We all use Photoshop on a daily basis, but I bet there’s at least one tip in this post that will give you the old ‘Why didn’t I know of this before’ moment! It’s tips like these that make the most common of tasks quicker and easier than ever to help speed up your Photoshop workflow.
Drag a selection with the Marquee tool, but before releasing the mouse button, press and hold the Spacebar to relocate the selection.
Go to Photoshop’s preferences and head down to the Type section. Change the Font Preview Size option to Extra Large to display legible preview on the font drop down menu.
Rather than typing in an exact figure, simply nudge the numeric value up and down sequentially with the cursor keys.
Double click the Zoom icon’s magnifying glass to jump back to 100%.
Click the ‘eye’ icon next to a layer to toggle the visibility on or off, then drag the selection down the palette to repeat the command on multiple layers.
Press the ALT key while clicking the ‘eye’ icon next to a layer to toggle the visibility of all other layers.
Press CMD while clicking the layer thumbnail to load a selection of the layer contents.
Windows users can simply toggle using the cursor keys, Mac users however can use the Shift key along with the plus and minus keys while the direct selection tool is active. Using this command while another tool is selected will change the blending mode option for that specific tool.
Increase the size of your work area by toggling off the palettes using the Tab key. Hover over the edges of the screen to bring back palettes, which will then disappear again when the mouse is moved away.
Another handy tip for Mac users. Cycle through various full screen modes by pressing the F key.
Press Caps Lock to turn on the precision cursor, useful for creating accurate selections. This also toggles off the brush outline, which can be handy for some occasions.
With the Brush tool selected, press the [ and ] keys to increase or decrease the brush size.
Head into the Brush setting, under Brush Tip Shape adjust the circular icon to rotate the angle of the brush.
Select a preset opacity value by pressing the numeric keys from 1-10. Number one equals 10%, five equals 50% and so on.
Select and adjust the selection settings to automatically select a layer, or a group. Or turn the option off to avoid accidental layer selection.
Go to File > Scripts > Load files into stack to open up a bunch of images and automatically place them onto individual layers.
Click and drag a guide from the document rulers, or go to View > New Guide to drop a guide at a specific placement.
Click the small options arrow in the corner of the Layers Palette, then change the Layers Panel Options to alter the thumbnail size.
Draw a selection, then use the shortcut Shift+CMD+C to Copy Merged. This takes every layer into the clipping, rather than just the current layer selection.
The cursor keys will nudge an object by 1px by default. Hold Shift while nudging to increase this to 10px. Especially handy when designing web layouts for consistent spacing.
