10 tips needed to learn Photoshop

Photoshop has always been a very popular software in graphic design, and almost all users of contact graphic design will use Photoshop. And about Photoshop software, to learn it is not so easy, even if you just want to learn some fur, for day-to-day photo processing, but also to master a lot of skills to do. Here's a list of 10 techniques that Photoshop must master in your application to see what you don't.

1. Use of shortcut keys

This is the foundation of Photoshop, but also the best way to improve productivity. The use of shortcuts allows you to concentrate more on your work than on the tool panel. Once you have the ability to use shortcut keys skillfully, you can use Full-screen working mode, save the unnecessary panel position, make the view more open, maximize the use of screen space; some simple commands can be done with the keyboard, without distractions in the choice of tools, even if it takes up very little time, But we prefer not to be interrupted at work.

Note: You should try to use more shortcuts, the following shortcuts are a good helper to improve efficiency, but I do not know why many books are in the vicinity, and even did not mention, please be sure to firmly remember.

Ctrl+j: Copy the current layer to a new layer;

J: Switch to airbrush tool;

M: Switch to marquee tool;

[]: When the current tool is in brush mode (including the airbrush, brush, pencil, clone stamp history Brush, eraser, and blur and burn tools), increase or decrease the pen size in turn;

Shift+backspace: Pull up the Fill dialog box.

At first, you may not be able to memorize all the shortcuts, and you can use Photoshop's ToolTip to help you. The method is to turn on the Edit > Presets > General and select Show ToolTips. This way, when you move the mouse over the tool panel, the tool name and its shortcut keys appear until you remove the mouse to disappear.

2. No seam map

No seam mapping is important either for 3D images or Web pages, and we can do it easily in Photoshop. After customizing your image, run filters > Other > Displacements, shift in both horizontal and vertical directions, generally set the displacement to half the size of the image, and most importantly, set the undefined area to retrace. After the displacement is completed, use the rubber stamp tool to smear the image at the flattening point, remove the seams, and then define the image as a pattern. Fill with this pattern, you can get a seamless background image.

3. Custom actions for commonly used combination commands

In the process of processing images, in many cases we will use the combination command. For example, you need to move a document from a multi-tiered image to another document. The quickest and safest way to do this is to create a new layer of shift+ctrl+n, flatten all visible layers below shift+alt+ctrl+e, select all images Ctrl + A, copy Ctrl + C, deselect Ctrl+d, and delete the current layer. This set of commands is to create an image of the images, which contains all the visible layer images below the current layer, and your clipboard has left the contents of the image, just paste it in the desired document. This is a very typical example, although you can use a series of shortcut keys to complete this set of commands, but it is recommended to store it as an action, in the Action Options panel, you can set a convenient function key for this action, such as SHIFT+F2, so you call at any time, very convenient, Especially when you import images from Photoshop into other applications, you save a considerable amount of time! Shift,control and F2 to F12 these different combinations, can define a lot of action, greatly improve efficiency.

4. Automatically select Layers

A very humble little action, but very useful, especially in some layers of large files, even if the order of each layer is ordered, stacking layers in sequence is also a hassle when choosing-you may not remember which layers they belong to, and the consequences of faulty operations are sometimes scary. At this point, you can select the Mobile tool first, check automatically select layers in the tool options so that, in addition to the slice tool, the path Component Selection tool, the Pen tool, and the hand tool, the other tools in the toolbox are currently selected, holding down the CTRL key while the current tool temporarily becomes a move tool. When you click on any object on the canvas, Photoshop automatically goes to the layer on which it is located so that it can be manipulated. When you are currently moving the tool, even if you do not choose to automatically select the layer, just hold down the CTRL key, you can also freely select the different layers of the image content.

5. Create a custom brush

One of the most useful resources in Photoshop that is not fully exploited by most people is to create a custom brush. Create a new document size for the brush size you want to make, black (also can be color or different shades of gray, but this will make the brush color lighter) Draw your brush image, such as a small flower, a few small trees and so on. Then use the rectangular marquee selection, defined as the new brush. If there is no choice, Photoshop will define all the images on the canvas as brushes. In this way, you can use these custom brushes to create a variety of unique images, especially some decorative frames and other patterns.

6. Lens Flare Effect

In the primary image processing, lens flare is one of the most commonly used cosmetic effects. In general, you can use filter > Render > Lens flare directly in the image to add an atmosphere to the image. So, if you are very satisfied with the effect of the lens flare at one time and want to save it, we can take advantage of the layer blending feature. Create a new layer on the image, fill it with black, then execute the lens glow filter, and then set the layer blending mode to "screen" so that the black is hidden and you get a separate halo effect layer. However, the only disadvantage of this method is that it cannot be displayed on a white image.

7. Lighting Effect Filter

One of the biggest surprises of this filter is that it creates a variety of lifelike texture effects. The simplest use is to put a simple texture into a channel, and then apply the filter > Render > Lighting effect on a layer, select the channel in the texture channel just to store the texture, adjust the corresponding lighting settings, so you can get the texture effect of three-dimensional.

8. Use adjustment layer

No one is sure to be able to adjust the image at once is very perfect, so, in addition to develop good backup habits, it is best to use adjustment layer when the use of adjustment layer. You may be in trouble, but this is a little bit less of a problem than the loss of image damage. And more importantly, you can make new adjustments at any time during the authoring process without worrying about the damage to the image.

9. Quick Copy Skills

In the same document, determine that the current move tool (or temporarily the mobile tool) while pressing the ALT key, drag the object to copy, hold down the SHIFT key to ensure that it is moved by a multiple of 45 degrees, and hold down the SHIFT key between different documents, if the two documents are the same size, The object is copied to the same location in the new document, and if the document is of different size, the object is copied to the middle of the new document. Copying in this way is not only convenient, but also can reduce the use of the Clipboard, further saving system resources.

10. Accumulation of results

When you use Photoshop for a period of time, you will certainly save a lot of good stuff. such as you painstakingly modulated gradient, contour, style and so on, but also includes some convenient to work the color board and so on. These are only temporarily saved in Photoshop, and once you reload, Photoshop will revert to the default state, become clean and sneak, and these customizations will disappear without a trace. This is not only a pity, but also affects your work (such as the definition of the color swatch lost). Therefore, it is best to use the preset manager for every time you have a good day, and keep it in a special folder. The preset manager saves brushes, swatches, gradients, styles, patterns, contours, and custom shapes so that your work will not be lost as well. After reloading, you can return to the familiar work environment with the appropriate file coverage.