Didja Know?

Happy Monday everyone! Hope your weekend was great!

First off, this weekend's winner is Jen D! Email me at info@phauntactions.com to claim your prize!

Today I wanted to start a new feature called "Didja Know".. sharing quick tips that make PS a little bit easier. They may be elementary for some, but they're essential to using PS to it's fullest.

First off, a shortcut:

CTRL+Z will undo your last step.  Press it again to undo the Undo (that make sense?) So pressing CTRL+Z repeatedly will let you go back and forth between the last step you made so you can quickly see before/after without clicking in your History Palette.

CTRL+ALT+Z Undo, but you can keep going back as far as you want. Similar to clicking backwards on the History pallete, but you don't have to click, just keep pressing until you get to where you want!

And another Didja Know: Did you know you can create Snapshots in your History Palette that allow you to "save" the state of your photos (with layers intact!) and go back to it at any time! THis allows you to save a state and do detailed tweaks. If you don't like it, you can always go back to your snapshot! Here's a few visuals:

You can make as many snapshots as you want, so can save a picture at a bunch of different states, then click through the snapshots to figure out which you like best.

Be SURE to save any changes you made though, saving your image (even as a PSD) does NOT save your snapshots.

Oh, and because I'm feeling giving today.. You can use the code: mondayrules TODAY ONLY to get $5 off anything in the store. Have fun :)

Oh, and don't forget to take the new poll :)

Masking Basics

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Ever hear someone refer to masking in Photoshop and wonder what the heck they were talking about?

Well Never again! Today I'm going to show you the basics of masking in simple terms (we like simple around here). I'm also going to show you a quick way to use masking to whiten up and sharpen eyes.

Didja Know?

Quick Tip for today (well, tonite, as it's 12:47 am as I'm writing this)..

If you find that the photo you're working with is just a wee bit on the reddish side in the skin tones; which often happens if you are doing color pop/saturation changes to portraits. A quick fix can be made with the Hue/Saturation adjustment.

Create a Hue/Saturation Layer (go to Layer-New Adjustment Layer-Hue/Saturation) and instead of affecting Hue/Saturation Globally (on all colors in the image), chose a single color instead.



Now pull down the saturation until the oversaturated color looks right. If you have other areas in the photo with Red (or whatever color you are desaturating) in it, you can always make a layer mask that only affects the skin tones that had a problem.

Creating an Action and Sharpening

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Second tutorial (finally) an easy way to do better sharpening (using Smart Sharpen) and how to create actions for your own use.