Peter Bauer

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-25-2022

This Cheat Sheet is handy to keep nearby when you're working in Photoshop as a quick reference to selection tricks, layer-merging tricks, filter gallery colors, and troubleshooting tips.

Article / Updated 03-08-2022

When cleaning up photos in Photoshop CC, large challenges sometime require drastic measures, such as duplicate layers and layer masks. Take a look at the following figure. At the top left, you see the “before” photo: at the top right, the “after” image. Below are images from three key steps in the process. Here are the steps taken to remove the boy from the group photo: Decide what needs to go and how best to cover it. In this case, the young man is no longer welcome in the group photo. The easiest way to remove him (without using scissors and leaving an empty hole) is to move the two young women on the right over to the left. Make a selection of the area that you’ll use to cover. A large rectangular selection is used, which included everything to the right of the young man. Be careful to include everything you’ll need in the altered image. In this case, the girl’s hair is on the boy’s shirt. Remember you can always make a rough selection with one tool and then press and hold Shift to add to the selection with another tool, or press Option/Alt to remove part of the selection. Copy the selection to a new layer. Use the keyboard shortcut Command+J/Ctrl+J to copy the selection to a new layer. Position the new layer. Use the Move tool to slide the new layer over the top of the area you want to remove. Add a layer mask. Click the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers panel and then paint with black in the layer mask to hide areas of the upper layer. As you can see in the lower left in the figure, the upper layer covers areas of the lower layer that need to show (such as the man’s head), creating an unnatural shadow pattern. The layer mask in the lower-center image exposes as much of the lower layer as possible, leaving the upper layer visible only where necessary to show the two young women and their shadows as well as to hide the people on the lower layer. Look for and adjust anomalies. In the lower center of the figure, you see that one woman’s foot should be in the man’s shadow. A new layer is added, and a selection is made of the area that should be in shadow, which is filled with the color of the toes that are already in shadow. Then use the Multiply blending mode and the Opacity slider to match the original shadow. (See the lower-right image in the figure.) Crop. Glancing again at the lower-center image in the figure, you see the area that needs to be cropped, off to the right. Using the rectangular Marquee tool, make a selection of everything you want to save. Then use the Image→Crop command, and the alteration is complete. Save the image.I suggest you save the image with a different name in case you ever need the unaltered image again.

Article / Updated 01-07-2022

Sometimes in Photoshop CC you need to copy/paste over something that needs to be removed from a photo. The Clone Stamp tool is usually faster and easier than working with selection. One of the keys to using the Clone Stamp tool is keeping an eye on your work. Zoom in close so you can work precisely, but choose Window→Arrange→New Window for [filename]. Choose Window→Arrange→Tile All Vertically and keep that second window zoomed out and off to the side so you can monitor your progress while you work. Keep a copy of the original image open for reference. You can make a copy of the file with the Image→Duplicate command or by clicking the left button at the bottom of the History panel. As you make changes to the original image, refer to the duplicate (the original filename appended with copy). If you're not happy with the previous change, you can undo it. Here are some tips for working effectively with the Clone Stamp tool: Work on a separate layer. Before cloning, click the New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel and set the Sample menu to All Layers in the Options bar. By cloning to the new layer, you protect yourself from irreversible errors (you can always erase part of the upper layer or delete it), and you can show/hide your work layer to check progress. If the image already has multiple layers and you want to clone from only one, hide the other layers in the Layers panel by clicking the eyeball icons in the left column. If a color or pattern is uniform, choose a source near the area you want to clone. Option+click /Alt+click the area in the image you want to clone. If, for example, you’re removing a power line in a beautiful blue sky, clone from right above and below the power line so that you get the best possible color match. For delicate jobs or larger items, you can clone by halves — clone half from one side and the other half from the other side. To avoid a recognizable pattern, choose a source that's far from the area you want to clone. You can clone from a variety of places to avoid creating any recognizable replicas of nearby flowers or rocks. You should, however, try to clone from areas that are approximately the same distance from the lens as the area over which you’re cloning. If you clone from the far distance into the foreground, you’ll have a recognizable size mismatch and perhaps a focal difference, as well. To copy areas or objects, use Aligned. By using the Aligned option, the relationship between the point from which you sample and the point to which you clone remains constant when you release the mouse button. To pick a new source point, Option+click/Alt+click elsewhere in the image. To repeat a pattern or texture, don’t use Aligned. If you have a specific object, texture, or pattern that you want to replicate in more than one area, you can clear the Aligned check box on the Options bar. Every time you release the mouse button, the source point returns to the exact spot where you Option+clicked/Alt+clicked. You can copy the same part of the image into as many different places as you choose. You can vary the tool’s opacity and blending mode. Generally speaking, when you want to hide something in the image, use the Normal blending mode and 100% opacity. However, you can also clone with other blending modes and reduce opacity to subdue rather than hide and, of course, for fun special effects. Adjust your brush size on the fly. Pressing the left and right brackets keys (to the right of P on the standard English keyboard) decreases and increases the brush diameter without having to open the Brushes panel. Check the brush’s hardness and spacing settings. To get the smoothest result for general cloning, reduce the brush’s Hardness setting to about 25%, allowing edges to blend. There are times, however, when you’ll need a more distinct edge to the brush, but you’ll rarely need to clone with a brush set harder than perhaps 90%. In the full-size Brushes panel, you can generally set the Spacing (in Brush Tip Shape) to 1% for cloning to ensure the edge is as smooth as possible. The Spot Healing Brush works much like the Healing Brush to repair and replace texture. However, instead of designating a source point by Option+clicking/Alt+clicking, the Spot Healing Brush samples from the immediate surrounding area, which makes it perfect for repairing little irregularities in an area of rather consistent texture. You can also clone from another image. Open two images and tile them vertically (Window Arrange Tile All Vertically). Option+click/Alt-click the image you want to clone (the source) and drag inside the image you want to clone the pixels to.

Article / Updated 01-06-2022

The Brush Settings panel in Photoshop CC, like the Layer Style dialog box, has a column on the left that lists options. Like the Layer Style dialog box, you mark the check box to activate the feature, but you have to click the name to open that pane in the panel. As you can see in this figure, the Brush Settings panel menu offers very few commands, whereas the Brush panel menu includes variations in how to display the panel content, some housekeeping commands for resetting/loading/saving brushes, and a list of brush sets in the bottom half of the menu. Don’t overlook those little lock icons to the right of the various pane names in the Brush panel. Click the lock to preserve the settings in that pane while you switch among brush tip presets. Any unlocked attributes revert to those with which the brush tip was created. Locking, for example, Shape Dynamics retains those settings even if you switch to a totally different brush tip. Here, in order, are the Brush panel panes and the options in those panes to which you should pay attention: Brushes: This button (just above the names of the panes) opens the Brush panel, where you pick the basic brush tip shape from the brushes loaded in the panel. You can also resize the brush tip, but that’s it. (Note that you can also select a brush tip in the Brush Tip Shape panel of the Brush Settings panel.) Brush Tip Shape: Without a check box to the left or a lock icon to the right, Brush Tip Shape is the pane in which you can select and customize a brush tip. (Refer to the Brush Tip Shape pane in the figure) This is perhaps the most important part of the Brush panel. In this pane, you can select a brush tip, change its size, alter the angle at which it’s applied, change the height-width relationship (Roundness) of the tip, and adjust the Spacing setting. Shape Dynamics: Dynamics in the Brush panel add variation as you drag a tool. Say you’re working with a round brush tip and choose Size Jitter. As you drag the brush tip, the brush tip instances (the individual marks left by the brush as you drag) will vary in diameter. The Shape Dynamics pane offers Size Jitter, Angle Jitter, and Roundness Jitter. Each of the “jitters” can be set to fade after a certain number of brush tip instances or can be controlled with the stylus that you use with a tablet and stylus. Angle can also be set to Direction, which forces the brush tip to adjust the direction that you drag or the direction of the selection or path you stroke. Use Shape Dynamics to add some variation and randomness to your painting, as shown in this image: Scattering: Scattering varies the number of brush tip instances as you drag as well as their placement along the path you drag. Like Shape Dynamics, Scattering can be set to fade or can be controlled with a Wacom tablet. Texture: Use the Texture pane to add a pattern to the brush tip, as shown. You can select from among the same patterns that you use to fill a selection. Texture is most evident when Spacing for the brush tip is set to at least 50%. Dual Brush: Using a blending mode you select, the Dual Brush option overlays a second brush tip. You could, for example, add an irregular scatter brush to a round brush tip to break up the outline as you paint. Color Dynamics: Using the Color Dynamics pane, you can vary the color of your stroke as you drag. This comes in most handy for painting images and scenes rather than, say, working on an alpha channel. Just as you might add jitter to the size, shape, and placement of a grass brush while creating a meadow, you might also want to add some differences in color as you drag. You could pick different shades of green for the foreground and background colors and then also add jitter to the hue, saturation, and brightness values as the foreground and background colors are mixed while you drag, as shown in the previous figure. Transfer: Think of this pane as Opacity and Flow Jitter. You can add variation to the opacity and flow settings from the Options bar to change the way paint “builds up” in your artwork. Brush Pose: When working with a tablet and stylus, this panel enables you to ensure precision by overriding certain stylus-controlled variations in a stroke. If, for example, you want to ensure that the brush tip size doesn’t change, regardless of how hard you press on the tablet, open Brush Pose, set Pressure to 100%, and select the Override Pressure check box. You can also override the stylus's rotation and tilt as you paint, setting any value from -100 to +100 for both tilt axis values and 0 to 360 degrees for rotation. Other Options: At the bottom of the left column are five brush options that don’t have separate panes in the Brush panel. They’re take-it-or-leave-it options — either activated or not. Noise: Adding Noise to the brush stroke helps produce some texture and breaks up solid areas of color in your stroke. Wet Edges: Wet Edges simulates paint building up along the edges of your stroke. Build-up: The Build-up check box simply activates the Airbrush button on the Options bar. Smoothing: Smoothing helps reduce sharp angles as you drag your mouse or stylus. If the stroke you’re painting should indeed have jagged turns and angles, disable Smoothing. Protect Texture: The Protect Texture option ensures that all the brushes with a defined texture use the same texture. Use this option when you want to simulate painting on canvas, for example. When creating a dashed line or stroking a path with a nonround brush tip, go to the Shape Dynamics pane of the Brush panel and set the Angle Jitter’s Control pop-up menu to Direction. That enables the brush tip to rotate as necessary to follow the twists and turns of the selection or path that it's stroking. (You'll generally want to leave Angle Jitter set to 0 percent so the stroke follows the selection or path precisely.)

Article / Updated 01-06-2022

Painting certainly has a place in your arsenal of Photoshop skills, even if you never create an image from scratch. Painting. The word evokes images of brushes and palettes and color being precisely applied to canvas. Or, perhaps, images of drop cloths, ladders, rollers, and buckets — color being slopped on a wall and spread around. It doesn’t generally bring to mind digital image editing. In addition to painting landscapes and portraits (which you certainly can do in Photoshop, if you have the talent and training), you can use Photoshop’s painting tools for a variety of other tasks. For example, you can paint to create masks and layer masks, adjust tonality or sharpness in specific areas, repair blemishes and other damage in an image — even to create graphic elements and special effects. Add color with the Pencil tool The Pencil tool differs from the Brush tool in one major respect: Regardless of the Hardness setting in the Brush panel, the Pencil tool always uses a hardness value of 100%. With the Pencil tool active, the Options bar offers the miniature Brush panel, a choice of blending mode and opacity, the somewhat-misnamed Auto Erase option, and a symmetry option, which enables you to mirror your pencil stroke with one of several presets such as Vertical, Horizontal, Wavy and much more. When you choose the Symmetry option, you choose a preset, and then adjust it to create the type of symmetry you need for the lines you’re drawing with the Pencil tool. When selected, Auto Erase doesn't actually erase, but rather lets you paint over areas of the current foreground color using the current background color. Click an area of the foreground color, and the Pencil applies the background color. Click any color other than the foreground color, and the Pencil applies the foreground color. Remove color with the Eraser tool The fourth of your primary painting tools is the Eraser. On a layer that supports transparency, the Eraser tool makes the pixels transparent. On a layer named Background, the Eraser paints with the background color. On the Options bar, the Eraser tool's Mode menu doesn't offer blending modes, but rather three behavior choices. When you select Brush (the default), the Options bar offers you the same Opacity, Flow, and Airbrush options as the Brush tool. You can also select Pencil, which offers an Opacity slider, but no Flow or Airbrush option (comparable to the actual Pencil tool). When Mode is set to Block, you have a square Eraser tool that erases at the size of the cursor. (When you click or drag, the number of pixels erased is tied to the current zoom factor.) Regardless of which mode is selected, the Options bar offers one more important choice: To the right of the Airbrush button, you’ll find the Erase to History check box. When selected, the Eraser tool paints over the pixels like the History Brush, restoring the pixels to their appearance at the selected state in the History panel. A couple of variations on the Eraser tool are tucked away with it in the Toolbox, too. The Background Eraser tool can, in fact, be used to remove a background from your image. However, it’s not limited to something in your image that appears to be a background. Remember that digital images don’t really have backgrounds and foregrounds or subjects — they just have collections of tiny, colored squares. What does this mean for using the Background Eraser? You can click and drag on any color in the image to erase areas of that color. You can also elect to erase only the current background color and designate the foreground color as protected so that it won’t be erased even if you drag over it. The Magic Eraser, like the Magic Wand selection tool, isn’t a brush-using tool, but this is a logical place to tell you about it. Click a color with the Magic Eraser tool, and that color is erased, either in a contiguous area or throughout the image, depending on whether you have selected the Contiguous option in the Options bar. And, like the Magic Wand, you can set the tool to work on the active layer or all layers in the Options bar, and you can also set a specific level of sensitivity (Tolerance). Here is the one difference between the two: The Magic Eraser is, in fact, a painting tool in that you can set an opacity percentage, which partially erases the selected pixels.

Article / Updated 01-06-2022

The custom shapes already available in Photoshop cover a wide range, but they might not fill all your needs. You can purchase commercial collections of custom shapes from a couple of sources. You can create custom paths and define shapes from them, too. But you’ve already got bunches of custom shapes on your computer, just waiting for you to use them. Select Photoshop’s Type tool and take a look in your Font menu. Check out the fonts already there with names like Wingdings, Webdings, Symbol, and Dingbats. (Your font list may vary.) These are all examples of symbol fonts, which are fonts that have shapes and symbols rather than letters and numbers. Many more typical fonts also have special characters available when you use the Shift key, the Option/Alt key, and the Shift key in combination with the Option/Alt key. Here’s how you can define a custom shape from a symbol: Choose File→New to open a new document. The document can be virtually any size and can be either grayscale or color. Select the Type tool and pick a font. With the Type tool active, choose a symbol font from either the Options bar or the Character panel. The font size doesn’t matter much because you’re creating a vector-based shape that you can easily scale. The foreground color doesn’t matter either because shape tools rely on the foreground color active at the time you create the shape. Type a single symbol and then end the editing session. Click the check mark button to the right on the Options bar, switch tools in the Toolbox, or press Cmd+Return (Mac) or Ctrl+Enter (Windows) to end the editing session. (The symbol visible in the figure below can be produced by pressing the Q key when using the Wingdings font.) Convert the type character to a shape layer. With the type layer active in the Layers panel, use the menu command Type→Convert to Shape. Select the Custom Shape tool. If you do not select the Custom Shape tool, the Define Custom Shape command is not available. Define a custom shape. Choose Edit→Define Custom Shape, give your new shape a name in the Shape Name dialog box, and save it. Your new shape is added to the Custom Shape picker, ready to use. Remember that your custom shapes aren’t truly saved until you use the Custom Shape picker menu command to Export Shapes. Until you take this step, the shapes exist only in Photoshop’s Preferences file. If the Preferences become corrupt, you could lose all your custom shapes unless you export your custom shapes. When exporting custom shapes export them to a folder outside the Photoshop folder. That prevents accidental loss should you ever need to (gasp!) reinstall Photoshop. The figure shows one possible folder structure for saving and organizing your custom bits and pieces. Also, you can use the Shape Picker Import Shapes command to add shapes you've exported.

Article / Updated 01-06-2022

Photoshop CC offers basic shape tools for working with your images and artwork. Rectangles, rectangles with rounded corners (rounded rectangles), circles and ovals, multisided polygons, straight lines and arrows, and a whole boatload of special custom shapes are all at your command with a simple click-drag. Select the appropriate tool in the Toolbox, select the desired options in the Options bar, and click-drag to create your object. (The various shape tools are nested in the Toolbox, as shown in this figure.) Sounds simple, right? It is — no tricks. Here are some additional features to make things even easier for you: Use the Shift key. Pressing the Shift key (both Mac and Windows) while you drag constrains proportions (maintains the width-to-height ratio). With the Shift key, the Rectangle tool creates squares; the Ellipse tool creates circles; the Polygon tool creates proportional polygons; the Line tool creates horizontal or vertical lines (or diagonal lines). When using custom shapes, pressing the Shift key ensures that the shape retains the width-to-height ratio with which it was originally defined. Use the Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows) key. The Option/Alt key creates the object centered on the point from which you click. Without the Option/Alt key, the object is created in whichever direction you drag. Use the Shift and Option/Alt key. Pressing Shift and Option/Alt together helps you create a proportionally constrained object, centered on the point at which you click. Click the shape tool. If you click rather than drag, you’ll open a small dialog box that allows you to enter precise dimensions for your new shape. Enter the desired dimensions, click the OK button and the shape is created to the lower right of (or centered on) the point where you clicked. The dialog box is visible in the figure. Use the spacebar. While you’re dragging a shape, keep the mouse button down and press the spacebar. You can then drag to reposition the object while you create it. Still keeping the mouse button down, release the spacebar and finish dragging the object. Check the Options bar. When you switch from shape tool to shape tool, the Options bar changes to fit your needs. For example, with the Rounded Rectangle tool active, you choose the radius of the rounded corners. The Polygon tool offers a simple field in which you choose the number of sides for the shape. When you’re using the Line tool, choose the thickness (weight) of the line in the Options bar. Click the button to the left of the Weight field in the Options bar to add arrowheads to either or both ends of the lines. Change the layer content. With a shape layer selected in the Layers panel, select any shape tool and change the shape’s attributes in the Options bar. You can easily change (or remove) both the fill and the stroke. Edit the vector path. You can use the Direct Selection tool to change the course of the path, customizing the appearance of the shape. Create work paths or pixel-filled shapes. Using the three options in the menu to the left on the Options bar, you can elect to create shapes, work paths (temporary paths used to make selections or masks), or add pixels in the selected shape to your currently active layer. You can easily spot a shape layer in the Layers panel — especially when the default layer name starts with the word Shape. (You can, of course, change the layer name by double-clicking it in the Layers panel.) You can see in the Layers panel shown in this figure that the shape layer thumbnail includes the shape badge in the lower-right corner. When a shape layer is selected in the Layers panel, that shape’s path is visible in the Paths panel.

Article / Updated 01-06-2022

The Styles panel in Photoshop CC is hidden by default. Choose Window→Styles to make it visible. This panel, which you see with its menu open in this figure, is where you find and store layer styles and is the easiest way to apply a layer style to your active layer. When you first open the Styles panel, you see four sets: Basics, Natural, Fur, and Fabric. The 20 styles in those sets are great — if you happen to need a wood or rabbit fur or tweed texture. If you want some useful styles, open the panel menu and select Legacy Styles and More. Then you can select a set of styles by clicking the Legacy Files and More disclosure arrow. Shown in the following figure are All Legacy Default Styles, and there’s a bunch of them. Click the Styles Panel menu button to display Style Panel options. To apply a layer style via the Styles panel, make the target layer active by clicking it in the Layers panel; then click the style that you want to apply. It’s truly that simple! You cannot apply a style to a background layer. To remove a layer style from the active layer, press Ctrl/Cmd + Z or choose Edit and then Undo. You can click the middle button to save a custom layer style, and you can drag a layer style to the Trash icon on the right to delete it from the panel. What you find in the styles panel menu Take a look at the Styles panel menu shown in the figure, starting from the top and making your way down to the bottom. The first command simply adds the style applied to the active layer to the panel. In the second section of the menu, you can choose from five different ways to view the content of the Styles panel. The Text Only, Small List, and Large List options might come in handy after you create a bunch of custom styles with names you recognize, but until you become familiar with the styles in the panel, their names are pretty much meaningless. The default Large Thumbnail option gives you a better view of the effects in the style, but you see fewer styles at a time in the panel than you can with the default Small Thumbnail view. At the bottom of the styles panel are three icons. They are: Folder: Opens the Group Name dialog box. Enter a name and the group appears at the bottom of the Styles panel. Open the group and you can drag and drop a style folder into the group, or drag individual styles into the group. This moves, but does not copy, folders and styles into the new group from their original location. New Style: Opens the New Style dialog box. This command gives you the option of saving the currently selected style as a new preset. This option is handy if you’ve modified a style in the Layers panel after applying it. Enter a name for the new style and click OK, or cancel if you change your mind. The new style is added to the bottom of the Styles panel. Delete: Opens a dialog to delete the selected style(s). Click OK to delete or Cancel if you decide to keep the style. If you delete styles that you have not exported the styles are gone forever more. 'Housekeeping' commands Five commands in the Styles panel menu are “housekeeping" commands because you use them to control the content of the panel: Rename Style: The Rename Style command opens the Rename Style dialog box. Enter a new name for the preset and Click OK. Delete Style: Opens the Delete Style dialog box. Click OK to deleete or Cancel if you have second thoughts. Deleting a style in undoable, so proceed with caution. Append Default Styles: Opens a dialog the enables you to append style defaults to the list of style presets. Click OK to append the presets or Cancel. Import Styles: Opens the Styles dialog box, which shows a list of your exported styles. Select the desired style set(s) and click Open. Imported styles can be found at the bottom of the Styles panel. Export Selected Styles: The Export Selected Styles command lets you save the styles you current have selected in the panel as a new set of styles. This command opens the Save dialog box. Enter a new for the selected styles and click Save. The new set is saved in the Styles folder. After exporting a style set, if for any reason you remove a style set from the panel you can import it. Other parts of the styles panel menu The last two commands on the Styles panel menu are used to control the visibility of the panel (Close) and the visibility of the panel and those panels nested with it (Close Tab Group), which depends on how you’ve arranged Photoshop’s panels in your workspace.

Article / Updated 01-06-2022

Here you are, the proud owner of the world’s state-of-the-art image editor, Photoshop CC, and now you’re adding text, setting type, and pecking away on the keyboard. You’re faced with a lot of variables. Which options are you going to need all the time? Which ones are you going to need now and then? Which ones can you ignore altogether? Here are some various text and type variables, along with a few general guidelines on which options are most (and least) frequently required. Take a look at this figure, in which you can see (in all their glory) the most commonly used text attributes, all of which are available to you from the Options bar whenever a type tool is active. You can change the following text attributes via the Options bar, which is usually available at the top of your screen: Tool Presets: The Tool Presets panel enables you to select a predefined set of options that you’ve already saved. Set up each as a preset and then activate all the options with a single click. Orientation: The Orientation button toggles existing type layers between horizontal and vertical. Regardless of what text is selected, the entire type layer is flipped when you click this button. Font menu: Click the triangle to the right of the Font Family field to open the Font menu, showing all your active fonts in alphabetical order. You can also click in the field itself and use the arrow keys to switch fonts. Alternatively, you can type the first letters of a font in the Font text field to display fonts. For example, type AD to view all Adobe fonts installed on your system. If you select some type with a type tool first, using an arrow key automatically applies the change to the selected characters. If no characters are selected, you change the entire type layer. Font Style: When a font has multiple styles built in, you can choose a variation of the font from the Font Style menu. Styles include Regular (or Roman), Bold, Semibold, Italic, Condensed, Light, and combinations thereof (as you see in the figure). Some fonts, however, have no built-in styles. Font Size: You can select a font size in three ways: by typing a number in the Font Size field, by clicking the triangle to the right of the field and selecting a font size from the pop-up menu that appears, or by clicking the tT icon to the left of the Font Size field and then dragging left or right to change the value in the field. Font size is generally measured in points (1 point = 1/72 inch), but you can elect to use pixels or millimeters. Make the units change in Photoshop’s Preferences (choose Preferences→Units & Rulers, not Preferences→Type). Keep in mind that when type is measured in points, the image’s resolution comes into play. Anti-aliasing: Anti-aliasing softens the edges of each character so that it appears smooth on-screen. As part of this process, anti-aliasing hides the corners of the individual pixels with which the text is created. When outputting to a laser printer or other PostScript device, anti-aliasing isn’t required. It is, however, critical when printing to an inkjet or when producing web graphics or designing for tablets and smart phones. Smooth is a good choice unless your text begins to look blurry, in which case you should switch to Crisp. Use the Strong option with very large type when the individual character width must be preserved. When designing for on-screen projects (web pages, tablets, smart phones, and so on), choose System or System Gray for anti-aliasing. Never choose System or System Gray for text that will be printed, either on an inkjet or using a PostScript device. These two anti-aliasing methods are designed to help text appear properly in web browsers. Alignment: The three alignment choices on the Options bar determine how lines of type are positioned relative to each other. The buttons do a rather eloquent job of expressing themselves, wouldn’t you say? Note: Don’t confuse the term alignment with justification, which straightens both the left and right margins (and is selected in the Paragraph panel). Type color: Click the color swatch on the Options bar to open the Color Picker and select a type color. You can select a color before adding text, or you can change the color of the text later. If you start by selecting a type layer from the Layers panel, you’ll change all the characters on that layer when you select a new color in the Color Picker. Alternatively, use a type tool to select one or more characters for a color change, as you can see in the figure. Warp Text: Warp Text bends the line of type according to any number of preset shapes, each of which can be customized with sliders. (The text in the figure uses the Arc Lower warp style.) Keep in mind, however, that the Warp Text feature isn’t available when the Faux Bold style is applied through the Character panel. Palletes: Click this icon to display the Character and Paragraph panels. In the Character panel, you can fine tune the look of text by choosing options, such as small caps, underline text, strikethrough text, and more. The Paragraph panel is used to align text, justify text, indent text, and more. Each character in a type layer can have its own attributes. Click and drag over one or more characters with a type tool and then use the Options bar or Character panel to change the text attributes. Color, font, style — just about any attribute can be assigned, as you see. Like many word processing programs, you can select an entire word in Photoshop by double-clicking the word (with a type tool). Triple-click to select the entire line. Quadruple-click to select the entire paragraph. Click five times very fast to select all the text.

Article / Updated 12-30-2021

Many of Photoshop CC's creative filters use foreground color, background color, or both, and you should select these colors before you get into the Filter gallery. Use this list for important Photoshop filters and the colors they use: Filter Color(s) Filter Color(s) Artistic→Colored Pencil Background Sketch→Graphic Pen Foreground + background Artistic→Neon Glow Foreground + background Sketch→Halftone Pattern Foreground + background Brush Strokes→Accented Edges Foreground + background Sketch→Note Paper Foreground + background Distort→Diffuse Glow Background Sketch→Photocopy Foreground + background Render→Clouds Foreground + background Sketch→Plaster Foreground + background Render→Fibers Foreground + background Sketch→Reticulation Foreground + background Sketch→Bas Relief Foreground + background Sketch→Stamp Foreground + background Sketch→Chalk & Charcoal Foreground + background Sketch→Torn Edges Foreground + background Sketch→Conte Crayon Foreground + background Texture→Stained Glass Foreground