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    How Do I Do That in Photoshop?: The Quickest Ways to Do the Things You Want to Do, Right Now!
    How Do I Do That in Photoshop?: The Quickest Ways to Do the Things You Want to Do, Right Now!
    How Do I Do That in Photoshop?: The Quickest Ways to Do the Things You Want to Do, Right Now!
    Ebook647 pages3 hours

    How Do I Do That in Photoshop?: The Quickest Ways to Do the Things You Want to Do, Right Now!

    By Scott Kelby

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    About this ebook

    Scott Kelby, the world’s #1 best-selling photography technique books author, is here with an entirely new concept in Photoshop books—one that’s designed from the ground up to get you straight to whatever it is you need to do in Photoshop right now, get your answer fast, and get you back to editing your images in Photoshop.

    Thanks to Adobe’s incredibly popular Creative Cloud Photography plan, which includes Photoshop and Lightroom, photographers are extending the depth and power of Lightroom by jumping over to Photoshop to do all those things Lightroom just can’t do (or Lightroom can do, but in Photoshop, it’s faster and easier, or the results are just better). Because Photoshop has so much power and depth, sometimes the things you need are…well…kinda hidden or not really obvious. There will be a lot of times when you need to get something done in Photoshop, and you know Photoshop can do it (because Photoshop can do just about anything), but you have no idea where Adobe hid that feature, or what the “secret handshake” is to do that thing you need now so you can get back to working on your images. That’s why this book was created: to quickly get you to the technique, the shortcut, the setting, or exactly the right thing you need to do right now.

    Here’s how it works: When you need to know how to do a particular thing, you turn to the chapter where it would be found (Layers, Printing, Fixing Problems, Special Effects, etc.), find the thing you need to do (it’s easy, each page covers just one single topic), and Scott tells you exactly how to do it just like he was sitting there beside you, using the same casual style as if he were telling a friend. That way, you get back to editing your images fast.

    This isn’t a book of theory, full of confusing jargon and detailed multi-step concepts. This is a book on which button to click, which setting to use, and exactly how and when to use it, so you’re never “stuck” in Photoshop again. This will be your “go to” book that sits within reach any time you’re working in Photoshop. With this book, help is right at your fingertips.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRocky Nook
    Release dateJun 10, 2016
    ISBN9781681980812
    How Do I Do That in Photoshop?: The Quickest Ways to Do the Things You Want to Do, Right Now!
    Author

    Scott Kelby

    Scott Kelby is the world’s #1 best-selling author of photography technique books, as well as Editor and Publisher of the highly acclaimed <i>Photoshop User</i> magazine. He is co-host of the influential weekly photography talk show <i>The Grid</i> and he teaches digital photography workshops and seminars around the world. Scott is an award-winning author of over 60 books, including <i>How Do I Do That in Lightroom?</i>, <i>How Do I Do That in Photoshop?</i>, <i>The Lightroom Book for Digital Photographers, The Digital Photography Book series, Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers, and Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It</i>. He lives in Oldsmar, FL. For more on Scott, visit his fantastic blog at scottkelby.com.

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      Book preview

      How Do I Do That in Photoshop? - Scott Kelby

      Chapter 1

      How to Get Around Like a Pro

      Photoshop’s Interface

      I think it’s only fair that I warn you once again about a long-standing tradition of mine, and that is to write chapter intros that have little or nothing to do with what’s actually in the chapter. I want you to think of these as a mental break between chapters and not something that actually adds any value to the book, or to your life, whatsoever. That being said, I am breaking with another one of my long-standing chapter opener traditions and that is to name the chapter after a song, TV show, or movie, which is something I’ve done in nearly all my books. So, for example, in one of my previous Photoshop books, I had a chapter on editing video in Photoshop, and I named the chapter Video Killed the Radio Star, after the 1979 hit song by the Buggles (which, in case you have an interest in music history, was the first video aired when MTV debuted in August of 1981, but here’s an even lesser known piece of music trivia: Did you know that the original video they planned to air was actually Rush Rush by Paula Abdul? But, the executives at the network felt that with Paula being a judge on American Idol, there might be a conflict of interest. As it turned out, they went with the Buggles song, which was a good call since Paula Abdul’s Rush Rush wasn’t recorded until June of 1991, nine years after MTV debuted, not to mention the fact that American Idol didn’t air until 2002, which I have to admit has me frankly a bit concerned about how far you would go in a high-stakes game of music trivia. Look, if we’re going to do this thing together, you’re going to have to tighten up your music trivia quite a bit because I’m not going to sit in the audience and watch you go down in flames when they ask, who did the song Smells Like Teen Spirit and you guess Taylor Swift? Now, if you’re wondering what any of this has to do with navigating your way around Photoshop, it’s important that you re-read the first sentence in this opener, and you will instantly receive total consciousness.

      Open Panels?

      Many of Photoshop’s features are found within the panels (they’re kind of like palettes that pop out from the side of the screen), and the most-often-used panels are already visible onscreen by default (like the Color panel, the Swatches panel, the Libraries panel, the Layers panel, and so on) and appear on the far right of the window. There’s also a thin horizontal panel across the top of the window called the Options Bar (when you’re using one of Photoshop’s tools, it shows all the options for that tool here). To keep your screen from being totally cluttered with panels, some panels are nested behind other panels, so all you see is a small tab sticking up with the name of the panel (see above left, where you see the Layers panel, and to the right of its tab you see two other tabs for panels that are nested with it—the Channels panel and the Paths panel). To see one of these nested panels, just click on its tab, and the full panel appears (see above right, where I clicked on the Channels tab, and now you see the Channels panel). Of course, there are a lot more panels than what you see onscreen at first. To open any closed panel (there are around 30 in all), go under the Window menu (at the top of the screen), and you’ll see all of them. Choose one and it opens onscreen, alongside the existing panels that are already open.

      TIP: HOW TO MAKE PANELS FLOAT

      If you want a particular panel to be detached from the rest, so it floats on its own, just click-and-drag a panel tab away from the rest of the panels and it floats.

      Hide or Close Panels?

      You don’t have to work with all your panels open all the time. You can collapse them down to just their icons and names, like you see above center (just click on the two little right-facing arrows in the top right of a panel, shown circled in red above left), or collapse them even further, so only their icons are showing (once you’ve collapsed them, click on the left edge of the panel group and drag to the right until just the icons are showing, as seen above right). Collapsing these panels gives you a larger working area for your images, but your panels are still just one click away (click on any icon and that one panel pops out to full size). If you want to expand all the collapsed panels as a group (like you see above left), click on the two little left-facing arrows in the top right of the panel header. If you actually want to close a panel (not just collapse it; you want it offscreen altogether), click on the panel’s tab and drag it away from the panels it’s nested with (this makes it a floating panel), and now an x appears in the top-left corner of the panel. Click on that to close it. To reopen it, go under the Window menu and choose it.

      Create a New Document?

      Go under the File menu and choose New to bring up the New dialog. This is where you choose the size and resolution of your new document—just type in the Width and Height you want, along with the Resolution (in this case, I choose 240 Pixels/Inch for printing to an inkjet printer). You can also choose the color you want for your background (in case you don’t want it to be white), and a color profile, if you like. At the top of the dialog is the Document Type pop-up menu, which contains presets with common image sizes and resolutions already in place—you can choose web presets, print presets, video presets, and so on. If you have a particular custom size you use (like maybe for printing on 13x19" paper), you can save that as your own custom preset. Just enter the size and resolution you want (again, I use 240 ppi for inkjet printing), and click the Save Preset button at the top right. Name your preset and now it will appear in the Document Type pop-up menu for next time.

      See More Than One Image at a Time?

      When you open multiple images, they open kind of like panels do—you see the active image in front, and then little tabs (in the top of the image window) for the other open images behind it (if you have this tabbed viewing set in your Preferences). If you want to see all the images onscreen at the same time, go under the Window menu, under Arrange. At the top of the menu are a bunch of choices for how you can display them: show them all in thin vertical tiles or horizontal tiles, or display two, three, four, or six images equally (like the four images I have onscreen here. When I choose 4-Up, it instantly resizes the image windows, so all four open images fit onscreen. You’ll see that I also have Application Frame turned on, here, in the Window menu [on a Mac]). If you look a little further down in the Arrange menu, you’ll see some controls for making all those image windows open onscreen work together—what you do to an image window you click on, happens in all the other windows. For example, if you click on an image window and zoom in on that photo, then choose Match Zoom, the other three open images all zoom in the exact same way.

      Organize All These Panels?

      When you choose to add a panel to what you see onscreen, in most cases, it just appears onscreen next to the ones you already have open. In many cases, they attach to the left edge of your already open panels, and they start to cover more and more of your image area. I personally prefer to keep all my panels in groups over on the right side of the window, so I have as much room for my images as possible. If you like keeping things tidy like this, there are two things you can do: (1) You can group (nest) panels together by clicking on a panel’s tab and dragging it onto another panel’s tab. As you’re dragging over onto the other panel you want to nest it with, you’ll see a blue stroke appear around the group of panels (as seen above left). Once you see that, just release your mouse button and it joins that group. So, you’re pretty much dragging tabs together to form a group. Easy enough. (2) You can also attach panels directly below any open panel, pretty much the same way. But, in this case, you’ll drag the tab to the bottom of a panel. When it’s about to dock, you’ll see a solid blue line appear along the bottom of the panels you’re about to dock with (as seen above center). Now, just release the mouse button and it attaches to the bottom of the existing panels to form a vertical group (as seen above right).

      Use Guides?

      Anytime you need to line things up, you can drag out horizontal or vertical guides over your image. To get to these guides, first you have to make Photoshop’s Rulers visible (press Command-R [PC: Ctrl-R]), then click-and-hold directly on the top or left-side ruler and drag out a guide, positioning it right where you want it. You can reposition them using the Move tool (V; when you move your cursor over a guide, it will change into a double-headed arrow with two lines in the middle [seen circled above]. That’s your cue that it’s ready to move). If you want to add a guide based on a measurement (for example, you know you want a vertical guide added 2" into your image or 35 pixels into it, etc.), you can have Photoshop place it exactly at that position for you: Go under the View menu and choose New Guide. In the dialog (seen in the inset above), enter the measurement you want (enter the number, then a space, then in for inches, or px for pixels, etc.), click OK, and it places it precisely for you. To delete a guide you don’t want anymore, just drag it back to the ruler where it came from. To delete all your guides at once, go up under the View menu and choose Clear Guides.

      Change the Color Outside My Image Area?

      If you want to change the color of the workspace background outside your image, just Right-click anywhere outside your image (if you’re using Application Frame with tabbed documents, you may need to shrink your image view a bit [zoom out]; if not, click-and-drag out your image window, so you can see the canvas area), and a pop-up menu will appear with choices. Choose the one you want and you’re good to go.

      Change the Color of Photoshop’s Interface?

      Go under the Photoshop CC (PC: Edit) menu, under Preferences, and choose Interface. When the Preferences dialog opens, in the Appearance section, choose a new interface color from the Color Theme color swatches. You don’t really get to choose a new color here, you’re just changing the lightness of the default gray color.

      See My Image at Full-Screen Size?

      Press the letter F on your keyboard twice. The first time you press it, it just hides the window that surrounds your image. But, the second time, it hides everything and displays your image full-screen size. Now, for some reason, one thing it doesn’t hide in Full Screen mode is Photoshop’s Rulers. So, if you have them visible, once you’re in Full Screen mode, press Command-R (PC: Ctrl-R) to hide them. To return to the regular size view (and see the rest of Photoshop), just press F again.

      Make Those Pop-Up Tool Tips Go Away?

      Go under the Photoshop CC (PC: Edit) menu, under Preferences, and choose Tools. When the Preferences dialog opens, in the Options section, turn off the Show Tool Tips checkbox (as shown here). You owe me for this one. ;-)

      Make the Rulers Visible?

      Just press Command-R (PC: Ctrl-R) and rulers appear across the top and left side of your image window. That’s it.

      ADVANCED TIP: CHANGE STARTING MEASUREMENT

      If, for some reason, you don’t want the top-left corner of the image to be measured starting at the 0x0 point, you can click-and-hold directly in the top-left corner of the image window (not in the image, in the window—right where the vertical and horizontal rulers meet), and drag the starting point to a new location (for example, if you want to start measuring 2 into your image, you could drag the axis of those two rulers to that point and it starts measuring from there). Again, this is an advanced tip for you advanced folks who are advanced, and since you’re advanced, all of that made sense. Hope that advances your advanced Photoshop skills.

      Have Objects Snap to the Rulers or a

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