Digital Imaging / Photoshop® Tips

Add your tips to this page! Just click to e-mail them.

Click logo to visit site:

Take me back to the Articles Page.

Download this file as an MS Word file (See, no instructions! This is the Downloaded file.)

Apple users click to download rich text

Scanning Slides
Over-sampling to reduce electronic noise 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x or 16x. If you are scanning a slide with a significant amount of dark areas, when the scanning sensor passes over these areas, (because the signals received are so weak compared to a brighter area) electronic noise becomes more of a factor. If your slide has modest amounts of dark areas you can get away with scanning at 1x. Examine the dark areas of this 1x scan. If there are a lot of white specks in the dark areas, just rescan at 8x or 16x to average the noise out of the scan. By using an average value, electronic noise is greatly reduced. If you follow this practice, you can save a great deal of time because scanning at 1x is much faster than the other settings.

Sharpening your images. Photoshop’s FilteràSharpenàUnsharp Mask it the tool which gives you the most control over your sharpening. Based on testing I’ve performed, images appear sharper if the sharpening is done after you have resized your image for printing. The unsharp mask process does not really increase the sharpness of your image, it just fools the viewer’s eyes by increasing contrast along edges.. It does this by inserting light colored pixels along dark edges and dark pixels along light edges. In the Unsharp Mask dialog box are three values which control different aspects of the sharpening process.

Ø The first value is express as a percentage but what this value really controls is the brightness of the inserted “contrast” pixels.

Ø The next value is radius. This controls the distance from the edge that “contrast” pixels will be inserted

Ø The last value is Threshold. If the difference in brightness (color value) between an edge and it’s background is not more than the amount you specify in the threshold value, then that edge won’t be sharpened

Where you gain more control with Unsharp mask is that you can preview the effects of the sharpening before you actually run the filter. In the dialog box there is a preview window. If you click and hold the mouse button down when your cursor is inside the preview window you can see the “before” version of your image. When you release the button you see the effect after sharpening. You can also move your cursor over different areas in your image and if you click on any given area, that area will be moved into the preview window.

Layer Visibility
If you’d like to turn off the visibility of a bunch a layers at once in Photoshop just position the cursor in the eyeball section of the layers palette and click and drag the cursor vertically.

Go to the Digital Printing presentation notes

To add a faded border to your image or print do the following:
1. Select the marquee tool and in the option bar set the feathering option to 10
2. Select the most of the image leaving about a half inch outside your selection at the edge of the frame
3. Press Ctrl-Shift-I to select the inverse (outside the marquee selection)
4. Choose Filter->Blur->Gaussian, enter 30 and click ok
5. click on the new layer Icon in the layers palette
6. Press D to reset the foreground and background colors to Black and White
7. Press Ctrl-Backspace to fill the new layer with white
8. Lastly go to the layers palette and drag the white filled layer to the bottom of your layer stack.

Controlling Filter effects - Immediately after you apply a filter you can use the Edit->Fade command to modify the opacity as well as the blend mode associated with the last performed filter effect. This adds an unparallel degree of control over filter and image interaction.

Retaining steps in the History Palette - As you know when you go back to a certain state in the History Palette all subsequent steps beyond your chosen state are grayed out to signify that they will be lost if you perform any operation (at that point). If you'd like to change this you can click on the right facing triangle in the History Palette to bring up the pop up / palette menu, then choose "Non-linear History". This will allow you to go back in time and just change one step without losing the subsequent steps.

Random Tips

1. Do you wish the crop tool in Photoshop would allow more visibility of and beneath the cropping shield? Just select the crop tool and drag out a cropping area, but don't press Enter.   Look up in the option bar (which has now changed from its normal state). If you click on the black square, the color picker box comes up and you can choose a more visible color than black, say light green or cyan. While you're up there in the Option Bar, click on the Opacity setting and drag it down to 50%. Now you can see beneath the cropping shield and there is no mistake about where the cropping shield begins and ends.
2. Have you ever made some image adjustments then done some extensive painting, erasing or cloning then wished you could go back in the history palette and start over just before the extensive brush work took place? I've been disappointed many times only to find that all 20 history states contain tool strokes. All I could do was click on the opening state of the image and start over. There is a very easy way around this limitation. Just before you begin any extensive tool work, click on the little camera icon at the bottom of the history palette. This will produce a snapshot of the current state of your image without having to save the composite to disc. You can also increase the default number of history states from 20 up to 100 by pressing Ctrl-K then putting in a number and clicking OK. This is very memory intensive so choosing 100 may not always be the right choice to make. Choosing too high a number could result in an overal performance slow down when Photoshop struggles to hold all the history states in RAM and finally ends up writing information to a scratch disc on your hard drive (which is much slower to write out and read in than from RAM).
3. Want to add a black or colorful border to your image? Using the color picker (double click on the foreground color to bring up the color picker dialog box), choose your color and click OK. Now press the X key to exchange the foreground color which you just picked with the background color. Next, choose Image-->Canvas Size and add a 1/4 inch to the height and width (remember to check the relative box in PS 7) and click OK. Your image will now have a border in the color you chose.

Tip deJour

1. When I first started learning Photoshop I was very intimidated by the complex interface. I wish I had been given (or paid more attention to) a guide to the more important parts of interface (especially the Layers Palette). To that end I have created a downloadable annotated image file which you can print on standard paper. It describes many important terms like Pop up or Palette menu, Command Menu, Option bar, Palette, Icon, Thumbnail, Layer mask, Adjustment layer, and Tools palette. Take 5 minutes and find these and a several other terms in the download file. I've found that once you remove the mystery associated with the preceding terms it will make your learning much easier later on. To Download the file click here--> Download Now (this might take a minute)
2. Below are a number of informative links to Photoshop tutorials or other aspects of digital imaging. Click on the descriptions below to visit these sites:

o Tutorial - http://www.adobe.com/products/tips/photoshop.html

o Tutorial - http://www.designsbymark.com/index.html

o Tutorial - http://www.planetphotoshop.com/alback.html

o Tutorial - http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/

o Tutorial - http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tut_misc.htm

o Tutorial - http://www.cbtcafe.com/photoshop/index.htm

o Tips & Tutorials - http://www.arraich.com/intro.htm

o Tutorial - http://www.digital-foundry.com/index_photoshop.html

o Color management - http://www.profilecity.com/

o Fonts - http://www.1001freefonts.com/ofonts.htm

o Photoshop Tips - http://showcase.netins.net/web/wolf359/linkotip.htm

o Keyboard Shortcuts - http://www.thunderlizard.com/handouts/ps_table.html

o Also see our site's Links page

Below is a link to an excellent article which compares images made with digital cameras to images made by scanning 4x5, 6x7 and 35mm slides. This link was borrowed from Mark & Lisa Graf's site. Hope you enjoy it.

http://www.users.qwest.net/~rnclark/scandetail.htm

In Photoshop to hide all the layers but one, Alt-click on the eyeball (down in the layers palette) of the layer you want to remain visible. To make all the other layers visible simply Alt-Click on the eyeball again.

Free Transform Keyboard controls - Have you ever been frustrated by Adobe Photoshop's title of this menu choice? What do they mean Free? The #!$@ box won't let me do anything but rotate or change the size. The trick to tweaking the transform bounding box are the keyboard "modifiers" which need to be pressed in conjunction with mouse drags. Here they are:

1. Shift = resize maintaining proportion.
2. Alt = resize from the center.
3. Click on a point in the Reference Point Location Icon in the Options Bar to set the place from which the transformation will occur.
4. Ctrl-Click on a corner -Drag allows you to distort the shape
5. Ctrl-Click on a side - allows you to distort but keeps the opposite side frozen allowing you to skew the shape
6. Ctrl-Alt-Click a corner - Drag = pin the adjacent two corners and allows you to stretch or move the other corners.
7. Ctrl-Alt-Click a side - Drag = revolve the shape by pinning the opposing side.
8. Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Click-Drag = change the perspective.

More Photoshop tips

1. If you want to see a layer mask as an overlay (so you can more easily edit it), click on the mask to make it active (in the layers palette) then press the "\" key. (NOT THE "/" key, press the key with the | over it [just above the enter or return key]). To temporarily deactivate the mask, Shift-Click on the mask icon in the layers palette. Shift-Click again to toggle back to the active mask state. If you want to view only the mask Alt click on the layer mask thumbnail in the layers palette. To return to viewing the image click on the eye ball in the layer's palette for the active layer.
2. Did you know that when you are loading a saved selection you can add, subtract or intersect with an existing selection? These options are in the Load Selection dialog box
3. Have you ever used the background eraser tool for making a selection. It can be very handy for selecting foreground images where there is a significant difference in the color or brightness between the foreground and background. So if you have leaves on a tree and the sky in the background is light blue or white you can easily extract the foreground by:
• Make a duplicate copy of your image by dragging the background layer thumbnail down to the new layer icon in the layers palette (the icon to the left of the little garbage can).
• Click on the new layer if it is not already active
• Pick the background eraser tool from the tools palette (it's under the regular eraser tool).
• Make the following setting changes, tolerance-30, un-check the contiguous box, set the sampling mode to continuos
• Oh, I forgot to tell you to click on the color sample tool in the tool palette and select the 3x3 sample (as opposed to either point or 5x5 sampling). This sampling controls how the background eraser tool will sample the background.
• While you have the sampling tool selected, click on a color which is representative of the foreground.
• Returning to the background eraser tool, click the box which says "Protect Foreground Color".
• Now you're all set to use the tool. Simply increase the size of the tool with the ] key and begin clicking and dragging the background eraser tool in the background area. The colors sampled under the crosshairs at the center of this tool will be erased, out to the perimeter of the tool. So long as there is a distinct difference in terms of color and brightness between the foreground and background, you should end up with a nice selection of the foreground once the entire background is erased.

Controlling Filter effects - In Photoshop if you want to see the before and after effects of a filter without using the history palette, in the filter dialog box with the preview image, click on the image. When the mouse button is down the filter is off. When the button is up the filter is applied.

Removing Red Eye with Photoshop
I got this one from an article in Popular Photography. Open the image, zoom in with the zoom tool or by pressing Ctrl+. Press B to select the Brush Tool. Select a brush and press the right [ key to make it really small (I find that a 1 pixel diameter gives me the best control. Set the blend mode of the brush to Saturate (which is really de-saturate). Now just paint over the red pixels in the iris of your subject. It kinda magical. There were a few more steps in their article but I found that this was all I needed to correct the red eyes I've encountered so far. They also suggested that you could make green eyes greener, blue eyes bluer etc. by picking a color and painting over your subject's iris.

Would you like to add a drop shadow to an image? (Why?) 'cuz they're pretty that way!

Open the image in Photoshop. Press Ctrl-A to select all. Choose Select>Save Selection, type in "picture" and click ok. Now pick the eyedropper tool and click on the white color in the color picker pallet to set your background color to white. Now choose Image-Canvas Size and in the dialog box, add a half inch or so to each side then click ok. Double click on the background image icon in the layers palette and convert it to an editable layer (make it layer zero). Next, choose Select->Load Selection, find the "picture" selection and click ok. With the selection around your original picture press Ctrl-J to copy the selection to it's own new layer. In the layers palette, click on the little f inside a circle icon at the bottom left and check"Drop Shadow". Fool around with the settings until you're happy (set opacity so that it is around 30 the shadow should just be visible) then click ok. Ta da!. You're done. (OK you could flatten the image and save it, choose Layer->Flatten.)

Would you like to emphasize a foreground element of an image? Here are a few ideas.

1. Idea 1 Desaturate the background, Duplicate the image by dragging the background layer to the new layer's Icon in the Layer's palette (the icon left of the trash can). Using the selection tools of your choice select the foreground element e.g. a flower against a background of pebbles. Press Ctrl-Shift-I to select the inverse of the foreground element. Use the Edit-->Clear command to erase the background. Click on the original background layer. If it is not editable double click on it to change it to layer 0 (this makes it editable). Now click on the Adjustment Layer icon in the Layer's palette (the half dark half light circle one). Select Hue and Saturation. In the dialog box pull the Saturation slider to the left until you're happy with the effect.
2. Idea 2 Blur the background, same steps as above up until you get to the italics. Now choose Filter-->Blur-->Gaussian. In the dialog box move the pixel slider and watch the effect on your background. Once you're happy click Ok.
3. Idea 3 Tint the background, same steps as Idea 1 including the italics. Now click on the new layer icon. Make sure this layer is between the layer with the foreground element and the desaturated background by dragging the new layer icon in the layers palette to the correct position above the background layer. Now click on the color picker palette and pick a color you like. Press Alt-Backspace to fill the new layer with the color you selected. Click on the opacity slider in the layers palette for this color layer and adjust it down to a setting you like. This will tint the background layer with the color you chose and leave the foreground layer alone.

Making Infrared and Black and White images from your color slides. Take me there

More Photoshop Goodies:

1. Photoshop can do the math for you when straightening an image. Select the measure tool, draw a horizontal or vertical line as it should appear in the image. Then Image-->Rotate-->Arbitrary, Photoshop has already calculated the amount of rotation to straighten your image so click on OK.
2. Remember when Keith Matz ran his program on Polaroid emulsion removal and mounting it on card stock? There is a very nicely explained tutorial on how you can simulate this in Photoshop with any of your existing images. The link is: http://www.evening.demon.co.uk/tutorials/emulsion.pdf. Have fun!
3. If you are printing your work you need about 240 dpi (dots per inch) for adequate printing resolution. If you are printing an 8 x 10, you will need an image size of 1,920 pixels by 2,400 pixels. This works out to a file size of about 13.2 megs (1,920 x 2,400 x 3 [colors red, green & blue] divided by 1,048,576 [bytes to megabytes conversion factor 2^20]). To get a file this size from a digital camera without having to have software "invent" pixels you would need a 4.4 megapixel camera (13.2 megs divided by 3 colors).
• What scanning resolution does your scanner need to produce a print? If you are going to scan a slide to produce an 8x10 your scanner would need to scan at 2,032 ppi (pixels per inch). This is determined by taking the 1,920 pixels from above, dividing that by the width of a 35mm slide which is 24mm and multiplying times the millimeters to inches conversion factor of 25.4.
• How big of a print can you make from a scanned slide if you intend to print at 240 dpi and your scanner can scan at 4000 ppi and you don't want any interpolation between or invention of pixels? The formula is: scanner ppi x (scanning distance in mm / 25.4) / printer output dpi. So in the example above 4000 x (24 / 25.4) / 240 = 15.75 inches. The long side would be 4000 x (35 / 25.4) / 240 = 22.97 inches. So you could print about 15.75" x 22.97". Actual sizes would be a little smaller due to cropping at the time of scanning.
• How much data is in a 4000 ppi scan of a 35mm slide? The answer is (35mm x 4000 / 25.4)x(24mm x 4000 / 25.4) x 3 colors / 1,048,576 = 59.6 megabytes. Usually with cropping, the file sizes end up at 51 to 53 megs.
• What size digital camera would you need in megapixels to equal the same amount of raw data you can get from a scanned 35mm slide? You can determine this as follows:
• (effective mm scanning width x scanner ppi / 25.4) x (effective mm scanning height x scanner ppi / 25.4) / 1,048,576,
• this can be shortened to: width x height x scanner ppi squared / 676,499,292. So for example, if you have a 4000 ppi scanner, the equivalent sized digital camera would have to be 17.2 megapixels (22 x 33 x 1,600,000 / 676,499,292)
4. Want to know more keyboard short cuts than you can possibly get your mind around? Check out Deke's tips at the following site: http://www.thunderlizard.com/handouts/ps_table.html
5. Did you know that you can reduce the amount of electronic noise that your scanner produces by resampling the image several times? If you perform a 4 times resampling, the same pixel value will be read by your scanner 4 times then the average of all of the readings is used to determine the final pixel value. While I have not been able to detect much of a difference between 4x and 16x sampling, there is a noticeable reduction of noise between 4x and 1x. This resampling allows you to get the same effect (only much easier) as tip number four from the 9/03/02 listing below.
6. Fast Blending Modes - If you would like to quickly cycle through the blending modes for a given layer (assuming you have at least 2 layers in your image), all you do is make the layer active (click on the layer thumbnail icon in the layers palette) then simply press SHIFT - or SHIFT + to scroll up or down the blend modes. As the blend mode changes you will see the effects on your image.
7. If you would like graphically adjust the size of your text font you can scroll thru the different font sizes by highlighting your text (with the text tool selected),then press Ctrl - Shift - > or Ctrl - Shift - <.(don't type the - signs)
8. Adjusting multiple digital camera images quickly:
9. If you have a number of images from a digital camera which were shot in the same light you can very quickly make curve or any other adjustments to all of them by:
   a. Opening the first image and make your adjustments using adjustment layers.
   b. Open your other image(s)
   c. Click and drag on an adjustment layer from your first image. Drag and drop the layer onto your newly open image and all the adjustments from the first image will be implemented in your other image.
   d. Repeat step c for all the rest of your images.
10. Stubborn Photoshop - I ran into yet another quirk where Photoshop would not let me edit and image. I had applied a layer style to a vector shape. Somehow Photoshop (or I unknowingly) created a layer mask to go with the style layer. When I tried to paint on the image I was greeted with "Image is not directly editable". It took me about 20 minutes to figure out why I couldn't edit the image. I finally made a new layer, re-applied the style and deleted the old troublesome layer.

Another Batch of Photoshop Tips:

1. Painting with Style - Did you know that you can paint using a Style from the styles box? After you select the paint brush tool, you just click on a style you like and paint away. You can create some nifty freeform text.
2. Painting in straight lines - You can create straight lines with your brush. Just click on an area with your brush then move the brush to another area. Now Shift-Click and Photoshop will draw a straight line connecting the two points.
3. There are many keyboard shortcuts for getting things done quickly in Photoshop. Here are a few: B = Brush tool, V = Move, P = Pen, R = Blur, Z = Zoom, W = Magic Wand, T = Text, I = eye dropper, H = Hand, L = Lasso, M = Marquee, G = Gradient Tool, S=Stamp or Clone Tool, Y=HistorY Brush. If you hold down the SHIFT key while pressing the letters above, you will get Photoshop to scroll through the tools under tools palette icon. For example, SHIFT-M = Rectangle Marquee tool, SHIFT-M again = Elliptical Marquee tool.
4. Improve your digital camera images - You can average out the noise from your digital capture camera by taking 4 or more images of the same subject from the same position with the same lighting. Open all the images inside Photoshop then press V (to select the Move Tool), hold the SHIFT key and drag images 1, 2 & 3 onto image 4. Click on each layer and reduce opacity to 1 divided by the number of images, in this case 25%.
5. More about adjustment layers - Did you know that you can restrict the effect of your adjustment layers by painting with black in the layer mask which is created by Photoshop at the same time the Adjustment layer is created. Just double-click on the layer mask thumbnail to the right of your adjustment layer in the layers palette, Click OK in the pop up dialog box and start painting. You will see your masked areas both on the screen and on the mask pane to the right of the Adjustment Layer. To better view the layer mask press the "\" key (the one above the enter/return key)
6. Fast Brush size changes- You can quickly increase or decrease the size of your brush by pressing the ] key and the [ key respectively.
7. For fast zooming, press Ctrl +. Press Ctrl - to zoom out.

Yet Another:

1. Font Selection Magic - Do you find it annoying that you can't see what the font looks like before you have to select it, commit it, then do it all over again if you don't like the font? Adobe seems to hide the shortcuts. Anyway if you carefully follow these steps you can see the font by just scrolling down the list:
• Select the text tool, type your text, click on the check icon in the option bar (towards the right) or press Ctrl-Enter or if you have a numeric keypad press Enter on that keypad,
• Using the mouse, click and drag across the text to select it (text should be highlighted),
• Press Ctrl-H to hide the highlight so you can see the text better,
• Click [ONLY CLICK ONCE] inside the font box in the option bar,
• Now use the up arrow and down arrow keys to select fonts and you can see what they look like on the screen. Cool huh?
2. Image Friendly Adjustments - If you are color correcting your images or making saturation or levels adjustments, if you perform these operations on your image, some of the original image data will be lost. Moreover, if you find that more adjustments are necessary you can't start over unless you go back through the history palette. Also, you won't have a record of the changes you made to your image. Creating adjustment layers is the best way around these limitations. Just go to Layers-->New Adjustment Layer and select the type of adjustment you want to make. The new layer(s) will save all the settings for easy subsequent adjustments and your original image data will not be destroyed.
3. Selections - For anyone starting out new in Photoshop, selections are the name of the game (if you are trying to work with individual image elements). There are many, many selection tips and tools. The most valuable tips which I've learned are:
• You can add to any selection by pressing and holding the SHIFT key while making another selection.
• You can subtract from any selection by holding down the ALT key and making another selection.
• If you forget to press down the SHIFT or ALT keys and the marching ants disappear, your work is not lost. Just click on the History Palette (if it's not already visible, click on it and pull the right hand slider all the way down) Now click on the step just before the last step and you will be back to where you were before you lost the selection. Ctrl-Z (undo) is probably the faster way to do this.
• When using the tips above, you can quickly zoom in on your selection edge by pressing Ctrl +. To zoom out press Ctrl -.
• You can also hold the space bar down to make the hand symbol appear then you can drag the image around while you work on the selection.
• The Lasso, marquee and magic (tragic) wand selection tools are kinda limited. For better selections try using the Quickmask mode. Just press the Q key (your screen may change colors). Then you can use paintbrush and other tools to refine your selection. Basically what ever you paint on, will not be selected when you return to the regular image editing view. If you would prefer to select the things you paint over, when you get back to the regular (Standard) mode just use the Select-->Inverse command to reverse the selection. Once you're done painting / selecting in the Quickmask Mode press the Q key again and you're back to the Standard Mode and your selection has those nice marching ants around it .

The Tips Just Keep on Coming!

1. Screen Tips -
• Tired of having to adjust the size of your image window to get it big enough to fill the screen? Try Ctrl-Zero to make it instantly fit.
• Want to see the size of your image as it will appear if you print it (100%)? Try Ctrl-Alt-Zero
• Did you know that images appear on the web at 72 dpi? So if you save an image at 144 dpi and load it onto the Web what will happen? Your picture will become twice as large and it will take 4 times longer to load than the same image at 72 dpi.
2. Memory - Did you know that when working with multiple layers and many history states (levels of undo) your computer's RAM can be used up. When this happens Photoshop creates and uses a special file called a scratch disc to hold the overflow information. This can slow down performance while using Photoshop. There are a variety of solutions. You can merge some of the layers, reduce the number of steps in history or my favorite, go buy more memory
3. Copyright Symbol - To create a © symbol in Photoshop, use the text tool and while holding the Alt key, type 0169 [you must use the numeric key pad numbers for this to work], then release the Alt key.
4. Need more Space? - To resize your canvas quickly (and graphically) click on the Crop Tool, outline your image by dragging, then after you release the mouse button, click on and pull the sides of the Crop bounding box so that each side is pulled outside of your image. Press enter and whalla! your image will be on larger canvas. You can also use the Image-->Canvas command but this is a bit slower.
5. Want to start a new image? Press Ctrl-N. Pretty quick huh?
6. Move text fast - After you type text using the text tool, you can move it without selecting the move tool, just move the cursor away from the type and you will see the cursor change to the move tool. Now click and drag your type as you please.
7. Stubborn Tools - Have you ever gotten an annoying or confusing message or no message at all, but the tool you have selected won't work? There could be a number of causes. For example:
• Your tool may not work with a 16 bit image. Solution, under Image-->Mode select 8 bits per Channel to convert to 8 bits.
• Probably the most common problem is that you are trying to edit the background layer. This layer is automatically locked by Photoshop but it is very easy to get around this. Simply double click on the background layer in the layers palette. When the dialog box comes up you can enter a name or just click ok and the background layer is converted to a regular unlocked editable layer.
• Your selection could still be active and you are trying to use a tool outside of the selection. Solution - Press Ctrl-D to deselect, then try your tool again.
• You are trying to do something on one layer but your active layer is a different layer. To get around this go to the layers palette and click on the layer that you would like to work on.
• You are trying to do something after using the Text tool or the Free Transform command but nothing seems to work. Solution - Press Ctrl-Enter or click on the check mark in the options bar over towards the right side of the screen or press the Enter key located on your numeric keypad. This tells Photoshop that you are done with the Text tool or the Free Transform command.
• You are trying to perform bitmapped procedures on a vector shape or text layer. A bit mapped image is one that describes one or more attributes for every pixel within an image. For example RGB images are composed of 3 color values (Red, Green & Blue). The values range from 0 to 255 in the 8 bit mode. Unlike a bitmapped image, a vector image is a mathematical description of a shape. Consequently, areas outside the shape are not accounted for. This has a number of implications such as the amount of memory needed to render a bitmapped image is much greater than a vector image because bitmaps have to describe every last pixel. The vector shape image only describes the shape outline and possibly the fill content. One of the implications is that you can't use painting tools (bitmapped) on a vector image (shape or text). This can be very frustrating because if seems like a $600 program should just figure out what you want it to do and provide a means to get there. Unfortunately this is not the case. You will have to remember that text and shapes can only be operated on with text tools for text and the pen and direct selection tools in the case of shape layers. Most of the other tools function in bitmapped images
• You are trying to edit a gif image but you can't get the color to change. The reason for this is the image is in the Indexed Color mode which, in order to reduce file size, this mode restricts the number of colors allowed to be used in the image. To freely add colors choose Image-->Mode-->RGB. When you're done editing in the RGB mode you can change it back to the indexed mode by choosing Image-->Mode-->Indexed Color

Take me Back
...

| Home | New Members | Gallery | WOCC Calendar | Articles | Links | Reading | Videos | Categories |
| Classifications | Assignments | GDCCC Print Rules | Standings | For Sale | Contact | By Laws |