Resize Your Type

Photoshop’s font preview leaves something to be desired, when your eyes are old and tired like mine are. Here’s my Tip of the Day. Go to Photoshop > Preferences > Type.

Choose “Huge” for Font Preview size. When you preview your fonts from within the Photoshop pull-down menu they’ll be nice and easy to read.

-Krishna

Taking Advantage of Adobe Kuler

Adobe Kuler is a nifty internet application that lets folks try out, create and share custom color swatches with one another. It’s free, but you’ll need to sign up for an account before you can share or download custom swatches from other designers. I’ve known about Kuler since it was first announced, but what I didn’t know before was how well integrated Kuler is within most major Adobe applications. (Built-in Kuler panel support is only available in CS4 and CS5 versions.)

You can actually have a Kuler panel inside your Adobe application, where you can create, browse, search and import custom swatches in a very convenient manner, without ever having to visit the Kuler website. In Photoshop, simply go to Window > Extensions > Kuler, and the Kuler panel (as shown above) will pop up.

Having the Kuler panel has finally eliminated the need for me to maintain an overpopulated Color Swatch palette. I can simply dial the specific color I want from within Kuler without so much unnecessary scrolling. To make your newly created Kuler swatch active, just double-click it from within the Kuler panel and it will show up as the foreground color in Photoshop.

For more information on using the Kuler panel, check out this informative video on Adobe TV.

-Krishna

My Favorite Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

If you’ve used Photoshop for any length of time, you owe it to yourself to learn and use a few keyboard shortcuts. Using them will speed up your workflow, especially for repetitive tasks. Keyboard shortcuts can also be used to invoke commands that *don’t* have a specific keyboard shortcut, as I will explain shortly.

You can find a comprehensive list of Photoshop keyboard shortcuts online. I won’t bother repeating the whole list here, but here are a few well-worn shortcuts I use day-to-day. I will be outlining Mac keyboard shortcuts below, but with the appropriate substitutions you can use them just as effectively within the Windows version. (Note: Cmd on Mac can be substituted with Ctrl on Windows, and Option on Mac can be substituted by Alt on Windows).

So without further ado, here are my most often used Photoshop keyboard shortcuts:

Cmd-O (Open a File)
Cmd-N (Create a new PS Document)
Shift-Cmd-N (Make a new layer)
Cmd-J (duplicates a layer / duplicates a selection)
Cmd-U (Invokes the Hue / Saturation panel)
Cmd-T (Transforms an existing selection)
Shift-Cmd-Option-E (flattens layers into one layer, but preserves all existing layers) – this is safer than flattening all layers into one via Cmd-E
Cmd-G (Groups layers into a Layer folder)
Cmd-S (Saves an open PS file)
Cmd-A (Selects All)
Cmd-Z (Undo) (Probably my favorite)

I use the following keyboard shortcuts to access the Toolbox:

B (brush tool)
M (Rectangular/Elliptical Marquee tool) NOTE: Shift-M will toggle between the two.
U (Shape tool)
L (Lasso tool) NOTE: Shift-L will toggle between the different Lasso tools
C (Crop tool)
W (Magic Wand tool)
[ (decreases brush size)
] (increases brush size)

As I mentioned earlier – these are the keyboard shortcuts I use every day, for the type of work I do.

You can also customize Photoshop’s keyboard shortcuts to suit your needs, by going to the Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts menu. This, in my opinion, has made all the difference in upping my Photoshop productivity.

Are you annoyed by the seemingly limited Undo (Cmd-Z), which only cycles back to the last performed step?

Me too.

So I fixed it. Photoshop has a command called Step Backward, which lets you cycle back multiple times. This works the way Undo should work, in my opinion, but the keyboard shortcut is mapped to Shift-Cmd-Z.

Not wanting to have to hit 3 keys to achieve my perfect vision of Undo, I reassigned Cmd-Z to Step Backward and assigned Shift-Cmd-Z for Undo. When I hit Cmd-Z, Step Backward does its thing, which is what I really want. At last, I have my multiple Undos! (This tip alone has erased one of my biggest pet peeves with Photoshop – the lack of a multiple Undo with Cmd-Z.)

Here are a few custom keyboard shortcuts I’ve assigned:

Stroke (Option-F5)
Gaussian Blur (Option-F6)
Color Halftone (Cmd-F6)

So there you have it – my favorite Photoshop keyboard shortcuts. There’s more to say about my Photoshop workflow but I’ll save that for another blog post.

-Krishna

P.S. If you’re new to Photoshop, I would strongly recommend checking out this excellent primer on Photoshop tools and techniques.

Productivity Tools I Use

I’m listing the software I use as part of my regular workflow. Some of the tools are specific to my craft, while others fall into the category of “can’t-live-without” productivity apps.

Creative

• Adobe Photoshop CS4: my de-facto go-to tool. Photoshop touches practically every angle of my workflow, whether it be graphics for the web, illustration, or comics.
• Corel Painter X: Admittedly I use Painter primarily for inking. Its coveted Scratchboard tool gives me the line variation I need.
• Autodesk Sketchbook Pro: New to my arsenal – but has quickly found its way to my must-have list. Sketching with this program rivals drawing on paper for me.

Productivity

• Launchbar: super fast application launcher (and much, much more)
• MarsEdit: A must-have for composing and editing blogposts. Highly customizable and easy to use. This powerful blogging tool is essential, especially if you manage multiple WordPress sites.
• Divvy: lets you quickly and accurately position application and Finder windows exactly where you want to on your screen.
• Blast: this program lives in my menubar and makes it a snap to quickly grab recent files I’ve been working on, regardless of their location on my hard drive. No more tunneling down into Finder windows to get what I’m after.
• Typinator: keyboard macros make writing boilerplate text a breeze.
• Default Folder: Imagine setting a specific application to always point to a specific folder. The time saved by this application alone is enormous.
• Pages: Fast and elegant word processing without all the bloat of MS Word.

Web

• Flickr Uploadr: This one has some quirks, but until I can find a better tool that lets me upload my photos to Flickr, I’m stuck with it.
• Google Chrome: Fast browser that lets me synch bookmarks across all my machines.
• Dropbox: 2GB of free space you can use to share files between machines. A browser interface lets you grab your files anywhere you have an Internet connection.
• Transmit: FTP wasn’t sexy until this application came along. I’ve used this program since 1996.
• SpamSieve: A terrific program that sorts junk mail from good mail. It learns quickly, and reduced my junk mail by several orders of magnitude.
• Backblaze: For my off-site back-ups.

Utility

• iStat: A calendar, clock, processor monitor, network checker, etc. all rolled into a neat menubar applet.
• iDefrag: Mac hard drives get fragmented. I run this app once every 3 months.
• Disk Warrior: The Lou Ferrigno of disk utilities for the Mac. I run this once a month, or when my system gets wonky.
• SuperDuper: makes reliable bootable back-ups. Each of my regularly used machines runs this app.
• Applejack: repairs permissions and clears caches. My first go to utility for routine Mac maintenance.
• Chronosync: synchronized back-ups – useful for archving specific folders from one hard drive to another.

I am always on the lookout for new tools – if you have any suggestions or recommendations, please share them in the comments below.

-Krishna