I decided to write this post, about how
I save time on Photoshop.
- Shortcut Keys
Ok, this one is inevitable! Shortcut keys will drastically save time... Photoshop has many submenus and sometimes even if we know well the layout of photoshop we can loose 3 to 5 seconds to apply some action! So this combinations of keys are a life saver.
So here it is a list of my most common used keys:
-
CTRL+Shift+N (this will create a New Layer)
-
CTRL+J (This duplicates the selected layer)
-
CTRL+Shift+U (This Desaturates your selected layer)
-
CTRL+U (This opens the Hue/Saturation menu; this is crucial to play with color and saturation)
-
CTRL+B (This opens the Color Balance menu, another great way of playing with colors)
-
Ctrl + F (This repeat the last action you made, for an example, if you used the BLUR filter and you think it wasnt enough, just keep pressing Ctrl+F untill you get happy)
-
CTRL+SHIFT+I (This is very handy! This basicly inverts the selection you've made; imagine that you want to select the all sky except for the moon...an easy way to do that is to draw a selection around the moon and then hit CTRL+Shift+I to invert that selection! That will select everything else except the moon
)
- "
Q" ("Q" for QUICK... as Quick Mask!)
- "
T" (Everytime you want to Tipe something)
- "
E" ("E" for Eraser)
- "
P" ("P" for Pen Tool)
- The most well know commands in the world,
Ctrl+Alt+Z to Undo severall times and
Ctrl+Shift+Z to Redo several times!
And finally
Ctrl+S to save!
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You can see more of this shortcut keys just passign through menus and use them a lot to get stuck with them in your hand... You'll see that in no time you won´t be able to work without them
You can even personalize your own shortcut keys; just go to "Edit - Keyboard Shortcuts" and change the shortcuts to whatever you like!
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- Slow Computer...Slow Photoshop? Not quite...
You think: "Damn...it sucks having a slow computer! I have to wait forever everytime i do a little thing in it!! (Insert "ROAR" noise here)"
But guess what... you can improve your Photoshop perfomance with a few basic adjustments!
- as Windows use virtual memory, photoshop uses it own virtual memory, but in this case they are called
scratch disks. Photoshop uses scratch disks to give you extra performance. For the best performance, you should set the scratch disk to a
Fast Read/Write hard disk that has plenty of unused space . Photoshop requires at least 650 MB of free disk space, ofcourse more is recommended!
How to set up the scratch disks? Just go to "
Edit - Preferences - Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks" and in the second menu (Scratch Disks) choose your main drive in the first blank space and if you have one second drive you can set up as the second scratch disk.
- Adjuste the
Image Cache. Photoshop uses image caching to redraw high-resolution images faster. With image caching, Photoshop uses low-resolution versions of an image to quickly update the image on-screen as you work. To enable the Image Cache option, specify the number from1 to 8 of low-resolution versions you want Photoshop to store. The more versions of an image you have, the slower it opens image files. Setting the Image Cache option to 1 disables image caching; only the current screen image is cached. Setting the Image Cache higher than 4 improves the performance when working on larger images by redrawing them faster.
To adjust the Image Cache setting just go to "
Edit - Preferences - Memory & Image Cache", enter a value from 1 to 8 in the Cache Levels text box.
Now the most important one!
- Reduce the number of History states! In Photoshop, each history state that includes an action that affects the entire image (any filter for an example), creates a full copy of your image at its original size. When you reduce the number of history states available, you potentially reduce the number of copies of your image using scratch space. That means that you're going to improve the performance of photoshop but one of the problems for this is that you can´t make as many "Undos" as before...
This is the first part of tips i have for you... more will follow! If you have more tips, feel free to share!
Improve your perfomance on Photoshop (time saving tips and more)...
Linear Mode
