Therefore I Create

With a complex tool such as Photoshop at your fingertips, there are thousands of features that are often overlooked. Here are 10 shortcuts which I recently found out about that really help speed up my design process.

Cycle Through Tools

Each tool has its own keyboard shortcut such as B for brush, P for paths or M for Marquee. But, if you also press shift, you can cycle through its related tools. For example, the Marquee tool will cycle between rectangle, ellipse, single row and single column selections. While, the Brush tool will cycle between Brush, Pencil and the colour replacement tools.

Inverse Select

To select everything except what you have already selected. Press Command+Shift+I

Select from Center

By default Photoshop defines where you first click as one of the “corners” of your select. However, you can also start a selection from the middle by holding down alt and using the Marquee tool.

Moving a selection

Once a selection has been made. You can move it around while the Marquee tool is still active by either using the arrow keys or dragging it with the mouse. If you have the move tool active, it will actually cut out part of the image and move it.

Duplicate a selection

With a selection established and the move tool active, you can duplicate the selection. Simply hold Alt while moving it around and the original layer remains unmodified while you have a copy of the selection.

Switching between Lasso Tools

If you are using the regular Lasso tool and hold alt while your still making a selection, it will switch to the Polygon Lasso tool. Letting go of alt will return back to the Lasso Tool

Arrange your Documents

The Photoshop Application Bar has a drop down menu called Arrange Documents. If you have multiple files open, this can be a quick way of displaying all of them at the same time in a tiling sort of fashion.

Making Patterned Text

This effect is rather popular. Basically, you have some heading that has a pattern or photo showing through the letters. It’s much more simpler to set up than it sounds.

• First, have some text one one layer.
• Then place a pattern on the layer above it.
• Hold down Alt and click in between the layers in the layers window.
• The text will now be a mask that shows the pattern through its letters.

Paths

Paths can be used as an alternative way of making selections or masks of complex shapes. There are only a few things you need to know to use them effectively.

• Clicking using the paths tool will create points that the path will follow
• Clicking and dragging will create directional handles that determine how curved the line will be
• Alt-clicking on your last point will remove part of the directional handle, allowing you to make a sharp corner.

Rulers and Guides

If you have your rulers visible, clicking on them and then dragging into the image will create a guide. This applies to both horizontal and vertical rulers. These are especially handy when it comes to designing a website, as you can later use the slice tools, which will snap to the guides, to cut up your psd file into separate images.