Unclutter Your Screen Work Area

Hello again,

I was just working away on a few different photos for a couple customers, and I had them all up at the same time. Don't know why, but that's just how I work sometimes. My brain likes to take a break from one project and work on something different for a bit, then go back. Always bouncing around. And a lot of the time it's not even in Photoshop - Like right now! My brain has wondered off to write in my blog instead of working on photos. Hopefully it'll be back soon - I have no control over what pops into it!

When I've got several images up at once, I like to use one of my normal keyboard short-cuts (and for those who know me, know I live by keyboard short-cuts) to clean up my screen for better viewing of the image I'd like to concentrate on.

Well, the customer I was working with, in amazement, who (whom?) also is into Photoshop just had to ask - What did I just do with the stroke of a single key? So here I am to show you too.

This is another one of those stupid, why didn't I know about that, kind of shortcuts that, once you learn it you'll use it all the time.

Here's one of my photos up on screen; notice all the clutter of other images and Bridge behind it?

It's hard to concentrate on what's important.

With simple push of the "F" key, it's all gone, and your image is full screen with a gray border around it and all your tools and palettes are still present.

Pretty nice, Huh?

Now, to get back to viewing your multiple windows, just push "Shift-F". Bam!

Now, the odd thing is that in your Photoshop drop-down menus, all (well, at least most of) the keyboard shortcuts for each function is shown to the side of that function in the drop-down menu. But this is one of those little secret ones that's not shown.

If you go to View>Screen Mode, you'll see the four options you have there - But no mention of a keyboard shortcut - Which is why I'm here to help you out.

By simply pushing the "F" Key, each push will toggle you thru each of the Screen Modes, while "Shift-F" will toggle you thru the modes in reverse order. Go ahead, give it a try, you know you want too!

See! Pretty slick, Huh?

And that's how I was able to quickly (and amazingly) clean-up my screen right in front of my customer.

Thanks again for coming by,

Tony D. Locke, MM

Tony's Tips - Today Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

Need to Undo a White Balance in Camera RAW?

If you attempted to set the white balance in your image with the White Balance tool (I) , and you don't like what happened, you can undo your white balance setting (gotta love the ability to undo things) by double-clicking on the White Balance tool in Camera Raw. Simple huh?

Living On & Seeing The Layers Edge

Would you like to see where the edges of one of your layers lies (very handy for layers with soft edges) - Now would you? Well Bucko, just go up to the View menu > Show, and choose Layer Edges. Now a thin blue border will magically appear around the edges of your selected layer, allowing you to see and live on the edge of your layer's boundaries.

Would You Like to Move And/Or

Copy A Layer Mask?

Oh dude, this is so easy, you won't believe it. No fancy key combinations here. Just click directly on the layer mask's thumbnail and drag it to the layer where you want it. If you want a duplicate of a layer mask (instead of just moving it), press-and-hold the Option key (PC: Alt key) before you drag. Instant Mask copy - See, what'd I tell ya!

OK, enough for today. Hope you learned at least one trick/tip today. I don't have any idea why the paragraphs are formatting the way they are, that's just how Blogger works sometimes. I'm learning Wordpress too as another option, so keep track of me here, and you'll see the changes come along.

Thanks again for playing along and reading my blog,

Tony