20 Photoshop Secrets Revealed…

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About Francesco Mugnai

I'm an Adobe Certified Expert in Photoshop CS4, i work as Teacher, Graphic Designer and Web Designer.

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50 Comments

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wow… some really good and helpful and tips (or secrets)
thanx a lot m8…. :)
crazyhunk June 14, 2008 at 9:23 pm
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thanx a lot m8â€¦. :)
ZaFaR June 15, 2008 at 8:04 am
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@ tip number 2 – it should be alt-click (on windows).
Stobasan June 15, 2008 at 2:29 pm
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@Stobasan: Yes, it’s Alt+Click. I corrected it. Thanks!
Francesco June 15, 2008 at 5:09 pm
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Thanks, very nice, learned a few new tricks :)
Also, another great one could be that when you have selected the “Move Tool”, you can simply hold down ALT + right clicking on any layer to highlight/go to it, in the layers panel. Very useful in large documents.
David June 16, 2008 at 10:33 pm
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Meh, it’s all basic stuff that’s in the manual. I use most of these daily. I certainly wouldn’t call them “secrets”.
Kevio June 17, 2008 at 5:29 am
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Very useful. Thanks.
Sachin Bhavsar June 17, 2008 at 8:29 am
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secrets??? useful for beginners propably, but def not for pros. cheers anyway.
niko June 17, 2008 at 10:47 am
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@niko, @Kevio: Well, i can agree with you but i teach Graphic Design in a renowned Italian institute of Art and Design and i can guarantee that these tips are not so common.
In any case if you are advanced users you’ll be happy to find at least one or two tricks, if you are beginners you’ll learn a lot (as a consequence the title was “secrets”).
BTW i’m working on a new post with other Photoshop’s tricks.
If you want please share here some tips…and i’ll update the post :)
Cheers,
F.
Francesco June 17, 2008 at 11:44 am
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iÂ´m looking foward. your pageÂ´s bookmarked. ;)
niko June 17, 2008 at 3:05 pm
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good tricks for regular photoshop users to know
website design June 17, 2008 at 10:25 pm
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Ctrl+H to show and hide any selection… i know all these shortcuts…but your post is very usefull for beginners
Thanx!
rubao June 17, 2008 at 11:37 pm
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Nice!
TraffiK June 18, 2008 at 9:52 am
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not to sound like a jerk, but if you’re at a renowned art and design school, and someone doesn’t know you can double-click the gray area of photoshop to open a document, or press spacebar to change to the hand icon…well, i’ll leave that sentence open ended.
#17 shortcut you can see just from opening the View menu, anyone who spends more than 5 minutes a day in photoshop should know how to change zoom levels on the fly.
a tip: ctrl+spacebar changes you to the zoom tool temporarily, ctrl+alt+space to zoom out.
for #18, ctrl+h will hide selections and/or guides at any time, not just when using the text tool.
also, for #5, it’s alt+click, at least in my installation of photoshop cs2 on xp/win
and #20 just amazes me that there might be people in the world who don’t know you can draw a line this way and call themselves graphic designers, or even graphic design students. that’s like saying you didn’t know your windshield wipers had adjustable speeds, and you’re studying to be a mechanic.
appreciate the post’s thought but this really is a bunch of beginner-level stuff, most of which is common knowledge, far from ‘secrets’.
steve June 18, 2008 at 9:11 pm
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@Steve: Ciao Steve,
i teach every grade from beginners levels to advanced (to hundreds of students all over the world) but, honestly, i don’t want to talk about it, I find it amiss (my portfolio it’s public and you left a fake email address without a personal link so i’m not sure if you are a graphic designer or something else).
Photoshop is so “big” and if you teach it with care, you can can be easily dedicate two or three months to learn just the fundamentals (so few tricks above are not so granted).
Having said this, again, i can agree about the word “secrets”
but i’ve received tons of e-mail thanking me for this post.
Surely, no one will learn photoshop from 20 tips but…someone will find it useful.
In any case, i repeat, i’ll publish soon a new post so…if you want give it a quick look!
Ciao :)
F.
Francesco Mugnai June 18, 2008 at 10:21 pm
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Thanks for this. I’ve been using PS for years and there’s no way I can remember all of the shortcuts, so it was nice to come across them all in one place. Ignore the posts from know-it-all jerks…lots of people appreciate sites such as yours which are willing to share knowledge and expertise. :-) Thankyou.
Jackie June 20, 2008 at 1:28 am
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Please have a look at Photoshop How to guide

Michael Garmahis June 30, 2008 at 11:28 am
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Nothing new here!!!
Were now on cs3, can there be any “Basic” photoshop secrets left
norm July 1, 2008 at 2:45 pm
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Nothing new for you perhaps, Norm. There are always new people coming along. It surprises me at the number of people that are so dismissive of information put out there. Just because you seem to know everything does not mean all do. I have young nieces and nephews that are just getting old enough to understand PS and also friends that are just starting out that I point to sites like this. I was new to PS at a time back when there were no sites like this. I wish there had been, then I’d know everything as you do.
FredEx July 1, 2008 at 4:24 pm
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You know what… I think it’s hard to learn photoshop by reading stuff, that’s why I like video tutorials better. These days so many people are creating video tutorials. I’ve seen many at http://www.codervods.com
Jeff Justice July 5, 2008 at 7:02 am
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Well, I’ve worked with PS for a number of years now and most definitely learned a few new tricks from this list. It’s not easy to remember all shortcuts if you do not use them regularly or if you were taught otherwise. Thanx for the insight, Francesco!
Fritsie July 6, 2008 at 12:08 pm
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Steve just becuase u use photoshop doesnt mean u have to be a graphic designer…
so thanks for the tips!
sam July 20, 2008 at 1:47 pm
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any keyboard shortcuts for hiding/unhiding the slice guides?
Rom July 25, 2008 at 5:30 am
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Thank you very much. Most of the shortcuts are popular but there are few which I didn’t know:)
Stella September 19, 2008 at 9:57 am
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I knew some of them , but as a reminder of the ones that i FORGOT , and that I asked myself many times …how was that shortcut ????.
Thank you , and please ignore all those great ( and also arrogant ) designers,,,,………
julio November 8, 2008 at 12:46 am
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Not a graphic designer, but a web designer, and I try to use photoshop on a daily basis more as a ‘hobby’, so tips like these are useful because when I don’t get to use it for more than 5 months due to ‘real work’ it’s nice to have somewhere that they are listed. I read them and say “oh yea, forgot about that one”. And remember, EVERYONE starts out as noobs, but apparently the pompous and condescending posters were born knowing how to use photoshop, if only we all were born that way…I envy you…. :-)
steve January 6, 2009 at 9:56 pm
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Thank you!
MFX Design Iasi January 20, 2009 at 8:22 am
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Hi its very nice and lovely things you have shared here and I’ll also try to get more short cuts. and I also shared this page in my blog also. hope you’ll like this.
CreativeguyA January 22, 2009 at 4:04 pm
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Very good. Thanks
david gouter July 5, 2009 at 9:04 pm
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wahoo very grt tricks
just4mano August 21, 2009 at 12:08 pm
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thanks so much for this “secrets”.
i have been working with Photoshop for like 10 years now and only now did i learn that
Alt + Click on the eye!!! hahahah amazing! :))
erik September 17, 2009 at 2:16 pm
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Something i don’t know before . Thanks
Ali October 5, 2009 at 3:44 am
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this photoshop super program. thanks
sinema seyret December 4, 2009 at 11:44 pm
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Yes I use ctrl + alt + shift + e all the time. It comes in handy more than you might think. Great post!
Ivy K. May 7, 2010 at 6:07 pm