Keeping with my “I’m On Vacation” short posts, I thought I would post a couple of Photoshop Quick Tips that I use all the time.
Tip #1
On whole, I think the crop tool is pretty lame. I much prefer cropping in Lightroom but sometimes I want to crop in Photoshop. The biggest problem I have is that I like to maintain my image size ratios when I crop so I actually end up using some selection tools instead of the Crop tool. Here’s how:
- Select All by pressing Ctrl + A
- Right-click on the image and select Transform Selection (you need to have one of the selection tools active to see the menu)
- While holding down the Shift key, click one of the corner arrows and resize.
- Double-click inside the image to complete the transform
- Go to the Image menu and select crop
Once you do it a few times using the keyboard shortcuts, it becomes second nature and will take you no time at all.
Tip #2
If I want to quickly resize an image for the web, I can calculate how many pixels I should resize to, or I can just use this quick and easy method.
- Open your Navigator panel and reduce the size of your image on screen to the size you would like it to be on the web.
- Look at the image viewing percentage read-out on the lower-left corner of the Navigator pallet.
- Press Ctrl+Alt+I to open up the Image Size dialog.
- Enter the percentage size that you saw in the navigator into the Width section of the Pixel Dimensions box and change the Units to Percent and click OK.
- Your image will look small but when you enlarge it to 100%, it will be the exact size you wanted for posting to the web.
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Nice tip #2. I hadn’t considered that as a quick way to resize for the web – I typically go the math route that you mentioned.
This is another time that actions can really come in handy. Having a standard portrait/landscape sizing action can save a ton of time when needing to change the size and/or resolution. I do this frequently when outputting images for use in PowerPoint.