Quick Tip Tuesday – Right-Click It!
by Jenn on March 2, 2010
in Quick Tip Tuesday
What can you do with a right-click?
Right-click…. on any Layer in the Layers Palette: to copy and paste layer styles, to duplicate the layer, to delete the layer.
Right-click… in a Selection: to select the inverse, feather the selection, or transform the selection.
Right-click… on a Text layer: to change horizontal to vertical, to rasterize or simplify the type, or to warp the text.
Right-click… with the Brush Tool: to choose a new brush from the brushes palette, or to change the diameter of the brush.
Do you right-click?
Jenn
Photo by House of Sims on Flickr
Quick Tip Tuesday – Lock it!
by Jenn on February 24, 2010
in Quick Tip Tuesday
One of the more overlooked features of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements is the ability to lock your layers! The one place I use this a lot is when coloring in shapes, or chalking edges on elements.
We have two options – Lock and Transparency Lock. You can access these at the top or bottom of your Layers palette. Here’s what it looks like in PSE 8:
Next to the word Lock, there is a little checkerboard, and a padlock.
The padlock is a Layer Lock and will keep you from being able to do ANYthing to the layer. This is useful at times when you don’t want to mistakenly make marks on a layer, or keep from moving something inadvertently. You just click on the padlock, and a padlock shows on the layer in the palette to remind you it’s locked. To unlock, click on the padlock below the palette again to toggle it off. 
The more useful tool is the little checkerboard, or the Transparency Lock. When you click the checkerboard, a lighter colored padlock shows on the layer in the palette. Now, you will not be able to alter the transparent areas of the layer, only the layers with pixels! So you can take a large soft brush and add color like I did to this leaf. The color will show up only on the shape, and not in the transparent area!
Some of you may accomplish this by CTRL-clicking on the layer thumbnail to select the item, then brushing on it. This is not a bad way to do it, but sometimes the ‘marching ants’ keep you from being able to see the edge clearly. I find using the Transparency Lock feature is easier, and gives me a better result!
Give it a whirl, go ‘chalk’ the edges of a journal card, or draw a shape and add some color! And if you use it in a layout, post it in the gallery for everyone to see 
Happy Scrapping!
Jenn
Quick Tip Tuesday – What Size is YOUR Feather?
by Jenn on February 16, 2010
in Quick Tip Tuesday
It’s yearbook season in our house, and I work with the middle school students in our community helping them to put together their book with PSE. They’re all quick learners, and since I’m getting them “clean and green” I’m trying to get them into some good work habits. Here’s one that might keep you from making a terrible error (that no doubt you will only discover after printing!)
We all have occasion to use a feathered selection – most commonly in a vignette:
Many people will use the Marquee Tool to create the vignette (see our tutorial “3 Ways to Vignette a Photo here) and to get the soft edge on the vignette, they’ll set the feather in the Tool Options bar.
DON’T DO IT!!
Instead, right-click inside the selection, and choose Feather from the menu. You’ll get a little dialog box where you can enter the feather value you want.
WHY? Because…
You’ll forget. Then you’ll be doing something else, and make a quick selection with your marquee tool, CTRL+C to copy, CTRL+V to paste – and voila! A feathered selection where you didn’t want one! The tragic part of this is when the feather is small and you don’t notice… until you get the print!
By using the right-click method, you eliminate that possibility. You get in the habit of having to enter a value every time you want a feather, so you’re doing it thoughtfully.
Hope this saves you some heartache! What little work habits do you use to keep yourself out of trouble?
Some of our best from a year ago
by Stan on February 9, 2010
in Quick Tip Tuesday
(Note from Stan – thanks for all the well wishes for Jenn’s recovery but believe it or not, now we’re both sick! Must have picked up something in the hospital where all the sick people are. Please enjoy this post from more than a year ago recounting some of best Photoshop and Elements tips.)
We’ve been posting Quick Tips for a year now! So I thought it was time to take a look back, and see what YOU liked best (judging by number of comments) and visit some of our own faves…
You’ll notice some are on this blog, and many are over on our ScrapKitty Design Blog
Here are the top 10 in descending order of popluarity:
1. Subject Too Dark – our very FIRST tip was our overall most popular! Has it really been downhill from there or are you guys just getting less chatty?
2. Out in the Weeds – this was a VERY close second AND a recent post. Guess we’re still getting it right!
8. Selecting Colors Outside Photoshop
Hope you discover something cool you missed the first time around! To keep you amused, bewildered, and awed until we’re feeling better, here are links to all of our Quick Tips. (Feel free to leave comments, we’re still listening!)
ScrappersWorkshop Quick Tip Archive
ScrapKitty Design Quick Tip Archive
Recovering!
Jenn and Stan
Quick Tip Tuesday – More than just a Navigator
by Jenn on February 1, 2010
in Quick Tip Tuesday
One of my favorite tools in PS/PSE is the Navigator window. (Go to Window>Navigator to display).
It shows your entire document in a large thumbnail, and if you zoom in on it, the area that’s showing in your working window will have a red box around it. This is great for when you’re zoomed WAY in working on something, and need to move to a different part of your page. Just click inside the red box on the navigator and drag it to another part of the page! But here’s the best part – you can make the navigator as large as you wish!
Drag the navigator window onto your work space, and you can size it up as much as you like. This comes in handy when you are doing very close retouching or cloning – you can see how the overall image looks without zooming in and out all the time! The navigator window refreshes every time you let off the mouse button, so you can see if you like the changes as you go.
I love the Navigator, and keep it open most of the time in my palette bar, but it’s handy to size it up from time to time. Give it a whirl!
Happy Scrapping!
Jenn
