Speed is one of the reasons many artists choose to go digital. But it can take weeks, months, even years before an artist develops a digital workflow that really takes advantage of the medium’s true advantages. When faced with a program as robust as Photoshop, figuring out the fastest way to perform certain tasks can be a bit daunting. Monster Cutie comes to the rescue with 9 Quick Photoshop Tips that should get you started developing your own speedy digital jutsu

9 Quick Photoshop Tips

While some or most of these tips might seem basic for you advanced Photoshop users, you need a strong foundation upon which to build an optimized workflow. Essentially, you have to learn how to run before you parkour. The nice thing about this list is that they should work regardless of what version of Photoshop you’re running (well, probably back to version 5.5):

1. Learn Your Favorite Tool’s Shortcuts
2. Name Your Layers
3. Reposition Rotation Pivot
4. Select Layer Transparency
5. Hide Marching Ants
6. Fill With Foreground/Background
7. Record Actions
8. Optimize to File Size
9. Save With Layers Off.

Learn Your Favorite Tool’s Shortcuts

The more you use Photoshop, the more you’ll use certain tools over and over again. Take the time to learn the short cuts of your go-to tools. To get the keyboard shortcut, just hover over the tool and a tooltip will popup with the name of the tool and the corresponding shortcut in parenthesis. Unfortunately, some of the most useful shortcuts are not accessible so easily. In the Digital Painting 101 video, I used Space Bar for the Hand Tool and Option for the Eye Dropper (I would say those two are a must to remember for all digital painters). You can slog through the full list of keyboard shortcuts in the Edit menu, but to save time and brain space, it’s probably best to just focus on the ones you actually use.

Name Layers

Give each new layer you create a short, but descriptive name. Here’s why:

1. Makes it easier for you to figure out what you’re working on at a quick glance.
2. Should you ever have to pass on your file to another artist, layer names make it easier for them to find the pieces they need to work on.
3. If you’re using the Move Tool (V), you can point your arrow over elements, right click, and select them by layer name.

Reposition Transform Pivot

As demonstrated in the Quickly Merge Two Scanned Halves of a Large Page post, you can move the pivot point when you want to scale or rotate an object in Photoshop. When you want to scale or rotate an object with CTRL T (on a PC) or Command T (on a Mac) a circle with cross hairs will appear in the center of your object. You can reposition it by clicking on it and moving it around to a different position.

Select Layer Transparency

Sometimes you’ll want to create a layer or group mask based on a specific layer. To select the layer’s transparency mask without mucking about with the magic wand, CTRL click (PC) or Command click (Mac) the little thumbnail of the layer to the very left of the layer name. If you want to add or subtract the transparency mask of other layers, right-click or Command click another layer’s thumbnail and a menu will pop up giving you a number of options.

Hide Marching Ants

If you’re painting a selection sometimes the animated marquee, known as “marching ants,” can be very distracting. If you want to see how your edges will interact without the animated marching ants, hide them with CTRL H (PC) or Command H (Mac). You can bring them back by hitting the key combination again or by creating another selection with the Lasso, Magic Wand, or Marquee Tools.

Fill With Foreground/Background

There will be times when you want to fill and entire layer or an entire selection with a single color. You could use the Paint Bucket Tool, but there may be artwork that you just want filled over and the Bucket will only fill one color at a time. To fill a layer or selection with the Foreground Color, hit Option Delete (both Mac and PC). To fill a layer or selection with the Background Color, hit CTRL Delete (PC) or Command Delete (Mac). This works great with the transparency lock turned on for a layer.

Record Actions

The more you work with Photoshop, the more you will find yourself repeating tasks.  Recording actions is a great way to automate those tasks to speed up your work flow.  To demonstrate, here’s a video for setting up an action that will separate lineart from the background.  Don’t worry if you miss a step.  I’ll do a more in-depth lineart/cellshading demo soon.

Optimize to File Size

Delivering graphics to the web can be tricky business.  If specific file size is your chief concern, using the Optimize to File Size option will make saving graphics for the web a cinch.  Here’s a short video to demonstrate.

Save With Layers Off

When Photoshop saves a file, it renders a small thumbnail.  If you have a gigantic file with lots of layers and masks and effects, the thumbnail creation actually takes up a decent bit of space.  Take a look at the file size of this sketch of Akuma.

If you turn off the visibility of every layer in your file, Photoshop has nothing to render for a thumbnail.  You can shave off a few megs just by turning off those layers.  Just click on the eye icon next to each layer and save away.

That’s it for this round of Quick Photoshop Tips.  If you’ve got any questions, comments, or quick tips of your own, please feel free to leave a comment.