Photoshop actions are basically ways of performing repeated tasks easily. An action is a recorded sequence of commands that can be saved and played at a later stage. You can add actions for pretty much any procedure such as resize an image, adding filters, changing colours etc.

To use/install an action you can drag the .atn file directly into the action panel or you can drag it into the Photoshop action folder in the Photoshop directory. Another way is to select the "load Actions" from the actions panel which will load the action anywhere from your hard drive.



There are places on the internet that provide free Photoshop actions created by other Photoshop users. Below is a list of free Photoshop actions.

• visual-blast - 124+ Free Photoshop Actions to Boost Your Designs.

• The Ultimate Collection Of Useful Photoshop Actions - like the name says, the Ultimate Collection, over 350 actions available to download.

• turningturnip - A reasonable list of Photoshop actions.

• designreviver - 400+ Time Saving Photoshop Actions.

• Actionfx - 100+ free photoshop action. Work in all version.

• deviantart - many different Photoshop actions.

Sometimes it is easier to download a high resolution texture rather than creating your own texture in Photoshop. There are all sort of free textures available to download such as wood, stone grass, metal etc.




Below I have provided a list of places where you can get free textures in Photoshop:

• Photoshoptextures – A popular place to download many different categories of textures.

• z7server - There are over 1350 texture in this site which are separated into catalogues.

• Grsites – They claim they have the largest collection of textures on the internet

• freephotoshop – Contains four main catogories which are grunge, rocks, rust and wood.

• Archivetextures – Over 3500+ textures with many new textures added daily.

• Change-books – Textures include metal, nature, sky, stone, textile and wood

• Cgtextures - The world largest free texture site.
  

Quick masks are a method of selecting areas in an image by using the brush or pen tools. This allows you to make more accurate selections as you are able to paint the areas you wish to select.

The process of using the quick masks involves:

• Resetting the colour palette.
• Entering quick mask mode.
• Painting the mask.
• Exiting the quick mask mode.

Resetting the colour palette

To begin using quick masks you must first reset the colour palette by pressing the “D” key. This will allow you to see the quick masks more clearly. Although, if you have two different colours in your palette you will notice the foreground colour turn gray when to enter quick mask mode.


Entering quick mask mode

There are two ways of entering the quick mask mode. You can either select the “Edit it quick mask mode” icon on the toolbox like below:


Or you can select the “Q” key on the keyboard. There are two different ways you can tell if you are in quick mask mode. Firstly, the title on the image will have “Quick Mask”; and the history panel on the right will have the message “Enter Quick mask”.


Painting the mask

When you paint in quick mask mode, you will notice a transparent red colour. The colour red indicates the areas which have masked out. For example below, I want to select the sky background, so have painted the area.


You can of course increase the size of your brush and zoom into your image when you are in quick mask mode.

If you make a mistake you can flip the colour palette by pressing the “X” key and paint to unmask the areas, but remember to flip the palette back. Or you can alternatively use the eraser tool to remove your mistake.


Exiting the quick mask mode

There are two ways of exiting the quick mask mode. You can select the icon opposite the “Edit it quick mask mod” in the toolbox. Or you select the “Q” key again to exit the quick masks. The example will look something like below:


You should notice the opposite area selected. You can reverse this choosing Select > Inverse and your image should look like below. Ideally you should paint the opposite of what you want to select in quick mask mode.



Summary

This is a quick summary of how to use quick mask mode:

• Resetting the colour palette – Select the “D” key.
• Entering quick mask mode – Select the “Q” key on the keyboard or the icon on the toolbox.
• Painting the mask – Paint the mask area.
• Exiting the quick mask mode – Select the “Q” key on the keyboard or the icon on the toolbox.

In this series I will provide a collection of different text effects created in Photoshop. All the text effects in this series are original and can provide an insight into the possibilities of Photoshop. There is practically an unlimited amount of text effects you can create using the tools in Photoshop.

Below are examples of the kind of text effects you can achieve.

Text effect example 1

If you are a regular user of Photoshop, you will find it rather time consuming to select each tool from the tool bar manually. To save time, you can use the shortcut keys which can speed up the process of selecting the tools.

Below is a link for Photoshop keyboard shortcuts for both windows and mac:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/11.0/WS24E993BC-E1F3-4ac6-8225-7685C3B17669a.html

You can also customise your own Photoshop keyboard shortcut. This avoids you having to use the default shortcuts. To customise the shortcuts you can either select:

• Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts (Windows)
• Windows > Workspace > Keyboard Shortcuts (Mac)

To find more information on keyboard shortcuts checkout:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/11.0/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-76b7a.html

The standard lasso and the polygonal lasso have options like the Marquee tools which are:

• New selection – This is the default, a new selection made every time you use the standard or polygonal lasso. The old selection will get removed when a new selection is made.
• Add to selection – This adds more selections from the current selected areas when you use this option.
• Subtraction from selection – This subtracts selection from the current selected areas.
• Intersect from selection – This option keeps the section from the intersected area of two selections.

The magnetic lasso has a different set of options which are:

• Width – The pixel width of the magnetic lasso. The maximum width value is 256px.
• Edge contrast – The sensitivity of the edges in the images, the value ranges from 1 – 100 %.
• Frequency – The rate the lasso detects and sets to the edges of the image. The greater the value the more frequent the anchor points.
• Stylus Pressure – This is for if you are using a graphics tablet, the more pressure you apply the smaller the edge width.

There are 3 main kinds of Lasso tools in Photoshop which are :

• The standard lasso
• Polygonal lasso
• Magnetic lasso

The standard lasso

The standard lasso is a tool used for drawing freeform selections. You use this tool like a pen, you click and hold down the mouse and draw your selection on the image. To draw straight lines you can hold down the Alt key. The standard lasso is useful for making quick selections on an image, although the selected areas will not be accurate. If you make a mistake when using the lasso you can simply double-click and start your selection again.




Polygonal lasso

The polygonal lasso is a tool used for drawing straight edged selection. This tool is similar to the standard lasso, but draws straight selections instead of free forms selections. To use this tool, you click the location where you want your first point for the selection, and keep clicking until you end your selection. If you want to erase the selection you can hit the Delete key. Also, if you want to draw freehand you can hold down the Alt key.




Magnetic lasso

The magnetic lasso is a tool for snapping to the edges of an area of an image. To use this tool, you click the initial starting point and use the mouse to follow the edges of the object where you want to select. You can either hold the down mouse button or release the button when using this tool. When you moving the mouse it will automatically snap the edge of the object. If the lasso does not snap to the edges you can click once on the mouse, which manually adds an anchor point to the image.



To create a straight edge like the in the polygonal lasso tool you can hold down the Alt key. If you want to erase a point you can hit the delete key which will remove the previous point.

Checkout The lasso tools part 2