Photoshop Learning… It never ends

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.

Photoshop Vector Tools

Photoshop has had vector tools for years and years, and they keep adding more features as time goes on. As I mentioned before, I’ve been using these tools for a long time, but I don’t always catch every new feature. When Adobe added Vector Layer Masks, the behavior of the tool changed, and rather than getting the book out, I just adapted. The default behavior changed so that a Color Fill Layer is created instead of a Work Path.

Now here it is a few years after they changed this. I finally noticed these three little buttons on the tool bar:

All this time, the key was right there. That button on the left is the default and creates a new fill layer with a vector mask. The second button is actually more useful to me. It will create a new Work Path or will affect an existing, selected path. The third button just makes pixels from the vector tools. My workaround was not that complicated, but I’m glad I finally discovered this part of the tool bar.

One thing to keep in mind when using the vector tools inside of Photoshop, It’s almost like you’ve switched to a different program. Some of your keyboard commands change in context and that sometimes trips me up. It’s getting better all the time.

Perhaps next time I’ll write about using Photoshop in a broadcast environment.

Does one need to relearn Photoshop?

I’ve been using Photoshop on an almost daily basis since 1994. I started on version 2.5, just before they added layers. Because Adobe adds new features at an alarming rate, I have to adjust my work habits when a new version hits the street, but I often don’t get around to learning all the new features. I instead, “run into” them from time to time.

I spent some time Friday doing some training for my coworker on the finer points of the vector tools inside Photoshop. I had to confess that while I had been using the vector tools for years, I had only recently noted the plethora of tool buttons at the top. Also, I only recently found out that I could convert a selection into a vector path.

Perhaps it’s time to sign up for that Lynda.com account?