The Photoshop Tip of the Week for the Clients and Friends of Ben Willmore
(www.digitalmastery.com):

Last week, while bouncing from city to city in my quest to transform the world with Photoshop wisdom, my PowerBook battery went dead, right in the middle of a flight. Left with just a pencil, paper and my thoughts, I spent the rest of the flight cooking up a slew of new tips for you-12 weeks worth, in fact. That means you'll have a steady stream of tips from now until June, and I'm sure that between now and then, something will come up to inspire even more. Not only that, but I've found a new way of sending out this email that will make things much easier on my end, and result in a more timely delivery of your weekly tip.

We've talked about layer tips in the past, but I think you can never have too many tricks up your sleeve when dealing with layers, so let's give it another shot.

When clicking on the new layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette, you can hold the Option key (Mac), or Alt key (Windows) to specify a name for the layer.

To change the name of a layer that already exists, you double-click the name of the layer in 5.5, or Option-double-click (Mac), Alt-double-click (Windows) in 6.0. Well, in 6.0, you can also Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) and choose the first choice that appears in the menu to do the same thing.

When using the Move tool to drag things around your screen, you can hold Shift to constrain your movement to vertical or horizontal.

When the Move tool is active, you can nudge a layer one pixel at a time by pressing any of the arrow keys on your keyboard. Hold Shift to nudge a layer 10 pixels at a time.

When moving a layer, you can hold Option (Mac), or Alt (Windows) to move a duplicate of the layer.

If you use the Move tool to drag a layer from one document to another, you can hold the Shift key to center the image in the second document. Or, if both documents are the same size (width and height in pixels), then holding Shift will place the layer in the same position it was in the original image.

To move multiple layers between documents, link those layers together (by clicking to the left of the layer thumbnail image for each layer), then use the Move tool to drag to another document. Just make sure you drag from the main image window and not from the Layers palette, otherwise only a single layer will be moved.

If you have multiple layers linked together and you'd like to unlink them, Option-click (Mac), or Alt-click (Windows) on the paintbrush icon that appears to the left of layer thumbnail image on the active layer. That should turn off all the link symbols on the other layers.

If you select an object, copy it and then paste it into a different document, you might notice a tiny halo around its edge. That's a hint of the hold background showing up. This really shows up when you copy from a bright-colored background and paste onto a dark one. To remove the halo, choose Layer>Matting>Defringe and use a setting of 1.

Then, if you choose Layer>Merge Down a lot, you might be interested in knowing that you can type Command-E (Mac), or Ctrl-E (Windows) instead.

OK, enough for now. This should keep you occupied until next time.

If you've been trying these tips out, you know that they can only take you so far. When it comes to truly understanding Photoshop, it takes more than quick tips...it takes a commitment to getting ahead of the learning curve, and taking the time to learn the more advanced techniques that will give you the ability to navigate through Photoshop like a pro. That's what my seminars are all about, and so, here's my shameless plug: If you have always wanted to go the distance with Photoshop, and you've got the time and the resources, my three-day Master Photoshop seminars will give you a behind the scenes look at how Photoshop really operates. In three days you'll learn the majority of 6.0's new features, and you'll develop the deep understanding needed to eliminate your frustrations and take control of this amazing program. I've got three of these seminars left in 2001: Denver, CO April 11-13 (9 seats left), Reston, VA May 16-18 (5 seats left), and Minneapolis June 13-15 (plenty of seats avail.). For details, please visit www.digitalmastery.com, or call Regina at 800-360-4042.

Catch you next week. Thanks for tuning in.

-Ben Willmore