Photoshop Shortcut Keys

Knowing Photoshop's most used shortcut keys will help you design faster. Here are some of them:

Ctrl + J == Duplicate a Layer

Ctrl + C == Copy

Ctrl + V == Paste

Ctrl + A == Selecting all the active layer content

Ctrl + D == Deselect Item

Ctrl + Z == Undo 

Ctrl + Alt + Z == Multiple Undo 

Ctrl + Shift + Z == Multiple Redo

Ctrl + R == Show Ruler grid

Ctrl + Shift + E == Merge all active Layers

V == Switch to Move tool (very helpful when you're using the lasso tool)

X == Switch foreground to background color and vice versa

Foreground / Background Color

These are the basic shortcut keys that you need as a beginner, as you use Photoshop more and more you'll discover more useful shortcut keys and apply them to your projects. Have fun!

Simplified Overlay Effect

I will show you how to add drama to your photos by using the Overlay effect. This is one of my favorite yet simple photo-effect that I always use. This effect works best with outdoor shots.

My image:

This is my Background image on the Layers Pallete:

Create a duplicate of your image by highlighting the Background layer and clicking on Ctrl + J on your keyboard. This will create another layer called Layer 1.

While Layer 1 is selected, click on the Filter Menu at the top of your screen then go to Blur> Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to 6.0. You can change the radius according to your taste, the higher you go, the more intense the color will be. Then click OK.

At this point, Layer 1 is still highlighted on the screen. 

Click on the Blending mode drop down menu on the Layers Pallete and choose Overlay.

And viola! Your image has a dramatic effect on it.

Before

Notice the difference in the color intensity of the rocks? The effect also softened the details on the mermaids' scales. It's like a photo taken by a Digital SLR camera. Pretty cool huh?

Ain't that simple? Hope you enjoyed this tutorial. Have fun!

Fundamental Tool

A lot of people had come to me and ask "How do I use Photoshop"? Well there's a lot of answers to that question and I think you have to start from the basics before you can even answer that.

First of all, what is Photoshop? In my own words, it's a powerful tool used to enhance, manipulate and transform all sorts of images and basically turn them into art. I've been using Photoshop for over 8 years now and like every other Photoshop enthusiasts out there, I had to start learning from the beginning. Learning Photoshop is really as easy as A, B, C.

Let's start learning!

Let's begin with the basic workspace.

My workspace has 4 basic palletes, the Tool Pallete, Navigator Pallete, Color Pallete and Layers Pallete. Let's study them one by one.

The Tool Pallete

This pallete has all the tools that you need to manipulate your images. The image on the left shows the basic tools that I use most of the time which you will mainly use.

 See the little inverted triangle below some of the tools? It means that you can right click on them to see more tools to use. For example, if you right click on the Brush tool, it will show you the Pencil Tool (pretty neat huh?)

I use the Pen tool to make an outline of the images I want to select instead of using the Lasso tool since it is more accurate and easy to use. We will dwell more on to this tool as we go along the tutorials on this blog.

The Navigation Pallete

This pallete let's you move around your image with ease, you can magnify or zoom out of the image by using the scroll bar below the window. This tool really helps me in navigating through large images.

The Colors/Swatches Pallete

The pallete's name explains what this tool is for. Need I say more? :)

The Layers Pallete

 

This pallete let's you switch from one Layer to another which is a very important feature of Photoshop. You can also set the opacity of each layer and also set the blending mode by clicking on the drop down menu where it says "Normal" on the image on the left.

You will see this pallete over and over again as we go along some of the tutorials.

So now you know where to start. You can open your Photoshop software right now and play around the palletes that are discussed above. One trick to see all of these palletes (plus one more called the History pallete) is to click on the Window menu > Workspace > then click on Default Workspace, this will automatically show all the palletes that you need.