Home
Username:
Password:
Adobe Photoshop CS4 for the Web Tutorials

Photoshop Basics / Working More Efficiently pt. 2

Subtitles of the Movie

Let me show you just a couple of other neat ways and you know neat ideas for working inside the Photoshop Interface. The first thing that I want to show you here is, you may have noticed that you can never have a tool turned off. One tool is always going to be active, right and especially those that are new to Photoshop I always get asked this, they say, how do I turn off the tools? How do I, I don't want a tool turned On. Well, you're always going to have a tool turned On, right, that's how it works. But what I like to do and this is the way that I work, is this guy right here, the Move Tool, I think of him as my neutral tool. In other words, as soon as I'm finished, you know, erasing areas or working with my Gradient Tool or typing in some text or whatever, whenever I'm done whatever it is that I'm doing here inside Photoshop I always flip back to my Move Tool. Now let me show you some other ways that you can work a little bit faster with your tools. Obviously, when I hover over top of my tools I get this Tool Tip, but you may have noticed that a single character shows up inside brackets at the end of the Tool Tip and you may have noticed there Gradient was G, my Blur Tool, actually my Blur Tool doesn't have one - isn't that interesting - but Dodge does, Dodge is O, or the Hand Tool is H. Now what those are, are keyboard shortcuts. In other words, keystroke equivalents, so check this out. I'm going to hit the L key on my key - not Shift-L or Ctrl-L or Command-L, just L all by itself. That flips me over to the Lasso Tool. If I hit the H key on my keyboard that flips me to the Hand Tool. The Z key for the Zoom Tool, T for Type, P for Pen, right? M for the Marquee Tool, V for the Move Tool. Now I don't know them all, right, because I don't use all my tools, but I know the tools that I use all the time. W for the Magic Wand, C for my Crop and my Slice Tools, this kind of thing, right. So you'll kind of catch on to these guys and you'll definitely want to maybe take some time and get used to this. It's a really great way to work inside Photoshop. All good. Let me show you something else here. Try this. Try hitting the Tab key on your keyboard. Just Tab. Now what Tab does is it temporarily turns off your Toolbox and your Panels over on the right-hand side. Hit Tab again, everything comes back to life. So that's kind of a neat way to give yourself a little bit more screen space inside Photoshop. Now while you're at it, try this. Try hitting Shift-Tab on your keyboard and what that will do is that will turn off your Panels over on the right-hand side, but it'll keep your Toolbox available over on the left. So again, kind of a neat shortcut there. Shift-Tab or just Tab on its own, which is great. OK, let me show you one more thing here. I'm going to hit Tab to turn everything off and give this a try. I'm going to hit the F key on my keyboard and that brings me into Photoshop's Full Screen Mode. So hitting F once brings you into the Full Screen Mode, hitting F again brings you into an even larger Full Screen Mode if you will. Now we don't have a menu across the top or anything. And then F one more time brings you back into the regular old Photoshop Mode. So again, it's entirely up to you how you'd like to work. I just hit Tab here by the way to bring everything back. Usually what I do is when I get my image open I hit the F key right away, so now I'm working inside the Full Screen Mode. So, hopefully all good.

Tutorial Information

Course: Adobe Photoshop CS4 for the Web
Author: Geoff Blake
SKU: 34089
ISBN: 1-936334-01-1
Release Date: 2010-02-25
Duration: 7 hrs / 105 lessons
Work Files: Yes
Captions: Available on CD and Online University
Compatibility: Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux
QuickTime 7, Flash 8

VTC Sign up & Benefits

  • Unlimited Access
  • 98,729 Video Tutorials (23,265 free)
  • Video Available as Flash or QuickTime
  • Over 1026 Courses
  • $30 for One Month Access
  • Multi-User Discounts Available