These tips describe some things you can set up in Pho-
toshop and some things that you can improve on your
Learn the Tool shortcuts. They are one-letter only, and there-
fore easier to remember than Menu shortcuts. Start by intro-
ducing the ones that you use the most. B for Brush Tool is a
no-brainer, but not all of them are quite as intuitive. Youll find
their shortcuts by putting the curser over the actual tool and
leaving it still for a couple of seconds.
Instead of using the Navigator, master a more intuitive
navigation, and youll find that your work becomes more fluid,
particularly on large files. Zoom by holding down the Com-
mand-key and tapping the plus+ or minus- keys to go up or
down in suitably big increments. Use Command+Alt-0 (zero)
to go straight to 100% view. Toggle the F key to free up the
borders of the image window and work in full screen mode.
Use the [ ] brackets to make brushes bigger or smaller, using
the same softness as the brush you already have.
Learn the shortcuts for the menu commands you use most
often. They are listed next to the items name in the menu.
Introduce them one at a time, so you dont overwhelm your
memory! For oft-used commands that dont have a shortcut,
you can make one. Go to Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts and find the
menu item.
Customize the interface of Photoshop and Bridge, setting it
up with the palettes you use all the time at the front, and the
ones you use less often in a nested palette, sitting behind the
most oft-used ones. Palettes you dont need can be closed al-
together. Save your interface, from Window>Workspace>Save
Workspace, calling it something youll recognize as your own.
You can go back to it and re-load the workspace if you mess
up your palettes later.
Learn how to use Actions, and how to write them. Make
Actions for those 3- or 5-step operations that you repeat of-
ten. Assign hotkeys to these and youll be flying. Batch process
some simple Actions. Not all Actions can be batched, because
many of them need your attention, and sometimes they wont
work because the right conditions are not there (e.g. for saving
into a folder). However you use Actions, they will save you
time, because Actions dont have to wait for screen redraw,
and therefore accelerate the computers processing.
gry garness 2007 www.grygarness.com All rights reserved. No unauthorized copying or reproduction of this tutorial or its content.
computer, It also suggests some ways of working that
you can consider trying. This isnt a how-to or step by
step tutorial, but offers some handy hints. In my 1-1
Photoshop training I have many more tips on how to get
your workflow and computer running smoother, but this
tutorial is a good start. Go to www.grygarness.com/photo-
shop/traininfo.htm for more info.
Make sure your computer has enough RAM. The golden
rule is 4-5 times the largest size images youll be working on. If
you often work on 8-bit 50 mb files and add a few layers and
masks, youll easily get a file of 3-400 mb. If you work with
16-bit files, this can double and easily triple. In Preferences, set
the memory to around 85%.
When Photoshop exhausts the available RAM (memory)
during a session, it looks to the Scratch Disk for virtual memo-
ry. When the efficiency indicator shows below 100% is means
Photoshop is using Scratch Disk. The ideal primary Scratch Disk
is a defragmented (non-removable) hard-drive that is not run-
ning the operating system, and has lots of free space. My tip
is: get enough RAM first of all (4 gb at least if your files tend
to hit a gigabyte in size) and dont over-fill your computer. If
you computer is expandable and can take a second hard-drive,
this is great. This is not the same as partitioning one hard-disk,
which has no positive effect on Photoshops performance.
Keep an eye on image size, especially when working with
layers. If you do colour corrections in 16-bit, the size of the
document is bound to grow very heavy with a few adjust-
ment layers and masks. If you need to do a lot of retouching,
consider flattening and converting to 8-bit when youre ab-
solutely sure the major adjustments are satisfactory. This not
only makes it smaller, but also much simpler, with less chance
of layer conflicts.
Photoshop gets tired after a heavy session! If things are
really grinding to a halt, save your work, quit Photoshop, and
it will be snappier when you start again. This is particularly
noticeable when working on gigabyte-plus file sizes.
In (General) Preferences turn off Export Clipboard. This will
stop you from getting the annoying the clipboard is too big
to export message when exiting Photoshop. Dont do this if
youre working with PICT files. Setting the Cache (Memory and
Image Cache) to a high setting will speed up screen redraws
when zooming in big files, but will slow down opening of files.
Only set it higher if you have a lot of RAM.
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