Here is a collection of useful tips and tricks to improve your Photoshop skills.

Ten Golden Tricks

1. Hitting Tab hides all of your palettes. Hitting Tab again brings them back.
2. Shift+Tab hides all the pallets except your toolbar.
3. Hitting the "D" key resets your color pallets to Black foreground, White Background.
4. The "X" key will toggle your foreground and background colors.
5. Use CMD+Delete to fill your layer or selection with the current background color.
6. Option+Delete fills your layer or selection with the foreground color.
7. Change your paintbrush circle into a crosshair for precise control by pressing the Caps Lock key.
8. Double-Click the ruler on the top or side of your document brings up the Units & Ruler Dialogue box. (handy if you work in both print and web)
9. To quickly change the blend mode of a layer Shift+Option+(letter corresponding to mode) ie: Shift+Option+M is Multiply. Shift+Option+V is Vivid Light.
10. Using Shift+ the "+" or "-" will toggle through the various blend modes one at a time.

Speed Up File Browser
Adobe Photoshop tutorialIf you feel your File Browser is too slow in generating previews, you might want to try this setting.

Select Allow Background Processing in Photoshop /Preferences /File Browser to use extra processing power to pre-generate cache information like previews and metadata.

This setting will allow Photoshop to work on thumbnails for your files, while you're busy doing something else.


Help Menu Export?
Ok, I have no idea what was going through Adobe's head when they put an export option in the help menu. Yes you read that correctly. There is an export command in the help menu. I fiddled around with is for a little bit and discovered something interesting about this hidden option.

Adobe Photoshop tutorialThis is something that I think can be either a time waster or a time saver depending on your experience level and your personal work flow. For those that do not understand or avoid the pen tool for creating clipping paths, this can be a real time saver. If in the past you ever needed to make a clipping path from a selection it took a series of steps to get from the selection process to the final saved EPS. Well Adobe included a "Export Transparency" option. It's in the help menu and not in the file menu for some odd reason.

When you export your transparency, it will automatically include your clipping path and save your file as an EPS. You do have to follow a few on screen prompts so that the wizard knows what you are using the file for, (i.e. web or print).

I don't think this will be a replacement tool for many of us, however just knowing the option is there can be a big help from time to time.


Copying Path From Illustrator To Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop tutorialBy default when you copy a path from Illustrator to Photoshop it gets rasterized.

If you want to paste the path into Photoshop as a working path, you need to open Illustrator /Preferences /Files and Clipboard... and set the Clipboard to Copy As: AICB /Preserve Paths.

Next time you copy a path from Illustrator to Photoshop you will be given an option in Photoshop if you want your clipboard content as Pixels, Path or Shape layer.


Selecting The Right Layer
Adobe Photoshop tutorialMany times Photoshop files can get to many layers. This can be almost impossible to manage if you work only within the layers palette. First off, let me say that I am a big advocate of naming layers. Not only it is more descriptive than Layer 1 or Layer 2, itt gives other designers the ability to sort through your mess and hopefully call you a few less dirty names. With that said, using this next tip can greatly improve your speed when selecting layers.

Select the move tool (V) and hover over the area you want to select. CTRL-Click and a contextual menu will come up with a list of all the layers directly below your mouse. Simply select the appropriate layer and move on. As you can see naming your layers as you go greatly improves your ability to get through a project with as little headache as possible.


Adobe Photoshop tutorialExpanding And Reducing Selections
Have you ever made a selection like a square and tried to use the Select /Modify /Expand method to enlarge the selection? If you have, you noticed that you did not get a square at all. It will clip the corners off your selection.

If you want to get accurate results you will need to jump to quick mask mode by clicking the quick mask icon in the tool bar or by pressing the letter "Q". Once in the quick mask mode you will need to use Filter /Other /Maximum or Minimum. If your selected area is red use Minimum, otherwise use Maximum. Use the slider to adjust the amount of expansion. In my example I drew a rectangle marquee, and to enlarge it, I used the Maximum filter.

[tutorial and images © Ivan Raszl of CreativeBits]