To avoid having to constantly reset commonly used values for your tools, set up your preferred options for the tool, then click on the Tool Presets picker icon (in the upper left of the options bar) and save the preset. These Tool Presets can be accessed at any time from either the Options bar, or the Tool Presets panel. To view only those presets available for the currently selected tool, check the “Use the Current Tool Only” option on the Tool Preset panel (or picker).
To help with the placement/alignment/scale of an object that is being “placed”, the (placed) layer’s opacity and blend mode can be modified in the layers panel. Note: a layer’s opacity, fill and blend mode can also be modified while being transformed (Edit > Free Transform).
When using the File > Place command (invoked from either Photoshop or Bridge) the placed document is automatically converted into a Smart Object. Not only does this work when placing images, but also logos/artwork from Illustrator into Photoshop.
To create an “unlinked” copy of a Smart object, select Layer > Smart Objects > New Smart Object via Copy. This copy will reference it’s own embedded file. If you edit the contents of the Smart Object only that instance will be updated.
Multiple instances of the same Smart Object can be created by selecting Layer > New > Layer Via Copy or by Option (Mac) / Alt (Win) dragging the Smart Object in the Layers panel. Editing the contents of any of the instances of the Smart Object will update ALL placed instances of that Smart Object.
To Edit the Contents of a Smart Object, double click the Smart Object’s thumbnail in the Layer’s panel.
In this Adobe Photoshop CS4 tutorial (Creating A Triptych In Photoshop), Julieanne Kost shows you how to open 3 images at once in Photoshop and then easily arrange them into a Triptych.
In the Adjustments Panel, Option (Mac) / Alt (Win) -click in the grid area to toggle more/less grid lines. (10% vs quarter-tone increment)
To delete a point on a curve, select the point and do any of the following:
• Press Delete/Backspace
• Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + click on point (on the panel or from the image area)
• Click and drag the point off of the grid
With the On-image tool selected on the Curves Adjustments panel (that’s the one that looks like the hand with the up/down arrow – otherwise known as the “scrubby slider”, as oppose to any of the eyedropper tools), Shift + (plus) will select the next point on the curve and Shift + (minus) will select the previous point. Shift -click multiple points on the curve to select more than one and move them all at once. Command (Mac) / Control (Win) + D will deselect all selected points.
With the On-image tool selected on the Curves Adjustments panel (that’s the one that looks like the hand with the up/down arrow – otherwise known as the “scrubby slider”, as oppose to any of the eyedropper tools), hovering the cursor in the image area will display a preview circle (bouncing ball) over the corresponding value on the curve.
• Click in the image area to add a point to the curve.
• Click and drag up/down in the image area to add a point on the curve to lighten/darken the targeted value or
• Use the up / down or left/right arrows to move the selected point. (Add the shift key to move it in larger increments.)
If a Curves Adjustment layer is targeted in the Layers panel, selecting the flyout on the Adjustments panel reveals the “Curves Display Options”. Here, you can choose to show your numeric values on a scale from 0-255 (light) or 0-100% (ink), Channel Overlays, Histogram, Baseline and Intersection Line.
For added flexibility, use the Healing Brush and Clone Stamp tools to clone to blank layers by checking Sample “All Layers” in the Options bar. In addition, you can choose to Sample the “Current & Below” layers. This can be extremely helpful when cloning image layers and adjustment layer information simultaneously.
You can use the Healing brush and Clone Stamp tools between two open documents: Option (Mac) / Alt (Win) -click in the source document and then clone in the destination document.
Using the Healing brush with the blending mode set to Replace makes it behave like the Clone Stamp tool (in that it doesn’t automatically try to blend color or tonality of the source and destination), with one advantage: if you’re trying to clone high frequency image information, the edges of the cloned area will not appear soft as they do with the Clone Stamp tool.
