I started following Ward Jenkins on Twitter. He’s an animator, formerly of Primal Screen in Atlanta, and is now living in Portland, Oregon. He had a video of himself, giving a lecture to a class at Portland State University.
While I’m watching, there are certain things I’m seeing him do that make me say to myself, “It would be so easier if he’d…”
But there are always things that you see someone do that make you stop and ask, “what just happened?”.
It’s pretty simple, but I had no idea there was a shortcut for preserving transparency on a layer. <?> The question mark is one of the new things I’ve learned. Layers have existed in Photoshop since version 3. I’d have to do a lot of digging to learn how long that shortcut has been there.
The other thing I learned was how the brackets work with the brushes. I knew that the <+> and <-> keys would cycle you through the brushes in the pallet. The <[> and <]> (brackets) will size up and down your existing brush. This has immediately sped-up my workflow. – Somehow I feel that I knew this before, but I’m thinking that it’s a matter of Adobe moving around keyboard commands, and my failure to read the manuals.
Finally, I offer to you Mr. Jenkins, the command of, <Shift> <Delete>.
That brings up a simple dialog to fill with foreground or background color; or pure white or back, or pattern or 50% grey, all while giving you an option of preserving transparency or not. I’ve never used the paint bucket. To me, it has no purpose in a true-color paint program.
Anyway, Thank you Mr. Jenkins. I learned a lot. I hope to learn more.
