A full day of Photoshop: Photoshop World Day 1

Master Chief MimobotI eat this stuff up, I really do. Going to conferences is always a great way to get back in touch with creativity; both technically and artistically. So far I have sat in on classes about creative composites, Illustrator Down & Dirty Tricks, Exploring 3D in Photoshop, and Exploring HDR. Good stuff, coming from a plethora of experienced, photographers eager to share their skills with a truck-load of folks who are just there to sponge.

The expo is super cool too, and I finally got to see a Lensbaby and play with it – so I bought one! These things are freakin’ cool, and Master Chief here was taken with it quickly on the desk in my room, which by the way is a Mimobot Thumb Drive. They really pulled off a good update with the new composer. It has a lens interchange system as well as the ability to put a wide angle and telephoto adapter on it. Pretty cool. I will be getting out tomorrow sometime to shoot with it around the hotel. If I wasn’t such an ijit, I would have taken it with me to the party tonight.

Some of the good stuff aI have gotten into that’s easy to share are shortcuts – so here’s a list:

  • hold the <CTRL> or <CMD> key to temporarily disable the snap while resizing.
  • <CTRL> + E key will merge visible layers but not flatten them.
  • hold the <shift> + <option> keys to resize a layer from it’s center point
  • <CTRL> + <ENTER> will create a selection from the selected path.
  • hold the R key to rotate the image view with mouse
  • while zoomed into an image, hold the H key to get a birds eye view of the image and move the zoomed area, release it to zoom back in
  • hold the <ALT> key + right click and move the mouse up or down to resize the brush
  • hold the <SHIFT> + <ALT> + right click and move the mouse up or down to adjust the hardness of the brush tip
  • if you have the move tool selected, by hold the <SHIFT> key and hitting the +/- keys you can cycle through the layer blend modes
  • hit <CTRL> + 0 while resizing a layer will zoom out to show the entire bounding box of the selected layer
  • <ALT> + <BACKSPACE> will fill the selected layer with the foreground color
  • hold the <CTRL> key while creating a new layer and it will create it under the selected layer rather than above it

There are something like 240 quick key commands, so this is only the icing – but these are good ones.

2 thoughts on “A full day of Photoshop: Photoshop World Day 1”

  1. I haven’t had a lot of time to walk around – then it started raining yesterday afternoon…. But I will have some time this afternoon if it clears up. I have made down to Boston Commons, but that’s about as far into the city I have made it…

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