Photoshop Tips and Tricks for Beginners

These Photoshop beginner tips and shortcuts address some of the most common things you'll do in Photoshop, and learning them will save you lots of time down the road.

Create Project-Specific Custom Workspaces

Photoshop lets you create custom workspaces that display just the palettes you need for a specific project. For instance, if you're planning on working with text, you'll want to have the Paragraph and the Character palette open. But later you might be editing some Photos and want to close your text palettes to make room for photo editing palettes like color swatches and brushes. With custom workspaces you can switch quickly.
Once you've arranged the palettes just the way you want them, choose Window> Workspace> Save Workspace. Name your workspace and then click Save. Here's another tip - plan ahead so your custom workspace names make sense. This will be another time-saver later on when you need to locate one from the Workspace submenu.

Display The Same Image In Two Windows

When doing detail work on an image you may need to zoom in to take a closer look at the pixels. But to make sure that any changes you're making in this magnified state will look realistic at a normal view you'll have to zoom out for a quick look. Here's a great tip - instead of zooming in and out you can have the same image open in two windows at the same time.
With an open image selected choose Window> Arrange> New Window (the original file name will be listed). The same image will now appear in a new second window.
Keep one window set at 100% to see your effects, and work in the second window - either zoomed in or zoomed out. Sweet.

Instant Grabber Hand

Ever been frustrated by having to switch tools to move your image around the canvas? Here's the solution — Press the Spacebar to temporarily activate the Hand Tool. Click to move an image freely inside a canvas area that is smaller than the image. Release the Spacebar and the hand tool will revert back to the current tool you have selected.

Getting Rid Of The Marching Ants

Selecting an object will activate a line of dashes that blink to show you the selection's edge (marching ants), but they can be a visual nuisance at times. To quickly hide the selection marquee, Press Command+H (PC: Control+H). To view them again just repeat the shortcut.

Quick Revert - The Undo Command
To undo your last image modification Press Control+Z (MAC: Command+Z), and repeat the shortcut to undo the undo. Toggling back and forth like this is a good technique to review the before and after effects of a one-step change to an image, like dodge or burn.

For situations where you need to perform a multiple undo, go Edit> Step Backward or use Control-Alt-Z (MAC: Command-Option-Z. To go the other way (multiple redo) go Edit> Step Forward or use Control-Shift-Z (MAC: Command-Shift-Z). The number of steps available is the same as the number of History States, which can be changed in General Preferences.

Control Your Color Squares

Press D to reset your color squares to their default of black as the foreground color and white as the background color.
Press X to switch your foreground color and your background color.
To change the color of one of the color squares Click on a Color Square. This brings up the color picker, where you can select a new color.

Selecting Colors From An Image Quickly
Press I to activate the Eyedropper Tool and then click on any color in your image to turn that color into the foreground color. Press the ALT Key and click on any color in your image to turn that color into the background color.