Press I to activate the Eyedropper tool, and then drag the Eyedropper icon on your monitor screen to the place where you want to get the color of your choice.
10. How You Can Undo Previous Action?
Let’s end this post with one of the most common action that we usually perform when working on any design – that is undo the work we’ve done. We have a tendency to undo something, even when we haven’t made any mistake. Especially, when creating some sketches we will want to undo things that don’t seem right.
Trick:
You can undo your previous action in Photoshop, simply by pressing “Ctrl + Z”. Pressing the same key again, however, will redo your previous action you’ve made.
Summary
I hope reading this post would helped you learn about a few new tricks, making it easy for you to manipulate images and work with Photoshop layers.
