I will be using the same shape I was using in the Illustrator tutorial to demonstrate the techniques in this one. To get it into Photoshop I just copied and pasted it in as a Smart Object. (For more on Smart Objects, check out this previous tutorial)

Ah, but wait, it still has that previous dummy shadow. Let’s remove that by double clicking on the layer icon to open it up in Illustrator, delete the shadow and save. Done! The shape auto updates in Photoshop without its shadow.

Now for the shadow. Woah! Don’t go reach for the shadow effect in layer styles; we will not be using that for a poor replacement of a 3D shadow. Instead duplicate the layer you would like a shadow of. To duplicate a layer with speed, drag and drop the layer over the new layer button. Before I can use my shadow layer I need to rasterize it as Photoshop cannot apply the deformations we will be making to smart objects. To do this I right-click the layer and select Rasterize Layer.

Now to make it look a little like a shadow before moving it into place. Cmd/Ctrl click the layer icon on your shadow layer. This selects the contents. Now go to Edit -> Fill (or Shift + F5) and fill the layer with black. Finally use Cmd/Ctrl + D to deselect everything.

Now go to Edit -> Free Transform -> Distort. You will see your familiar transform hangers appear – but these are special. Try grabbing and moving the corner points. You will see Photoshop lets you deform like never before! Once you have finished experimenting press Esc to cancel the tool, and then load it again from the edit menu.

You need to think carefully from where the light is coming from as this can make or break the effect. My abstract background offers no clues to the location of the light, but the highlight on the shape itself suggests the main light source is in front of the shape and to the right. This would send the shadow backwards (into the picture) and slightly to the left. I grabbed the top hangers and moved the into the background like so.

In most situations you will want to ensure that the top two points are sitting horizontally, and the bottom two points are also horizontally. Also, do not move the points that connect the shadow with the object. Think about a real life shadow, the close it is to the object it is, the less distorted it is.

Once you have your shadow in the correct place, press enter to accept the deformation. It is good, but still not quite right. Lets start by blurring the edges of the shadow. Go to Filter -> Blur -> Guassian Blur. You probably want a Radius of about 4 pixels, but see what works for you.

Ok it is getting there, but still not right. Most shadows fade as they get further from the object casting them. Take the layer Fill of your shadow to 0%, it can be found below the layer opacity in the layers palette. Now double click on your shadow layer to open up the Layer Styles. Now select the Gradient Overlay row. Next click on the gradient to open the Gradient Editor. If your Foreground colour was set to black you will be able to select the second preset gradient, otherwise quickly create one that goes from solid black to 100% transparent black.Then press OK to close the Gradient Editor.

Now we don’t want our shadow to fade completely away, so change the scale to 150%. You may also need to change the angle of the gradient to fit with your shadow. Now press OK to close the Layer Styles panel.

It is almost there! Lastly we need to replicate the increased fade you get in the parts of the shadow that are most distant. For that we need to convert it for Smart Filters. Go to Edit -> Convert For Smart Filters. This allows us mask off parts of a filter using layer masks that will now come with any filters we apply. We are going to be sing our friend the Gaussian Blur again so press Cmd/Ctrl + F (This applies the last used filter again) or go up to Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. You probably want similar settings to last time.

Your Shadow layer in the palette probably looks something like this now.

You will notice the Layer mask which can be hidden or shown, but also an eye next to the gaussian blur. Yep, your filter is still editable much like Layer Styles were. Just double click the filter to re-open its settings box and edit it. But we don’t need that so click on the filter’s layer mask so select it. Now grab the gradient tool and ensure it is set to a simple black to white gradient. Lastly, drag from the base of the shadow to the end.

This will mask off the gaussian blur gradually so it mostly effects the furthest parts of the shadow – replicating a real shadow. The effect is subtle but useful.

Lastly, I made some small changes to the original vector shape to enhance the shadow effect.

Well done! You’ve have just created your own realistic shadow.

Workspaces can be found in two locations: under the View>Workspaces drop down menu or, in the Application bar on the right hand side.

InDesign workspace switcher

I this example I’m using InDesign. The current workspace (Essentials) is displayed in the application bar next to the search field. Click on the downward triangle to see a list of preset workspaces (this is known as the workspace switcher).

InDesign Essentials workspace panels

The essentials workspace doesn’t really have enough panels for even basic work with InDesign. Try selecting Advanced from the list, this causes InDesign to refresh and show some new panels.

InDesign Advanced workspace panels

The Advanced workspace contains more useful panels for general InDesign work and I recommend using this one as a default rather than Essentials.

Adobe supplies various preset workspaces to get you started. Their names should tell you all you need to know about what to expect. When you try a new workspace, be sure to check the menus as well as many Adobe workspaces make use of menu highlighting and some actually hide certain menu options.

As well as using the preset workspaces, you can make your own. Make visible any panels you wish to use. Drag and organise them on the screen to the location and order you find most useful. Remember that the toolbar and control panels can also be moved by dragging the double row of tiny dots.

Random arrangement of InDesign panels

Go to the workspace switcher and select New Workspace.

InDesign save workspace dialogue box

Type in a name.

Any custom workspaces you have created will appear at the top of the switcher list.

When you reselect Essentials this time, you may find it retains the customisations you made for your custom workspace. This is because you started with this workspace in the first place. To revert this, go back to the workspace switcher and select Reset Essentials (or whatever your starting workspace was). InDesign will now reload the panels in their default arrangement.

All the major Creative Suite apps are extremely complex and feature far too many functions to display at once. Workspaces give you complete control over what is displayed and when. You only need to see the panels you need right now.

So let’s start playing with this tool. Here I have a background and a line of text. What I would love is for the background texture to fill only the text area. This can be done with standard masks in just a few clicks, but with two clicks it can be one with clipping masks.

(1st click) Move text under the texture.

(2nd click) Alt/Option click between the layers. Done!

When you alt click between the layers, photoshop clips the top layer to the one below – effectively cutting our texture to the shape of the text. You can also very easily move the texture just by moving its layer, the clipping mask will update itself.

It doesn’t just work with text, it works with anything. Below is an example of an image clipped to a shape.

It gets even more useful when you combine this with adjustment layers. You can get an adjustment layer such as black & white to clip to another layer using the same technique – place adjustment layer directly above the layer you want it to effect, and then alt/option click between them. In the example below I flattened the dinosaur layers first. (You can’t apply clipping masks to groups)

You can even use standard masks in combination with this technique. Here I used the mask attached to the adjustment layer to put some of the colour back into the dinosaur in certain areas.

And lastly, the great thing about these masks is they are completely non-destructive meaning you can undo everything very easily, or hide the masks to show people how you made the image. To remove a clipping mask simply alt/option click between the two layers again.

To demonstrate the tools, let’s create a space themed application icon. These complex pieces of artwork often incorporate many existing images or textures to represent the software in one single and complete icon.

Let’s start with a blank 512×512 canvas. Nice and easy? It doesn’t get much harder. Our icon is going to need some kind of background. I already have an image I want to use so I have dropped that into the document. Not great though, I think it needs some stars.

I have dropped in another image of a starry sky and set the layer mode to screen; this creates a good starting point for the space background. However, I do not want these stars to show up everywhere, some of the stars are too strong and take away from my texture behind. It’s mask time.

While ensuring the layer you wish to mask is selected, press the layer mask button at the bottom of the layers palette (it’s the third one in, the square with a circle inside). You’ll notice it has attached a strange new thumbnail to your layer. This is the masking layer and it is currently filled with white. To start pushing back those stars, take the brush tool, set hardness to 0% and brush opacity to 50%. Finally make sure the colour is set to black. Now when you start painting you will see the stars start to disappear, as if they were being erased. Cool huh? Now check that mask thumbnail – its filled with black, white and grey sploges.

Those black and grey sploges are where you have been painting. Photoshop will hide the areas under black and partially hide areas under grey (the amount of ‘hiding’ depends on the lightness of the grey.) Anything on that layer under the white areas of the mask remain visible.

When you are working with masks you can paint on the layer by clicking on the layer thumbnail, paint on the mask by clicking on the mask thumbnail, and delete a mask by selecting the mask in the palette and either dragging it to the bin or pressing backspace.

So why use the mask and not the eraser tool? Are they not both doing the same thing? To find out, set your brush colour to white and start painting on your mask again. The stars will become visible again. Masks are non-destructive. This is incredibly useful as you can keep working on them, refining them and remove them entirely if you decide you don’t like them without losing any important information. Now, onwards with the icon!

I have dragged on the main feature in this icon: the spaceship. But I feel it needs something to make it stand out. There is nothing like rays of glowing light to highlight a vector spaceship! Use the gradient tool to put a circular white glow  onto a new layer.

Hm… its not quite right. I designed a light rays shape in illustrator and copied and pasted it into photoshop. Now it is positioned I would love for that glow to only occupy the shape. To do that we need another mask.

It would be painfully slow to paint the shape of that light rays layer ourselves. Can we get photoshop to do it for us? Yes! Cmd/Ctrl click the rays of light thumbnail and photoshop will generate a selection based on the layer. Then click the glow layer and press the mask button and photoshop automatically creates a mask from the selection. To see the effect hide the rays of light shape.

Awesome! That looks much better. Now lets use those same techniques to turn this picture into an icon. Group all of the layers by selecting the top one in the palette and shift selecting the last one (Note: if you have a background layer you will need to convert it to a standard layer by double clicking it and pressing enter) then press Cmd/Ctrl + G to group those layers. Next take the rounded rectangle tool and draw out a square over everything.

We are going to create a mask on the group so everything inside is masked. Cmd/Ctrl click the rectangle thumbnail to create a selection, click on the group in the layers palette and then click the mask button at the bottom and ta-dah! A white square? You’ll also need to hide the white rectangle as it is still sitting above the group.

There is your icon, almost complete. I am going to show you how to create a shadow below the icon to make it look as if it were hovering. You could easily paint it in yourself, but knowing how to do it with speed and accuracy with a mask is a useful skill. Create a new layer and place it underneath the group, then fill it with black. Next, take the ellipse tool and draw out a shadow so you have something that looks like this:

Know whats coming next? You guessed it! Cmd/Ctrl click the ellipse thumbnail to create a selection from the layer. Then select the layer of black and press the create mask button and… oh. That doesn’t look very much like a shadow…

The mask is solid because the shape has a solid outline. But here is a trick that could come in handy. Let’s take it back a step. Use Cmd/Ctrl + z or delete the mask on the black layer. Create the ellipse selection again by Cmd/Ctrl clicking the thumbnail but this time go to the Select menu -> Modify and Feather (or Shift + F6 for the shortcut savvy) Set the feathering to about 15px and then press ok. You may be asking what that did. To find out, select the layer of black and now press the create mask button.

Feathering a selection will soften up the edges. Using this in combination with masks can help you to create a shadow without having to paint one in by hand.

There you have the skill needed to implement the basic Photoshop mask. Experiment and it will really help you speed up your workflow.

Not got CS5? No need to fret, I’ll also take you through the alternatives for users on older versions of the Creative Suite.

First things first, original artwork. I find it best to start with a drawing so you never start with a blank canvas. Equip your pencil, start drawing and then get scanning.

Create a new document in Illustrator and use File > Place to import the drawing. Double click the layer in the Layers Palette that contains it to change the name and also change Dim Images to 25%. This will lighten bitmap images in the layer making it easier for us to re-draw. Finally click the Lock button before pressing OK to lock the layer.

Next we create a new layer to place our vector graphics in by pressing the New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers Palette. Then take the Pen Tool (P) and use the original artwork along with your imagination to start to re-draw the artwork in vector form. Ensure that Stroke is set to black with no colour fill.

Do not worry if mistakes rear there ugly heads when creating your path. Once it is finished the White Arrow Tool will help you move points and adjust the handles that control the curves. The Add/Delete Anchor Point tools can also be used to further adjust your path.

So far we have a black line. Hmm… Not so fond of the monochrome artwork? Letscolour our creation. Select one of your paths and add a fill that will be the primary colour of the graphic. At this point I find that the Window > Colour Guide Palette (Shift + F3) is invaluable when looking for colours that work well together. Drag suitable colours from the colour guide into your swatch for future use. You can also apply subtle gradients at this point if you choose.

To define the shape of our graphic we add shadows with the Pen Tool (P). Draw out your shadow ensuring it has a black fill with no stroke. Try to imagine where the light is coming from so you can picture where the shadows will fall. Once you have drawn a shadow select Window > Transparency and reduce the opacity. I used Opacity of 30%. This will all contribute to bringing the character to life.

Multiple overlapping shadows can be united into a single shape when using CS5s new Shape Builder Tool (Shift + M). Select the shapes to be united and then drag across them with Shape Builder selected. The same result can be achieved in earlier versions of the Creative Suite with Window > Pathfinder and clicking the Unite button on the far left with the shapes selected.

Highlights can be created in a similar way to shadows. They will continue to liven the character. Once again draw out your highlight with the Pen Tool but use a white fill. This time we do not only change the opacity but also the blending mode of the shape. Change it from Normal to Overlay which preserves the black strokes underneath. I used varying opacities for the highlights depending on the texture of the object. Set the opacity higher to give the effect of light reflecting off harder surfaces. Remember to bear in mind the direction of light so you can best position your highlights. Sometimes, you may want to layer highlights to also replicate specific surfaces.

In Creating an iPhone Graphic Part Two I will show you how to use the Stroke Width to bring your character to life.

Camera Raw is not just for photographers, anyone who needs to make adjustments to their images, small or large, should take advantage of the powerful tools.

Camera Raw is a part of Bridge and Photoshop and the techniques I show you should work in most versions of the Creative Suite – I am using CS5 Bridge and Photoshop.

I will take you through some of the tools available to you to help really enhance your images.

Let’s start with the photo of this loveable guy from a trip to the zoo.

Double clicking a photo opens Camera Raw from within Photoshop. This is useful if you are only making the first few changes with Camera Raw and then wish to take the image into Photoshop for further changes and general ‘Photoshopping’. Otherwise, right click the image and click ‘Open in Camera Raw…’ to open Camera Raw from within Bridge.

I think at this point it would be good to mention what kinds of files can be opened with Raw. Camera Raw will open all RAW file types but also Tiffs and Jpegs, but no others.

Welcome to Camera Raw! Along the righthand side is the bar where your mouse will likely spend most of its time. A tab bar lets you select the kind of enhancements you would like to make while an array of exciting buttons and sliders sit below to help you make those enhancements. There are also some tools that run along the top. Towards the bottom of the window is an Open Image button to open the image with changes in Photoshop normally and a Done button to save the changes and go back to Bridge. Between those too is the emergency exit – Just in case things get to scary and you do not want to save any of your changes.

In this tutorial we will be sticking mostly with the first tab bar, but we will sneak into some of the others.

I love this happy Sloth, but I think he can be greatly improved. Lets start with some of those settings in the first tab. (Aptly named – Basic Settings)

The two sliders here change the colours in the image to enable you to change the White Balance. All the drop-down does is make those changes with some presets. Not all are appropriate to your image but I feel the best way is to do it by eye for yourself. For my sloth I am sliding the temperature control up just 400 points (out of 50000) The changes in Camera Raw tend to be minor and fine but they make a huge difference. For my tint slider I am moving it 14 points towards the Magenta end to remove some of the green tinge in the fur.

Don’t forget, as you read this, play around! Everything you do is undoable.

These next settings are just underneath and control just about everything you could wish for in light manipulation without controlling the sun.

Exposure should make sense to most photographers; it changes the amount of light in the photograph, trying to replicate the setting on the camera. Brightness and contrast are also two sliders that are relatively self explanatory.

Recovery allows you to bring back some of the highlights that may have blown out, while fill light tries to recovery areas lost to shadow. Blacks increases the shadows darkness.

There is a saturation slider to saturate or de-saturate colours by helping you to pull the colours up and out to make them ‘pop’, or push them out to ‘wash out’ the image. Vibrance does the same but boosts less-saturated colours more than the high saturated colours. I find vibrance more useful as it helps protect you against over saturation.

Left: Before | Right: After

Next, lets move to the second tab – The Tone Curve. Here you can either use the preset curves to adjust contrast, or click and drag on the curve to adjust it yourself. I am going to leave it at the medium contrast curve.

The next tab is all about sharpening. You can use these in combination to improve the sharpness. To see the refinements you are making in more detail, hold the alt key while you adjust a slider.

Left: Before | Right: After

The fourth tab allows you to convert the image to greyscale and individually adjust each colours hue, saturation and luminance. This is particularly useful for making those super fine refinements.  Below is an extreme example of what fiddling with these settings does.

Left: Over Yellow | Right: Over Red

The fourth tab really comes into its own when the image is in greyscale; although you can use it for full colour images. To demonstrate this I am going to temporarily tun the Sloth black and white using the checkbox in the previous tab.

Split toning takes changes the highlights and shadows to the selected hue. This produces some wonderful effects.

You can adjust the balance so more of the image turns to the shadow hue or visa versa.

Left: Focus Highlights | Right: Focus Shadows

I would say the basic settings are now sorted. There are other tabs which I would recommend exploring but for now we will look at the tools that run along the top.

I am going to cover the 3rd and 4th group of tools in the tutorial, as I have mentioned before, experiment with the others too. It helps you to learn even more.

Lets start with the crop and straighten tools. Both work exactly as you would expect. Click and drag out a box for the crop or a new horizon line for the straighten tool; then press enter to confirm. They both create a new clipping box which you can adjust freely. Don’t like your new crop? click the tools again to re-adjust.

The next tool is the spot heal, great for taking out small spots of dust or other things. To use it, click and drag a circle over the offending area. Camera Raw will then create a green circle of the same size next to yours, this is the sampling circle that will be used to ‘heal’ the spot. If needed you can adjust the size and opacity using the new sliders on the right. Clicking another tool will hide the circles but you can always retrieve them by selecting the spot healing tool again. You can create as many as you need, but this sloth only needs to one to remove this odd ‘glowing’ hair.

Left: Before | Right: After

The next tool is the red-eye tool. Very simple, if you have people with red-eye, click and drag on their eyes and Camera Raw will do the rest. Fortunately for my sloth friend, his pupils are hidden and does not need this tool.

The next tool is called the adjustment brush and is one of my favourites. With it you can make most of the adjustments you can make with the Basic settings tab, but to certain areas by painting on a mask. The foot of my sloth needs to be sharpened up a little so here I have painted on a mask and can change some of the settings to improve only that area of the image.

When you finish painting an area you will see a pin, roll over it to see the mask associated with that pin. If you wish to create a new mask, click the ‘New’ button at the top of the Adjustment Brush settings panel. To go back to an old mask, click its pin.

Left: Before | Right: After

The final tool in those group is the Graduated Filter. Click and drag out a gradient starting in the place you want to effect the most and ending in the place you wish it to effect the least. The gradient is linear and can take some getting used to, but you can easily re-adjust or remove it if need be. I use this tool a lot for changing the sky as I have here with the sloth.

You can create multiple Graduated Filters too.

Left: Before | Right: After

The Sloth is done, for now. He now glows in this image and the colours are much truer to life. The great thing about Camera Raw is that you can always come back and make further changes or remove changes if need be.

To finish, click Open Image to take it into Photoshop and save out the file; or click done if you want to go back to Bridge. Here is a comparison to show how the original photo has been enhanced.

Left: Before | Right: After

There are so many powerful features in the Adobe Creative Suite that most people are not even aware are there; Camera Raw is one of those.

So say you have finished you artwork, how do you apply that perfect gloss to it? I will show my favourite techniques below.

To start, open your artwork in Photoshop. Done? Easy. Here is my artwork at the same stage.

The reflection is the essential part of a gloss. It is important to remember that it is the light reflecting off from your icon that we are trying to replicate with the gloss. Usually this reflection is hard edged and is coming from a large window. Remembering this can help you to make important choices about your gloss, whether or not to offset it, tint it and how intense it should be.

Take the ellipse tool and draw out a large ellipse that should completely cover the top half of your artwork. Do not worry about the colour, after drawing it out I take the fill down to 0%.

Double click on the ellipse shape layer to open up the layer style panel. If you have never seen this before it will either look very scary, or wonderfully exciting. You can find out a lot about most of these effects by experimenting and I would recumbent looking through them; but not right now. For the moment we are going to jump straight to gradient overlay section on the left.

Change the gradient to a Solid White to Completely Transparent. I use a transparency of 20% on the gradient overlay. Increase or decrease this to suite personal taste and the style of your artwork. Also ensure the angle is 90°.

Below is how my artwork looks like at this point.

Looks good nay? But not quite perfect. It needs a couple more effects, but subtle effects. The gloss should not take over the artwork, it needs to show off the artwork.

Open up the layer style panel again if you closed it. This time click the Inner Glow section to apply the default Inner Glow. If you want to tint the gloss, change the colour to your desired tint, otherwise I use white. Also take take down the opacity to about 10% and raise the Size until you get an even spread. I used 95px on this image, but it may be different for your artwork.

Then click Outer Glow and change the glow colour to black. This will help define the edge a little more. Raise the spread to taste and lower the opacity to about 20%.

But wait… there seems to be no effect. This is because of the blend mode. A black gloss will have no effect on the pixels below when using a screen. So to rectify this, change the mode to normal.

Hit OK to confirm and there is a perfect gloss. Some things you could try experimenting with: Inner Glow colour tint, offsetting the Ellipse and changing the opacity of the Gradient Overlay.

Finally, I thought I would touch on how to take all of this and round off the corners to create an icon. To start with this take the rounded rectangle and set the radius to 10px. Then drag out a square while holding the Shift key to ensure the square remains in proportion.

I left a gap on the right and bottom sides so I could apply a drop shadow to the square.

Now to apply the square as a mask to the artwork, select the layers of artwork and press Cmd/Ctrl + G to group it; then hold Cmd/Ctrl and click the shape mask on the square to create a selection from it.

Finally, click the group below the shape layer and click the layer mask button at the bottom of the Layers Palette. (Third button in from the left) This takes the selection and turns it into a mask which rounds off the corners.

Finished? Not quite. The artwork is quite, well, gone. To fix that, take the square’s fill down to 0% in the same way we took the gloss layer fill down.

These Tips and Tricks work similarly in previous versions of Adobe Creative Suite.

10 Shortcuts to make your life easier

1. Shift + Tab

Most people known that Tab will hide the palettes and toolbar (If you didn’t there’s one bonus tip) but Shift + Tab will only hide the palettes. This will help those on smaller screens.

2. Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Z

Ctrl/Cmd + Z enables you to undo your last action, holding alt with those lets you keep stepping backward in time after that. But what if you want to redo? Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + Z is here to save you. If you have gone back a few steps in history with Ctrl/Cmd + Alt + Z, pressing Ctrl/Cmd + Z will take back to the bottom of your history.

3. Square Brackets [ ]

For those often using the brushes in a photoshop you may know that pressing the left and right square bracket buttons will reduce and increase brush size respectively. What you may not know is that holding shift while pressing either of those keys will allow you to increase or decrease brush hardness.

4. D

Pressing D on the key board resets the foreground colour to Black and the  background colour to White. This can be useful when working with masks.

5. X

Whilst still on the subject of masks, X will swap the background/foreground colours around.

6. Tool shortcuts

Common tool shortcuts to streamline your workflow: V – Move, B – Brush, E – Eraser, A- Direct Selection Tool, P – Pen Tool, C – Crop.

7. Alt Clicking Tools

Alt clicking any tool that is a part of a set will select the next tool in the set.

8. Numbers and Opacity

Opacity in Photoshop can be quickly changed by typing in the desired value. For example, pressing 5 and 0 on the keyboard changes the opacity to 50%. The guys at adobe know that pressing keys takes time so they also built in the ability so that when you press one number, Photoshop will add in the extra 0 for you. E.g. Pressing 3 gives you 30%. When working with brushes, this will change brush opacity, when working with the move tool, this will change the current layer opacity.

9. Shift + Alt + Ctrl/Cmd + K

Bored or don’t like the default shortcuts? Use this one to completely personalise your Photoshop experience.

10. Alt + Panel Options

At the top of the layer palette, click the button for the drop down menu and while holding Alt, click Panel options for a small surprise during your next break.

10 Tips and Tricks to improve your workflow

11. Layer Masks

To disable a layer mask, Shift click the mask in the layers palette. To view the layer mask Alt click it in the layer palette and to see the layer mask with the layer hold Alt + Shift when you click the mask in the layers palette.

12. Duplicate Layer

Hold Alt when you move a layer to duplicate the layer. This also works with the nudge tool (arrow keys). To duplicate a layer in place, drag and drop the layer in the palette to the new layer button.

13. Hide Everything Else

There is often a need to only see one layer, but when working with many it can take time to hide all the other layers by clicking each eye. A much faster way is to Alt click the eye button on the layer you want to keep shown; all the other layers will hide. If you Alt click the same layer again Photoshop will bring them all back.

14. Aligning Two Identical Layers

If two identical layer do not snap into place when aligning them, change the top layer’s mode to Difference and then use the nudge tools to move the top layer around. When the top layer goes completely black the layers are aligned and you can change its mode back to normal.

15. Adjustment Layers

Adjustment layers, as standard, will affect everything below them. When you need it to only affect the layer directly below it, and not the rest, Alt click between the two.

16. Grouping Adjustment Layers

We know how to make an adjustment layer affect everything below it, or just the single layer below it, but what if you only want it to affect layers inside a group? Ensure your adjustment is inside the group and above all the layers you want it to affect, then click the group in the layers palette and change it’s mode from Pass Through to Normal.

17. Hide Crop Mode

By default a crop will delete anything not inside its bounding rectangle. This can be annoying when you need to move something back into the canvas as the layer will be cut off. To stop this happening, when you select the crop tool and drag out the bounding box, at the top of the window click Hide and when you press enter to confirm the crop all your layers will still be complete. The crop mode can easily be changed back by selecting delete rather than hide before confirming a crop. Even with Hide on, your background layer will still be deleted. To get around this, double click the background layer to convert it to a standard layer, and then create your crop.

18. Hold Alt for Detail Sharpness in Raw

When changing sharpness in Camera Raw, hold Alt and you will see the image go black and white. It makes it easier to see the effect the sharpening has. This works on Amount, Radius, Detail and Masking.

19. Mattings

If you have a layer where the background has been cut out, but there are some pixels around the edge that still remain, choose Layer > Matting > Defringe to change the colour of the edge pixels to the same colour as the pixels just inside from them. You can change the width to higher values to change the colour of more pixels.

20. Alt Transformations

When transforming an object most people will know that holding Shift constrains the proportions. However, you can hold Alt to scale from the centre rather than the opposite corner.

Go forth young Obi Wan, and may the power of Photoshop be a light in these dark times.