CUSTOMIZE YOUR GUIDES,
GRID, & SLICES PREFERENCES
Adobe Photoshop allows you to customize guides, the grid, and slices.
After spending many hours working in Photoshop, you’ll find that the
right guide and grid setup can help with your productivity and make
your workflow more enjoyable. Sometimes, you may just need to tem-
porarily change the color of the guides because they’re hard to see in a
particular image. Go to Photoshop CC (PC: Edit)>Preferences>Guides,
Grid & Slices, and experiment with the options.
CAMERA RAW SHORTCUTS
Here are some useful Camera Raw shortcuts.
Reset Camera Raw Preferences: Hold Shift-Option-Command
(PC: Shift-Alt-Ctrl) and double-click on a RAW image to
launch Camera Raw. When Photoshop asks if you’d like to
delete the Camera Raw Preferences, click Yes.
Zoom to 100%: Command-Option-0 (zero) (PC: Ctrl-Alt-0)
Zoom to fit on screen: Command-0 (zero) (PC: Ctrl-0)
Crop tool: C
Hand tool: H
Adjustment Brush: K
White Balance tool: I
CHANGE GLYPHS WITH A SINGLE CLICK
One of the cool things in Photoshop CC is the Glyphs panel (which you
can open from the Window menu); however, an even cooler feature is the
ability to use alternate glyphs without even going to the Glyphs panel. As
long as your Open Type font has alternate glyphs for the character you
want to change, Photoshop will automatically display those alternates.
Just highlight the character on the canvas, and then hover the cursor
over the highlighted area. You can then click on the alternate you wish
to use. One of my favorite fonts for this is Bickham Script Pro 3.
Bonus tip: As a Creative Cloud subscriber, you can access many
different fonts through Adobe Fonts at no additional charge. Just go
to Type>Add Fonts from Typekit, and when the webpage opens, type
the name of the font that you’re looking for in the search field, such as
“Bickham Script Pro 3.” When you find the font you want, click the
Activate Font switch to sync it to your Creative Cloud apps.
A FEW VERY HELPFUL LAYER SHORTCUTS
Here are some keyboard shortcuts that will help you when it comes to
working with layers.
Show/hide the Layers panel: Hold the Fn (function) key
and press F7.
Duplicate layer or selection to new layer: Command-J
(PC: Ctrl-J).
Create a selection from a layer: Command-click (PC: Ctrl-
click) on the layer’s thumbnail preview in the Layers panel.
Create a new layer: Shift-Command-N (PC: Shift-Ctrl-N).
Select all layers except the Background (locked) layer:
Command-Option-A (PC: Ctrl-Alt-A).
Move layer style from one layer to another: Drag-and-drop
the name of the layer style in the Layers panel. If more than
one layer style is applied, drag-and-drop the word “Effects.”
Copy layer style from one layer to another: Hold the Option
(PC: Alt) key, click on the name of the layer style, and
drag-and-drop it on another layer.
SAVE AS TO ORIGINAL FOLDER
In most cases, when I’m saving a different version of a document, I
prefer to save the new version in the original document folder. By
default, when you go to File>Save As, Photoshop automatically selects
the folder where the original file lives. If for some reason, Photoshop
keeps selecting a different folder, check your Preferences. Go to Pho-
toshop CC (PC: Edit)>Preferences>File Handling, and make sure Save
As to Original Folder at the top of the dialog is checked on. (In some
instances, you may want to turn this option off. Check out tip #12 by
Dave Clayton.)
THE HISTORY STATES
The default number of History States in Photoshop is 50, which is the
number of undos you can perform. In most cases, 50 History States
usually works fine for me, but you can actually increase it up to 1,000!
But that many History States can start to impact Photoshop’s scratch
disk space and performance, at which point you should try decreasing
the number. To change the number of History States, go to Photoshop
CC (PC: Edit)>Preferences>Performance and look for the History State
field in the History & Cache section.
