Handy tips and tricks for PS

[Evil_Sloth]

Press x to switch between the foreground and background colours.
Space bar to move your view.
Ctrl +/- for zoom.
When you have selected something with the lasso tool or what ever, press ctrl + h to make the doted lines invisible.
There are heaps more.

[Pixeldragoon]

In PS7, link layers and hit Ctrl+E to merge them. In PSCS/2, select one, hold shift, and click on others you want to merge, then hit Ctrl+E.

Alt+Mouse scroller lets you zoom in and out easily.

Ctrl let's you move a selection,

ctrl+Alt "Clones" the selection where you release it. Play with this before you try it on anything.

Ctrl+T For free transform- This one comes in handy. Press enter to Apply the transformation.



EASY WAYS TO PAINT WITH PS7
Okay. You have a nice round brush. Get your lineart, and get it off the background layer by Double clicking it- A window will pop up. The Name should say "Layer 0" Click Okay. It is no longer the background layer. Now click the small page with a corner folded- This creates a new layer. Place this layer BELOW the lineart. Now click on the lineart layer- There is a box that says "Normal" Click the small arrow, and go down to where it says "MULITPLY".
Then click out of the box.

GO to the layer below your lines. Get your base color, and fill that layer in with Base colors. YOu have now a flatly colored character.

Start a new layer, and call it Highlights. Then set your brush opacity to about 15%, depending on how bright the color is. Then click on your color box, for the color you want. A boc should come up with this crazy color mix and all these numbers. There is a box labeled L at the very top right. This stands for "Luminosity". Bring that up a little bit.

Now if you have a mouse, be careful about clicking overandoverandoverandover- Try to avoid it. Like painting, experiment with brushes, then make long, smooth strokes. If you have a tablet, do the same.

This concludes the basic guide to PS7 painting.

[arghmisfit]

lotsa shortcuts here http://user.fundy.net/morris/photoshop.shtml

[Fal$eProfit]

BRUSHES
change brush size [ or ]
change brush hardness shift + [ or shift +]
change opacity tap numbers for ten time the amount or quickly tap two numbers

SELECTIONS
invert selection Ctrl + Shift + I
select all Ctrl + A
deselect all Ctrl + D

You can save your selections that are hard core by going into the CHANNELS control panel and hitting save selection as channel. It has another button on there that will make it the selection
Hold CTRL and select a layer with your mouse will put a selection around the not transparent parts

GENERAL
If your don't see the right cursor size even though you have it set right (EDIT -> PREFRENCES -> DISPLAYS AND CURSORS -> BRUSH SIZE) it is because the caps lock is on

Hitting the TAB button will hide / unhide all the control panels

[aico003]

ctrl + backspace fills the selected layer with your background colour. Good for sketching on one layer if you wanna start over, but if you use it on a transparent layer it'll cover everything up, though this can be usefull too..
Be sure to hover your mouse over tools to find the shortcut key to select them, too.. B to get your brush, E for the eraser, M for rectangular marquee, V for the move arrow, etc.

[Datameister]

Many people recommend only using hard brushes in Photoshop. Photoshop's default hard brushes are indeed very useful, and it's true that using Photoshop's default fuzzy brushes tends to make pictures look uncontrolled and fake. But don't be fooled into thinking that soft brushes are useless. Design your own custom soft brushes that have some sort of texture or grit to them--they make great sketching brushes.

[madster]

Change your preferences so that Undo is Ctrl+'Z', but change REDO to Shift+Ctrl+'Z'.

This way, you can undo/redo up to the maximum number of steps you keep in your cache (I believe the maximum is 32). Sometimes faster than the History palette.

~M

[sketchling]

um.... if ya use ctrl-shift-z and ctrl-alt-z for going forwards and backwards in the history... and still keep ctrl-z as undo-redo in one step.... it is far easier I think..? use it all the time.


also useful ones:
alt [ or ] selects a layer above or below the current one
ctrl [ or ] moves your current later up or down one.

These two work very well together :
ctrl shift alt n (creates a new layer)
ctrl shift alt e (pastes visible into current layer)

[Dirk]

I think i will do it easy today and just link you to what i think of a very nice set of links/info etc. on photoshop (5 to CS2)

GFX^TM Photoshop and ImageReady (http://user.fundy.net/morris/?photoshop.shtml)

[piotrpociecha]

http://www.conceptart.org/gallery/files/2/2/6/1/4/pear.jpg

[rasdasa]

Here's another: if you want to apply textures to something, place the texture on its own layer right over the layer on which the desired object you want to texture is on, then hold down ALT and click right between the two layers, the texture on the above layer will constrain to the shape of the pixels on the lower layer.

branKo

[BlandAndVibrant]

im new to concept art dot org and im not really interested in drawing the intensely surreal for example dont think "tim burton" think "tim schafer" then spit on it and throw it at a canvas thats me!!!
im more into the abstract "crooked man in the crooked condo"
kind of art
what tool on PS would someone advise me to use