I supplied a bunch of tips to MacWorld magazine last year and I noticed that they’ve posted them to the MacWorld Web Site.
They didn’t use all the tips I supplied, so why not read the ones they didn’t use?
MacWorld Photoshop CS Tips
Old Photo Look Using Camera Raw
If you’re nostalgic for the faded look of old photographs, you can recreate that bygone look when opening a RAW format image. To make the image look yellow and faded, move the Temperature and Tint sliders to the right of center and move the Contrast and Saturation sliders to the left of center. Then to darken the edges of the image, turn on the Advanced option in the upper-right of the dialog box, click on the Lens tab and set the Vignetting Amount slider to -100 and the Vignetting Midpoint slider to 0.
Quick Adjustment Layers
Consider changing the standard adjustment keyboard shortcuts so they create Adjustment Layers. Choose Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts; choose Application Menus from the Shortcuts For pop-up menu; click on the Layer choice within the shortcut list to expand it and then scroll down until you find the choices under the New Adjustment Layer section of the list. Click on one of the Adjustment choices and type the standard keyboard shortcut for that type of adjustment (Command-L for Levels, Command-M for Curves, Command-U for Hue/Saturation and Command-B for Color Balance). When a warning appears indicating that the keyboard shortcut you just assigned is already in use, just click the Accept button in the upper-right of the dialog box.
Layer Mask Overlays
When painting on a Layer Mask that is attached to an Adjustment Layer, press the backslash key () to view the mask as a colored overlay
over the main image window. That will often expose problem areas where the mask doesn’t align with the area you are attempting to mask. Fix any problem areas by painting while the mask is being overlaid on the image and then type a second time to return to the normal view of your image.
Keyboard Menu Access
You can access Photoshop’s (or any other applications) menus using the keyboard by typing Control-F1 to invoke OS X’s Full Keyboard Access feature and typing Control-F2. Then use the arrow keys to navigate to the menu choice you’d like to use (or type the first letter of the menu item) and press Return to choose that item (or press Esc to abort). Once you’re done accessing the menu bar, you can type Control-F1 a second time to turn off Full Keyboard Access.
All Documents On Top
If you switch between applications by clicking on different visible document windows, then the window stack will end up being a mixture of windows from different applications intermixed on your screen. If you’d rather have all the windows from one application appear on top of the window stack, then switch to the application by clicking on the application’s icon in the Dock.
Moving Individual Letters
You can move the individual letters that make up a headline by choosing Layer>Type>Convert to Shape. After doing that, you can click and drag on the individual letters using the Solid Arrow tool to reposition them. Also, try typing Command-T to scale, rotate or distort the shape of individual letters. You can even control how the letters interact with each other by experimenting with the four icons that appear to the left of the Combine button in the Options bar at the top of your screen (use the rightmost option to create holes where the letters overlap).