Locked lesson.

Upgrade

About this lesson

10 little Photoshop productivity tips.

Exercise files

There are no related exercise files for this lesson, or we cannot provide them due to copyright issues.

Quick reference

Topic: JDIs: Just Do It

10 quick tips.

When to use

10 little Photoshop productivity tips.

Instructions

1: Brush Pixel Size can go up 5000

Type in to the size box.

2: Quick Opacity change to 0%

With layer selected, if you hit the 0 key twice if will change the layer to 0%.

3 and 4: Multiple layer functionality

With more than one layer selected, you can change the blend mode locking.

5: Duplicate Groups

Select group and press the command (mac) or control (win) J shortcut.

6: Color Code Layers

With the layer selected right click and scroll down to the color you want.

7: Hidden Layers Info

With the layer hidden, you can still see the blend and opacity information.

8: Layer styles order

The layer styles stacking order is shown in descending order in the left side tabs.

9: Liquefy brush

In the Liquefy effect, the brush sizes can be altered with the left and right bracket keys [].

10: Liquefy brush size

In the Liquefy effect, the brush sizes can be increased to 1500 pixel if needed.

Login to download
  • 00:04 A JDI, which stands for Just Do It, are typically smaller,
  • 00:08 heavily requested features that help users in their day to day workflow.
  • 00:12 This video will cover 10 of my favorite JDIs.
  • 00:15 Starting off with our brushes,
  • 00:16 the maximum brush size has been increased to 5,000 pixels.
  • 00:20 This is up from 2,500 pixels in Photoshop CS5.
  • 00:23 Now, most users will never have a need for a 5,000 pixel brush.
  • 00:27 But for artists and photographers who deal with print-size documents at
  • 00:30 a very high resolution, a brush of that size can certainly come in handy.
  • 00:35 In previous versions of Photoshop,
  • 00:37 changing the Opacity of your active layer was quite simple.
  • 00:39 You can either adjust it in your Layers panel, or
  • 00:42 by simply using the number keys on your keyboard.
  • 00:44 For example, pressing the number 6 would change the Opacity to 60%.
  • 00:48 Holding down your shift key and pressing 6 would change the Fill Opacity to 60%.
  • 00:52 1 would be 10%, 8 would be 80%, and 0 would be 100%, you get the idea.
  • 00:58 However, if you wanted to decrease the Opacity to 0% there was no shortcut,
  • 01:03 you had to do it manually.
  • 01:04 In Photoshop CS6 Adobe has finally given us a shortcut,
  • 01:08 press the 0 key twice on your keyboard to decrease the opacity to 0%.
  • 01:12 Hold down your Shift key and press it twice to decrease the Fill Opacity to 0%.
  • 01:16 Heading into the Layers panel,
  • 01:18 working with multiple layers has gotten a few nice tweaks.
  • 01:21 In Photoshop CS5, if you had multiple layers selected at once,
  • 01:25 your functionality was pretty limited.
  • 01:27 For one, you were not able to change the blend mode of more than one layer at once.
  • 01:31 Now in Photoshop CS6, even if you have multiple layers selected,
  • 01:35 you have the ability to change the blend mode on all selected layers.
  • 01:38 The same works for locking multiple layers as well.
  • 01:41 As long as you have more than one layer selected, pressing the Lock button near
  • 01:44 the top of your Layers panel will lock all selected layers.
  • 01:48 As a user who likes to keep things organized in groups,
  • 01:51 I frequently got frustrated when I would attempt to duplicate the active group with
  • 01:54 the command or Ctrl+J shortcut, only to find that nothing happened.
  • 01:58 Finally in Photoshop CS 6, you are able to duplicate layer groups using the same
  • 02:03 shortcut that duplicates your standard layers, command or Ctrl+J.
  • 02:08 Another nice organization feature that's been added is the ability to
  • 02:11 color code your layers.
  • 02:12 By right clicking any one of your layers in your Layers panel,
  • 02:15 you can give it one of seven colors.
  • 02:17 This is very useful if you wanna mark layers that need changing or
  • 02:20 simply want another way of identifying similar elements in your project.
  • 02:25 Another thing that frustrated me in Photoshop CS5 was that when you had
  • 02:28 layers that were hidden you had to unhide them in order to see what the opacity and
  • 02:32 blend mode of that layer was.
  • 02:33 In Photoshop CS6 even if a layer is hidden you can
  • 02:36 still see the correct blend mode and opacity.
  • 02:39 This next JDI may take some time to get used to, but it makes sense.
  • 02:43 In your layers styles dialogue box the order of the styles have been
  • 02:46 rearranged to better match the stacking order.
  • 02:49 In Photoshop CS5 it didn't make much sense that drop shadow was at the top of
  • 02:53 the list, when it's the last style on the stack.
  • 02:55 Now simply looking at the list you know exactly what order the layer
  • 02:59 styles are added in.
  • 03:01 Now heading into our liquefy filter there are two JDIs that I'm thrilled about.
  • 03:05 The first one is the ability to adjust your brush size using the same
  • 03:08 shortcut you would with your standard brushes.
  • 03:10 The left square bracket key decreases your brush while the right
  • 03:13 square bracket key increases it.
  • 03:16 And of course the maximum brush size has been increased to 15,000 pixels, again,
  • 03:20 most users will never have a need for a 15,000 pixel brush, but for
  • 03:24 those working with massive documents it's now available to you.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Gift this course