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[ 117 ]SAVING A LAYOUT TO THE LIBRARY
A very underused tool in Photoshop is the CC Libraries
panel (Window>Libraries). This isn’t just for downloading
templates and stock photos. You can use these libraries to
organize your own files. I use Libraries every day as a place
to store documents I want to reuse, such as layouts or my
own templates. It’s also a great place to save assets such as
logos, icons, and other branding elements. You can easily
put assets into the library by dragging a layer from the Layers
panel into the Libraries panel.
But what if you have a design with multiple layers that
you want to reuse, such as a thumbnail for a YouTube video.
The trick is to put all the layers into a group: Select the layers
in the Layers panel and press Command-G (PC: Ctrl-G). Dou-
ble-click the name of the group and rename it so it’s easily
recognizable. All you need to do now is drag the group into
the Libraries panel. To reuse the document, double-click it
in the Libraries panel and the new document opens with all
the layers intact, ready for your use.
REMOVE PERSPECTIVE BEFORE
MAKING A CUSTOM BRUSH
Custom brushes are a lot of fun and also really useful. You
can turn any photo, or selection of a photo or artwork,
into a brush. All you have to do is make the selection and
choose Edit>Define Brush Preset. If the object out of which
you’re making a brush isn’t totally flat, however, it has lim-
ited use. In other words, if there’s perspective in the image,
the brush will only look correct if applied to an object with
the same perspective.
Fortunately, I have a tip that can take any image and
make it perfectly flat in more or less a single click (I say
more or less, because it’s a single click once you get to the
tool). Open your image and go Filter>Camera Raw Filter.
In Camera Raw, choose the Transform tool (Shift-T) and
the Upright options will appear on the right. Choose the
Full icon (it’s the fifth icon at the top that looks like a grid),
and perspective disappears instantly. It’s pretty amazing.CONVERT A SELECTION TO A SHAPE
You can easily make a custom shape out of an icon or logo
that will be reusable whenever you like. Just select the
icon or logo with the Magic Wand tool (nested under the
Quick Selection tool [W] in the Toolbar). Once the selection
is active, open the Paths panel (Window>Paths). Click on
the top-right “hamburger menu,” and choose Make Work
Path. In the resulting dialog, set the Tolerance to 2.0 pixels
(use a higher number for a more complex image). Click
OK, and it will create a new work path for you in the Paths
panel. If you need to clean up the path, use the Pen tool (P)
and Path Selection tools (A).
Now, choose Edit>Define Custom Shape, give it a name,
and click OK. The custom shape will be added to the Cus-
tom Shape Picker and ready for you to use anytime with the
Custom Shape tool (nested under the Rectangle tool [U] in
the Toolbar). After you draw your custom shape, you can
also easily add a fill and stroke color of your choosing.APPLY MULTIPLE LAYER MASKS
TO THE SAME LAYER
Have you ever needed to apply more than one layer mask
to the same layer? Say, for example, you use a gradient
on a layer mask to fade the left side of an image into the
background and then do a little touchup with the brushes.
Now you want to fade the bottom of the image. If you
apply another gradient to the mask, it will remove the
original one. Here’s a workaround: Make the layer active
in the Layers panel and press Command-G (PC: Ctrl-G) to
put it in a group. You can now apply a separate mask to
the group. You can also put that group into yet another
group and add a mask to that too. As you can see, you
can keep nesting them like Russian nesting dolls and apply
a layer mask to each—really useful. n