The Extra-Strength Tips for the Clients and Friends of Ben Willmore (www.digitalmastery.com):

Before we get into the tips, a short message about this tip list: If you want to be removed from this list or need to change your e-mail address, please use the link at the end of each message. These tips are often delayed by having to manually remove or update information from people who e-mail me. I appreciate that people want to keep current with the list, but when I update the info manually it can result in typos causing the tip to be sent unintentionally to non-tip people, which they sometimes report as spam. This gets me in hot water with the good folks who sponsor this service, so in an effort to keep me in good standing with them, I implore you to use the link, instead of emailing me.That said, I'd like to thank Leif and Lars over at cooleremail.com for supporting this list. Without them, the list would not have been possible.

Ok, now on to the tips.

At the suggestion of someone who was attending one of my classes at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre (I speak at FotoFusion each year), this installment of tips will cover all the things you can do while you're stuck adjusting your images (when using Image>Adjustments).

What I mean by "stuck" is that you can't click on any of the tools in the Tool palette while you're using an adjustment dialog box like Levels or Curves. But many people assume that just about everything is disabled and that's simply not true.

Just because you can't click on the tools in your Tool palette doesn't mean that you can't still get some of their functionality while you're adjusting your image. For instance, you can hold the Spacebar anytime you want to use the Hand tool to scroll around your image. And if you add the Command key (Mac), or Ctrl key (Windows), then you'll get the Zoom tool and you'll be able to click, or click and drag to zoom in on your image. Add one more key (Option on a Mac, or Alt in Windows) and you can zoom out with each click of the mouse button. But I personally prefer to type one of the following keyboard commands to zoom in and out on my images:
Command Plus (+) = Zoom In
Command Minus (-) = Zoom Out
Command Zero (0) = Fit on Screen
Option Command Zero (0) = 100% View

And you can add Option to the top two commands to prevent the window that contains your image from changing size when you zoom. If you're using Windows, then just substitute Ctrl for Command and Alt for Option in the above commands, and adding Option will cause the window to resize.

You can also type Command-H (Mac), or Ctrl-H (Windows) to hide any guides or selection edges that might be visible and use Command-; (Mac), or Ctrl-; (Windows) to hide guides but not selection edges. Type Command-R (Mac), or Ctrl-R (Windows) to show or hide the Rulers. You can open or close any palettes (like the Info Palette) by choosing its name from the Window menu. You can even change the measurement system the Info palette uses (RGB, HSB, CMYK, etc.) by clicking on the eyedropper icon within that palette.

If you turn on the Caps Lock key, then your cursor will look like a crosshair whenever it's on top of your image. You can add a Color Sampler (with corresponding readout in the Info Palette) by holding Shift and clicking within your image, or Shift-Option-click (Mac), or Shift-Alt-click (Windows) to remove a Color Sampler that's already on your image.

If you're working on an image that is in RGB mode, but you plan on converting it to CMYK mode in the end, then you might want to know that you can type Command-Y (Mac), or Ctrl-Y (Windows) to turn on the Proof Colors feature. With default settings, that feature will show you what your image would look like if it were converted into CMYK mode. And if you can't quite tell which areas of the image are shifting when you toggle Proof Colors on and off, then try typing Shift-Command-Y (Mac), or Shift-Ctrl-Y (Windows) and Photoshop will cover all the areas that will shift with gray.

Now that we've talked about what you can do to your image and the palettes that surround it, let's take a look at what you can do right in the adjustment dialog box. If there's a number active, then you can use the Up and Down Arrow Keys to change that number. Adding Shift should change the number in larger increments. The Tab key will allow you to cycle through the different numbers you could change within a dialog box. Once you are done with an adjustment, you can press Return or Enter to apply the adjustment, or type Command-period (.) on a Mac or Ctrl-period in Windows to abort the adjustment (same as clicking the cancel button). The Escape key does the same thing by the way. Or, if you've completely screwed things up, then you can type Option-Command-Period (Mac), or Alt-Ctrl-Period (Windows) to reset the dialog box back to its default settings (just like clicking cancel and then going back into the same adjustment). If you've only half screwed up, then type Command-Z (Mac), or Ctrl-Z (Windows) to undo the last step your performed within the adjustment as a whole (before you click ok to apply the whole thing).

That's all I can think of for fun stuff you can do while adjusting your image. So I'm going to call it quits on this installment of tips. But since I know you guys have been waiting for me to get off my posterior and send out some tips, and you've kindly restrained yourself from sending too many 'where are they' e-mails, I've uploaded some new content to my web site for you to enjoy: four new magazine articles at www.digitalmastery.com/companionsite/magazine that you can download and print for free. Hope that partially makes up for how long it's been between tips.

And, if you promise to help me out by spending a few minutes of your time filling out an informational survey (part of the next tip I'll send out), then I'll promise to send out one tip a week for the next two weeks. Deal? I'll include details on how to get to the survey in my next tip message (you might get two... one for the tip and the second one for the survey).

Oh, and if you've been wondering about my seminars, you should know that I'll be presenting my new one day 'Photoshop for Photographers' seminar on March 14th in New York city. For details, visit www.photoshopseminars.com.

-Ben Willmore