HOW TO SOFTEN THE EDGES OF A CUTOUT
While nice crisp edges look great, sometimes they look too crisp and
artificial in composites. Here’s a tip to soften the edges of your selec-
tions. If you use layer masks for your cutouts, and you should because
of the flexibility they provide, here’s how to dial in that perfect edge.
Click on the layer mask thumbnail in the Layers panel to make it active,
and go to the Properties panel (Window>Properties). Add a little bit of
Feather until the edge looks how you want. Unlike blurring, you can
change the amount later if you need to.
REMOVE HOME SCREEN
A couple of years ago, the “Times-Square” Home Screen made its
debut in Photoshop. It contains lots of useful information and tips, as
well as visually showing your previous documents, but if it’s not your
cup of tea and you’d like to work undistracted, you can revert to how it
was before. (Personally, I use a very minimal workspace, so I can focus
on the work.) Choose Photoshop CC (PC: Edit)>Preferences>General
and check the box that says Disable the Home Screen. Restart Photo-
shop and it’s gone. You can always bring it back by unchecking the box.
GET RID OF SENSOR DUST ON MULTIPLE IMAGES
When you have dust on your camera sensor or lens, you’ll see little
spots on your photo. The problem is that these spots aren’t just on
one photo, they’re probably on all of them. The good news is that it’s
easy to remove the spots from the photos all at once. Open multiple
photos in Camera Raw. Use the Spot Removal tool (B) to remove
the spot from the top photo in the Filmstrip. You can even use the
Visualize Spots option and its slider near the bottom right of Camera
Raw to help you find the spots. Then Shift-click the bottom photo in
the Filmstrip to select all of the photos, click on the flyout menu at
the top right of the Filmstrip, and select Sync Settings. Choose the
settings you want to synchronize with the rest of the photos, and
click OK. Since the spots are all in the same spot (pun intended), the
sync process will remove them all. Now that was easy!
CHANGE SIZE OF PHOTOSHOP’S UI
Do you have trouble reading the font in the menus in Photoshop? This
is especially true at higher resolutions where the Photoshop UI can get
really small. You can change the size of the text and UI easily. Here’s
how: Choose Photoshop CC (PC: Edit)>Preferences>Interface. In the
Presentation section, you’ll see an option for UI Font size. Change it
from Small to Large. Underneath the UI Font Size option, you’ll see a
checkbox that says Scale UI to Font. Turn that on too. Click OK and...
nothing happens. Restart Photoshop and wow! Now the UI is larger.
Excellent! Hint to presenters: If you make it bigger, people at the back of
the room will love you.
GET SUPER COLOR PICKER
When you’re using the Brush tool (B), there’s a Super Color Picker
just a few keys away. Imagine painting and being able to change
the hue, saturation, and brightness of your brush on the fly right
onscreen. Imagine no more. With the Brush tool (or Color Picker)
active, hold down Control-Option-Command and then click-and-
hold in your document (PC: Alt-Shift-Right-Drag) to active the
Super Color Picker.
SHUT ALL FLOATING WINDOWS PLEASE
Have you ever had lots of floating windows open all at once in Photoshop
because you pulled them out of their tabs? Of course you haven’t; it’s
only me who drags stuff around and forgets to close the windows so
I end up with a ton of them open. Just in case you also forget to close
the windows, I have a solution for the one or two of you with this bad
habit. Hold down the Option (PC: Alt) key as you click the x button at
the top left of the window to close a document. All open documents
will close instantly. Any changed and unsaved ones will wait for you
to choose to save or ignore the changes.
