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About this lesson

10 little Photoshop productivity tips.

Exercise files

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Quick reference

Topic: JDIs: Just Do It

10 quick tips.

When to use

10 little Photoshop productivity tips.

Instructions

1: Brush Pixel Size can go up 5000

Type in to the size box.

2: Quick Opacity change to 0%

With layer selected, if you hit the 0 key twice if will change the layer to 0%.

3 and 4: Multiple layer functionality

With more than one layer selected, you can change the blend mode locking.

5: Duplicate Groups

Select group and press the command (mac) or control (win) J shortcut.

6: Color Code Layers

With the layer selected right click and scroll down to the color you want.

7: Hidden Layers Info

With the layer hidden, you can still see the blend and opacity information.

8: Layer styles order

The layer styles stacking order is shown in descending order in the left side tabs.

9: Liquefy brush

In the Liquefy effect, the brush sizes can be altered with the left and right bracket keys [].

10: Liquefy brush size

In the Liquefy effect, the brush sizes can be increased to 1500 pixel if needed.

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  • 00:04 A JDI, which stands for Just Do It, are typically smaller,
  • 00:08 heavily requested features that help users in their day to day workflow.
  • 00:12 This video will cover 10 of my favorite JDIs.
  • 00:15 Starting off with our brushes,
  • 00:16 the maximum brush size has been increased to 5,000 pixels.
  • 00:20 This is up from 2,500 pixels in Photoshop CS5.
  • 00:23 Now, most users will never have a need for a 5,000 pixel brush.
  • 00:27 But for artists and photographers who deal with print-size documents at
  • 00:30 a very high resolution, a brush of that size can certainly come in handy.
  • 00:35 In previous versions of Photoshop,
  • 00:37 changing the Opacity of your active layer was quite simple.
  • 00:39 You can either adjust it in your Layers panel, or
  • 00:42 by simply using the number keys on your keyboard.
  • 00:44 For example, pressing the number 6 would change the Opacity to 60%.
  • 00:48 Holding down your shift key and pressing 6 would change the Fill Opacity to 60%.
  • 00:52 1 would be 10%, 8 would be 80%, and 0 would be 100%, you get the idea.
  • 00:58 However, if you wanted to decrease the Opacity to 0% there was no shortcut,
  • 01:03 you had to do it manually.
  • 01:04 In Photoshop CS6 Adobe has finally given us a shortcut,
  • 01:08 press the 0 key twice on your keyboard to decrease the opacity to 0%.
  • 01:12 Hold down your Shift key and press it twice to decrease the Fill Opacity to 0%.
  • 01:16 Heading into the Layers panel,
  • 01:18 working with multiple layers has gotten a few nice tweaks.
  • 01:21 In Photoshop CS5, if you had multiple layers selected at once,
  • 01:25 your functionality was pretty limited.
  • 01:27 For one, you were not able to change the blend mode of more than one layer at once.
  • 01:31 Now in Photoshop CS6, even if you have multiple layers selected,
  • 01:35 you have the ability to change the blend mode on all selected layers.
  • 01:38 The same works for locking multiple layers as well.
  • 01:41 As long as you have more than one layer selected, pressing the Lock button near
  • 01:44 the top of your Layers panel will lock all selected layers.
  • 01:48 As a user who likes to keep things organized in groups,
  • 01:51 I frequently got frustrated when I would attempt to duplicate the active group with
  • 01:54 the command or Ctrl+J shortcut, only to find that nothing happened.
  • 01:58 Finally in Photoshop CS 6, you are able to duplicate layer groups using the same
  • 02:03 shortcut that duplicates your standard layers, command or Ctrl+J.
  • 02:08 Another nice organization feature that's been added is the ability to
  • 02:11 color code your layers.
  • 02:12 By right clicking any one of your layers in your Layers panel,
  • 02:15 you can give it one of seven colors.
  • 02:17 This is very useful if you wanna mark layers that need changing or
  • 02:20 simply want another way of identifying similar elements in your project.
  • 02:25 Another thing that frustrated me in Photoshop CS5 was that when you had
  • 02:28 layers that were hidden you had to unhide them in order to see what the opacity and
  • 02:32 blend mode of that layer was.
  • 02:33 In Photoshop CS6 even if a layer is hidden you can
  • 02:36 still see the correct blend mode and opacity.
  • 02:39 This next JDI may take some time to get used to, but it makes sense.
  • 02:43 In your layers styles dialogue box the order of the styles have been
  • 02:46 rearranged to better match the stacking order.
  • 02:49 In Photoshop CS5 it didn't make much sense that drop shadow was at the top of
  • 02:53 the list, when it's the last style on the stack.
  • 02:55 Now simply looking at the list you know exactly what order the layer
  • 02:59 styles are added in.
  • 03:01 Now heading into our liquefy filter there are two JDIs that I'm thrilled about.
  • 03:05 The first one is the ability to adjust your brush size using the same
  • 03:08 shortcut you would with your standard brushes.
  • 03:10 The left square bracket key decreases your brush while the right
  • 03:13 square bracket key increases it.
  • 03:16 And of course the maximum brush size has been increased to 15,000 pixels, again,
  • 03:20 most users will never have a need for a 15,000 pixel brush, but for
  • 03:24 those working with massive documents it's now available to you.

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