Top 3 Most Used Tools in Photoshop

Top 3 Most Used Tools in Photoshop

UX Design

Most used tools in Photoshop

In this article, I will show how to use the Top 3 most used tools in Photoshop (Magic Wand Tool, Move Tool, and the Crop Tool) and once mastered you’ll never be without them.

1. Magic Wand:

The Magic Wand Tool (W) selects areas of similar color You can change the tolerance (how close the color values should be to the sampled color in order to be selected) of a Magic Wand selection, and choose whether you want the selection to be contiguous (pixels that are touching) or not (in which case, matching colors across the entire document will be selected)

Tips and Shortcuts for the Magic Wand:

  • Hold the Shift key to add another selection to the first.
  • Hold the Alt key (Option key on a Mac) to subtract your new selection from the first.
  • Hold Shift-Alt (Shift-Option) to select the intersection of your first and second selections.
  • Use the arrow keys to move the selection pixel by pixel  If you feel that this doesn’t move your selection quickly enough, hold down Shift and use the arrow keys to move the selection ten pixels at a time.
  • Press Ctrl-J (Command-J on a Mac) to copy the selection into its own layer.
  • To cut the selection into its own layer, press Shift-Ctrl-J (Shift-Command-J)
  • If this seems familiar to you, it’s because I mentioned earlier how to copy a layer using the same keyboard shortcut  Now that you know that not selecting anything sometimes means that everything is selected, it makes sense that simply by selecting a layer in the Layers palette, you can copy the entire layer by pressing Ctrl-J (Command-J)
  • To deselect a selected area, click outside of it with one of the Marquee tools, or press Ctrl-D (Command-D on a Mac)
  • To reactivate your last selection, press Shift-Ctrl-D (Shift-Command-D)

2. The Move Tool:

The Move Tool (V) moves a selected area or an entire layer. You can invoke the Move Tool temporarily when using most other tools by holding down the Ctrl key (Command key on a Mac)

Tips and Shortcuts for the Move Tool:

  • For most tools, holding Ctrl-Alt (Command-Option on a Mac) and dragging a selected area will temporarily invoke the Move Tool, allowing you to move and duplicate the selected layer quickly
  • You can also duplicate a layer by holding down the Alt key (Option key on a Mac) while using the Move Tool.

3. The Crop Tool:

The Crop Tool (C) is used to trim images Create a selection using the Crop Tool, then double-click the center of the selection or press Enter, to crop the image to the size of the selection To cancel without cropping, select another tool or press the Esc key

Tips and Shortcuts for the Crop Tool:

  • You can use the Crop Tool to resize your canvas  Expand your document window so that it’s larger than the image area, and create a crop selection that includes the image and extends onto the gray areas “outside” the image  Applying this crop will resize your canvas to include those extended boundaries, making your canvas larger.
Photoshop is Changing The World

Photoshop is Changing The World

UX Design

Adobe Photoshop

“To see is to believe” is what most people say. However, this old adage, like so many others, has been negated by technology. Today, with Adobe Photoshop, you can create any image you want and share it with other people. This way, Adobe Photoshop is changing the whole world’s perspective on reality.

For those who do not know, Adobe Photoshop is a program designed to let people edit various images on their computers. Its primary purpose is to let people perform touch-ups on pictures before printing them. Of course, each succeeding version of Adobe Photoshop included more and more tools which let people add effects and do various other things to their photographs. The Adobe Photoshop of today actually allows people to add sound and animation to their photographs for sharing on the internet.

Beyond image editing

In the past, people who took bad pictures were stuck with them. A lot of things can go wrong in a picture. There’s the usual red-eye, skewed angles, shaky focus, and others. Adobe Photoshop was the tool that made all of these things disappear. With Adobe Photoshop, people can take pictures like amateurs and still produce images like pros!

However, Adobe Photoshop today has gone beyond image editing. Today, the software is labeled as an image manipulation tool. This somehow gives people the impression that Adobe Photoshop actually gives them a greater degree of freedom than other image-editing programs available today. In fact, it actually does.

If the sight is the reality, then Adobe Photoshop can help you create any reality that you want. With Adobe Photoshop, you will be able to create images of other worlds. You will be able to capture the beauty of the universe inside a glass jar. Your creativity will be unleashed. That’s how much Adobe Photoshop can change your life.

Photoshopping something

In the world today, one can easily observe the impact that Adobe Photoshop has wrought on culture. Just like Google, Adobe Photoshop is now being used by people as a verb. When a person is said to be photoshopping something, it is always assumed that the person is editing an image of some sort, whether he or she is actually using Adobe Photoshop or not.

Adobe Photoshop has also led to a whole new level of art and animation. Did you know that tablets were developed specifically with Adobe Photoshop in mind? Artists of today have gone beyond using paints and a canvas. Today’s painters make use of tablet sensors and Adobe Photoshop to produce their masterpieces. With the technology of Adobe Photoshop, people are able to take the art of drawing, add a bit of computer technology, and come up with a whole new genre of animation.

In the past, images had to be saved as specific file types in order to be usable for Adobe Photoshop. However, because of the proliferation of digital cameras and camera phones today, Adobe Photoshop can actually import the photographs directly from the sources. This means that the gap between taking the picture and sharing it is reduced.

Adobe Photoshop might just be a tool for some people. However, you should know that tools, when used by enough people can change history. In this age where everything is defined by computers, Adobe Photoshop is just another tool which, in the right hands, can change the world!

Optimize Your Images for The Web

Digital Marketing, UX Design

Website Redesign

Even though more and more Internet users switch to broadband every year, a large portion of the web’s population is still running on good old dialup connections. It is therefore unwise to count them out of the equation when you’re designing your website, and a very major consideration we have to make for dialup users is the loading time of your website.

Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a very short time even on a dialup connection. The culprit of slow-loading sites is mainly large images on your website, and it is very important to strike a delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not to bog down the overall loading time of your site.