<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/adobe_photoshop" title="Adobe Photoshop" rel="homepage" href="http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family/">Photoshop is a heck of an amazing <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/computer_software" title="Computer software" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_software">software. You can do all kinds of things with images and go as far as your imagination can take you. Once you are <a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/introductory-photoshop-skills-for-the-beginning-photographer/">past the beginner level and understand what the various options are for and how they work, then you are ready for tips like the ones that are the topic of this 2 part article.

They will help you in getting things done quickly, save you a lot of headache and steps and overall inflate your Photoshop-fu! So here we go:

<span style="font-size: medium;">Change Brush Size On The Fly

<img src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/brushsize.png" border="0" alt="" width="232" height="284" align="bottom" />

If you are even the slightest bit serious about Photoshop or you have used the Brush tool a couple of times, this single tip is worth at least a dozen alone. While you are using the brush tool you do not have to go back to the options palette to change the brush size or softness. <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/bracket" title="Bracket" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket">Left bracket key ‘[&#8217; decreases the brush size and Right bracket key &#8217;]‘ increases the brush size. Similarly Shift + [ decrease <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/hard_matter" title="Hardness" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardness">hardness (makes the brush soft) and Shift + ] increases the hardness of the brush.

<span style="font-size: medium;">Create Guides Easily

<img src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/guides.png" border="0" alt="" width="274" height="193" align="bottom" />

Guides can help you align objects in your composition. You can quickly create guides using rulers that appear at the top and the side of the document window. Click on the ruler and drag to create a guide. Release the <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/mouse" title="Mouse (computing)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_%28computing%29">mouse button where you want to create the guide. Once created you can quickly show/hide guides using <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/control_key" title="Control key" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_key">Ctrl + ;

<span style="font-size: medium;">Don’t Cancel Just Reset

<img src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/cancelreset.png" border="0" alt="" width="288" height="192" align="bottom" />

Photoshop can be pretty tough to get and even harder to master. Moreover, the nature of work dictates that you must experiment and things don’t always go the way you anticipate while experimentation. So if you are inside curves, or hue saturation or perhaps levels and you make a series of adjustments that didn’t turn out the way you wanted, you would want to start over again.

But wait don’t hit cancel just yet. Instead hold down the <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/alt_key" title="Alt key" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt_key">Alt key and see how the cancel button changes to Reset. Now click reset and the adjustments you made will be undone while sparing you the round trip to open the same dialog again.

<span style="font-size: medium;">Scrub The Input Boxes

<img src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/scrubber.png" border="0" alt="" width="244" height="99" align="bottom" />

There are a lot of controls in Photoshop that let you enter a value using the keyboard. Font size, brush size, opacity and who knows how many others. Well a peculiar thing about these input boxes is that you can increase or decrease the value that’s in them by just scrubbing with the mouse <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/cursor" title="Cursor (computers)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursor_%28computers%29">pointer. As you move close to any such control the mouse pointer changes to something like the one shown above. Now just <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/drag-and-drop" title="Drag-and-drop" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag-and-drop">click and drag in the direction you want to change the value. Generally dragging towards the right side increases the value and towards left side decreases the value.

<span style="font-size: medium;">Adjust Opacity Quickly

The opacity controls can be manipulated even faster! Just hit a number from 0-9 and opacity will be adjusted in increments of 10. This means that 1 would set the opacity to 10%, 7 will set it to 70% and 0 will set it to 100%. If you are looking for a definite value say 57% you can quickly type 5 followed by 7 to set the opacity to 57%. The trick works with layer opacity as well as for any tool that has an opacity setting.

<span style="font-size: medium;">Change Intensity Of Filters Without Dialog Boxes

Say you just applied the Unsharpen Mask filter to sharpen your photo. If you find you went a bit too far you can take back some of it by using Shift + Ctrl + F. If you would like to intensify the effect further you can use Ctrl + F to do so. Remember these would work just after you have applied the filter. If you performed other operations after applying the filter, these might not work as expected.

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