Everyone knows you can use the Eyedropper Tool to select a color from a photo. But no one seems to
tell you that by minimizing the Photoshop frame, then clicking inside the canvas and dragging
outside of it, you can use the Eyedropper Tool to select colors from any other app or website.
In this video, I will reveal to you five genius Photoshop
features you probably didn't know existed.
And do me a favor: subscribe and hit the like button if you learn something new.
Immediately after using most tools or applying filters and adjustments,
you can fade the changes you apply by going into Edit and choosing Fade or by pressing
Ctrl Shift F. From the Fade Window; you can reduce the Opacity and, in some cases,
change the Blending Mode of the last adjustment. This is great for retouching. For example,
applying the Spot Healing Brush Tool over a wrinkle will remove it completely. But you can
bring up the Fade window, then Fade the adjustment down for a more realistic look. In most cases,
you don't want to remove the wrinkles; instead, you want to make them less noticeable. Keep in
mind that the Fade command is ONLY available immediately after you apply your changes.
If you do anything else in between, including saving your image, you won't be able to use it.
Here's another feature similar to Fade, but even more genius. When using the Liquify filter,
you might get a little heavy-handed and push pixels much further than you need to,
and it just doesn't look realistic. Unfortunately, when you fade the result, you will see a ghosting
effect between the original image and the edited version. This is not what you want. Instead,
after you apply the Liquify adjustment, go into the Brush Reconstruct options and click on the
Reconstruct button, then reduce the intensity to something that looks good to your eye.
The next feature is great for working with images with a lot of intricate detail. If
you go into Window, Arrange, and choose New Window for and the name of your currently open document,
Photoshop will open the same document in another window. This is not a duplicate document. It's
exactly the same file. Now you can go into Window, Arrange, and choose Two-up Vertical
to place the two windows side by side. Then, you can zoom in on one Window to work on the details
of your photo, while the second Window shows the entire image. For example, in this case,
I'll make a selection around the dog. Then, I will use the Generative Fill to remove him. Notice that
the Fill shows up on both windows, and they update simultaneously as I cycle through the variations.
I can then continue to work on another part of the photo, like her arm. I'll use the Remove tool to
remove her tattoo. Notice that as I paint away the tattoo, the adjustment reflects on both windows.
You no longer have to zoom in and out to see how your detailed work affects the entire photo.
I was never good in math class, but with Photoshop, I don't have to be. Photoshop can
do the math for you in all input boxes. If someone tells you to make the canvas wider by one-third,
no problem. All you need to do is go into the Canvas size dialog box and enter the equation,
times four divided by 3. As soon as you click away, Photoshop will do the math!
Or if your font is too big, you can reduce it by half simply by dividing
by two. When you commit the changes, you can reposition the smaller text layer.
Another great feature is a step and repeat. When you press CTRL T to apply a transformation,
anything you do, whether it's distort, move, scale, or rotate,
Photoshop will remember. For example, if you move a layer to the right, scale it up by 10%,
rotate it 45 degrees, and commit the changes, Photoshop will keep all that in mind. Now,
you can press Ctrl Shift T to repeat all those steps on this layer or any other. Adding the Alt
key to that keyboard combination will duplicate the current layer and apply the transformation.
This feature becomes even more powerful when combined with the previous one. If
you wanted to evenly duplicate this star around this coin 15 times,
you could simply press Ctrl T to transform, then move the reference point to the center.
Now, from the angle input box, divide 360 by 15, then apply the rotation. You
can now press Ctrl Alt Shift T 14 times to get 15 evenly spaced stars around the coin.
And remember, as you're watching these tips,
if you learn something new hit the Like button and Subscribe!
To make a document the same size as another open document, go to Image, Image size. Now,
while the dialog box is open, go to Window, and at the very bottom of the menu, you will see all
open documents. When you select any document, Photoshop will automatically fill in the values
for that image. Then press OK to resize your image to match the other open document. But keep in mind
that if the source image has a different aspect ratio, the result will be a stretched-out photo.
You can also use the Crop Tool for something similar. Go to the image whose dimensions you
want to copy, then enable the Crop Tool. From the Crop Size drop-down menu, choose Front Image. Then
go to the second document and you'll see the Crop tool active with the dimension of the first image.
No matter how small or you cropped the photo, it will always resize to match the front image.
This little-known feature will allow you to create written step-by-step tutorials automatically. As
you probably already know, Photoshop is always tracking your edits. You can see what Photoshop
is tracking by going into Windows and choosing History. The History panel will show you all the
edits you've applied to your image. The problem is you can only see the generic basic steps without
any detail. Even if this list was detailed enough, you can't export it as text. So, if you want to
track all the steps you've made along with all the settings used and keep it all as a separate text
file, you can enable the History Log. To do so, press CTRL K to bring up the Preferences window.
From the History and Content Credentials tab, enable the History log checkbox. Under the Save
Log Items To, you can decide where to save the written steps. Metadata will save the text within
the image itself. Text file will create a separate file with all your adjustments. And, of course,
Both will do both. For this example, we'll save it all in a text file. Then, name your text file
and decide where to save it on your computer. Now, decide what to keep a record of. Choose
Detailed to get as much information as possible. Now, apply any adjustments you like to your image.
When you open the text file Photoshop created, you will see all the adjustments you made, including
the settings you used. This feature is helpful if you decide to keep a record of your edits
for a client, for legal purposes, or to simply remind you of the changes you applied to a photo.
Groups by default are used for organizational purposes, which is why the default blending mode
is Pass Through. It allows all adjustment layers inside of the group to pass through and affect
all layers below. But with Blending Modes, you can make groups into a powerful compositing tool. By
changing the Blending Mode of a group to Normal, Photoshop will treat the group as a single flat
layer. This will allow you to create adjustment layers that only affect the contents inside of the
group and nothing outside of it. You don't have to worry about creating Layer Mask, Clipping Mask,
or anything else, giving you greater flexibility. I use this technique on every movie and TV poster
I work on, including my last three most recent projects with the Discovery channel.
And before we get to the last genius feature, I'd like to apologize to you for not posting
during the last few months. I've been quite busy with my wedding! I got married on September 23rd,
which kept me quite busy as you can imagine. But I'm back creating tutorials,
and a lot more is coming here at the Photoshop Trianing Channel!
The image processing machine found under File, Scripts, and Image Processor is a fabulous
feature that allows you to convert multiple images into a different file type. To do so,
choose the folder containing the images you want to convert. I have a folder with
several PSDs I want to convert to JPEGs. Then, select the location to save the
process images and the destination file format. You can choose between JPEG, PSD,
or TIFF. I'll choose JPEG. The default settings work great. But you also have the option to
resize or run an action on each image. Then click Run, and Photoshop will automatically
open all PSD images and save them as JPEG files. Now, you can go to the folder where
you save the images and look for the JPEG folder containing all your new JPEG images.