Photoshop Tips and Tricks

Feel free to drop your questions here, share your favorite workflow hacks, or dive into the various features and capabilities found within Photoshop CS3 and CS2.

You can easily tweak your image resolution by navigating to Image > Image Size. It’s a pretty straightforward way to adjust the dimensions of your work. If you leave the settings as they are, changing the width will automatically scale the height to match—and vice versa—to keep everything in line. However, if you decide to uncheck Constrain Proportions, or one of those other two options, you'll have much more freedom to stretch things around.

Actually, Photoshop is written as one word
...

It’s a great thread, honestly—such a solid idea... It’s just a shame that about 20% of humanity had already missed the boat on this one...

http://www.google.com/search?client=f...=Google+Search

shadowbadger51 said:By the way, Photoshop is actually one word.

Fine, Photoshop CS3.

ZOOMING- just hold down ALT while you scroll the mouse wheel
PANNING THE CANVAS- hold down the SPACE bar along with your left mouse button to drag the image around
Hit Q to toggle between standard mode and mask mode
Use ALT+CTRL+Z to
undo your last move Press X to swap your background and foreground colors
Or hit CTRL+

Selection Tools

There’s quite a variety of tools available when you need to grab a specific area. For instance:
A) Rectangular marquee, elliptical marquee, single row marquee, and single column marquee
B) Standard lasso, polygonal lasso, and the magnetic lasso
C) Magic Wand and the improved Magic Wand tool (which you'll find exclusively in CS3)


If you need to clear your selection, there are two straightforward ways to handle it.
A) Simply click your mouse anywhere outside the active selection
B) Use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+D

Rectangles and Ellipses

Creating a rectangle or an ellipse is pretty intuitive. If you're aiming for a perfect square or a flawless circle, just hold down the Shift key until you release the mouse button.

So, here’s one of my old tutorials on how to whip up some clouds. It’s a bit dated since I was mostly using Photoshop 7.0 back then, but honestly, the process doesn't really change much when you move over to CS2.

Here is the download link. (1.1 MB, .rar file)

So, I finally went ahead and grabbed CS3 too. Honestly, I’m not seeing much that’s actually new, but whatever, might as well have it.
I guess there are plenty of tutorials out there on the web if you're looking for them.

I have been using CS3 for quite some time now, and I must say, there doesn't seem to be an overwhelming amount of new features... though I suppose at the end of the day, Photoshop is ultimately just a tool meant to serve our needs.

Rectangle... 🤣

Honestly, that word just doesn't land for me. It feels totally nonsensical, especially since I was grinding through some programming assignments in English the other day and found myself staring at the screen, genuinely struggling to wrap my head around what a 'rectangle' even was... 🤣

Quick question here
How do I actually cut something out once I've used the magnetic lasso to select it?

I know how to use the extraction tools, but this would be way faster for certain things

What do you mean by "cut out" an image? I guess if you’re trying to just get rid of a certain part, you'd probably just select the area you want gone and hit "Delete."

Like, I'm thinking about cutting someone out of one photo and just dropping them into another.

Just grab the part of the image you want using a selection tool -> hit CTRL + C -> then open up the photo you actually want to paste it onto -> hit CTRL + V.

(Or, you know, just your standard copy/paste) 😬

Look, you’re basically some kind of Photoshop guru... so why don't you walk me through this...
How am I supposed to, I don't know, swap out the background on a photo of some girl with crazy, voluminous hair without totally ruining the strands? That's what's killing me... everything else is easy, but the hair is just a nightmare...

Actually, hey, if you really want to help, I can send over a photo and you can show me how it's done...😎

Who are you asking if they're a pro? If you're talking about me, nah, I'm definitely not. This is just something I mess around with as a hobby, honestly. It’s kind of hard to tell you exactly how to pull it off without seeing what we're working with, you know? In Photoshop, there are like a million different ways to achieve the same result depending on the layers and everything. Just toss the image over here... send me the main shot and the background you want to use, and I'll see if I can try to piece it together once I get a chance.

If you guys have any random questions about Photoshop, just throw them my way! Seriously, I’ve pretty much mastered every single trick in the book, so don't be shy... 🙂

It really helps if you’re working with a high-res image where you can actually see those individual strands of hair clearly.

In my humble opinion:
- jump into Quick Mask mode
- grab a Soft Brush (just tweak the size to whatever feels right) and gently trace over everything you want to get rid of
- switch back to standard mode
- hit Delete

And there you have it!

Man, I wish it were actually that easy... but it’s not, mostly because they just don't blend together right...
Let's try this instead... how about I just shoot you an image and you see if you can pull it off? Because every time I try, it looks like total garbage and I end up having to erase half the hair manually...
I'm really trying to dive deep and learn everything there is to know about Adobe Photoshop, honestly, it's super interesting...

Have you ever heard of Pixel Perfect? It's this show about Adobe Photoshop...

Anyway, shoot me your email so I can send the photo over, or if you're on Zoom or something like that...