Page 92 - Photoshop User January 2017

HOW TO ››
Photoshop Tips boost your productivity and creativity
COLIN SMITH
Welcome to a fresh set of Photoshop tips. These tips are sure to alleviate those little Photoshop frustrations, as well as put you on the fast track to speed and proficiency in Photoshop. This is my 14th year writing this column, so if you’ve been reading it regularly, you should be a speed demon by now. If you’re a newer member and new to this column, fasten your seatbelts and check out some of the back issues on the KelbyOne site.
EXPORT LAYER AS AN IMAGE
When working in a multi-layered document, there may be times when you want to export a specific layer as a new image. Maybe you’re making variations of an image, or perhaps you have a perfect background that you’d like to reuse later. A beginner’s option is to hide all the other lay- ers and then export as an image, or Save for Web. Here’s a better option: Right-click on the layer in the Layers panel, and choose Export As. In the Export As dialog, choose your format (JPG, PNG or GIF), click Export All, navigate to where you want to save the file, and click Export. That isolated layer will be exported without playing hide and seek.
RESET ALL TOOLS
There are times when your tools get all messed up, or after a heavy editing session, all the alternative tools are showing in the Toolbar. You may have changed some of the default settings on the tools too. This doesn’t seem like a big deal until you’re trying to do something later and the tools aren’t working properly. The usual response is to blame Photoshop and say it’s not working right. Chances are that you changed a setting, such as a blend mode, and now things aren’t work- ing as expected. You can easily reset all your tool defaults at the top left of Photoshop in the Options Bar where you see the currently selected tool icon. Right-click on that icon and choose Reset Tool (for the current tool), or Reset all Tools to reset all the tools in the Toolbar to their default settings.
LOAD AS STACK
Do you have multiple images that you want to combine in Photoshop? In the old days, we used to open all of the different images in Photoshop, and then arrange the
documents into tiles. Finally, we’d select each image and drag it into one common image. This was time-intensive. I no longer use this method, do you? If you’re newer to Photoshop, or you haven’t updated your workflow in years, here’s a faster way of accomplishing this laborious task: Choose File>Scripts>Load Files into Stack. In the Load Layers dialog, click Browse, select the images, click Open, and then click OK in the Load Layers dialog. Photoshop will now do all the work for you. “Oh, that’s what the Scripts menu does?” Yep, it’s a very scary name for a very useful set of automation tools.
RETINA WOES
Are you using a Retina or HiDPI display? Most of the time this is great; however, when you’re working with Web or multimedia images, they appear half their actual size. This can throw you off. One solution is to display them at 200% magnification and then they’ll look normal. The problem is that every time you open an image, you’ll need to change the magnification to 200%. You could set a keyboard shortcut
for this, or skip the extra step entirely and make Photo- shop display the regular resolution. “Where’s the set- ting?” you may ask. “I’ve looked in every menu and prefer- ence and can’t find it!” This is a hid- den gem. Go to the launch icon for Photoshop (not the shortcut on the tool- bar, but the actual
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