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

Hey everybody! A special news bulletin before we get to our tip: Last week yours truly was inducted into the Photoshop Hall of Fame at PhotoshopWorld! Many thanks to everyone who voted for me. For details visit www.photoshophalloffame.com

Ok, now onto the tips. We haven't covered any Photoshop CS-specific tips yet, so I'm going to dedicate this tip to CS... but don't worry if you're not there yet; future tips will include a lot of info that still applies to older versions of Photoshop. In fact, the next two tips I'll send out (you'll be getting a whopping three total this month) will completely apply to older versions of Photoshop as well as CS.

If you like to use the File Browser to access your images, then I hope you've noticed the new File Browser icon in the Options bar that extends across the top of your screen... it looks like a folder with a magnifying glass. Clicking that icon will either open or close the File Browser. The next time the browser is closed, try Command-clicking (Mac), or Ctrl-clicking (Win) on that icon to force it fill your screen while hiding all the palettes that were visible on your screen. Once you're done using the browser, just press Tab a few times to get your palettes back. And if you'd like to close the File Browser when opening an image, just hold Option (Mac), or Alt (Win) when double-clicking on a file. If it's a RAW file (from a digital camera), then hold Shift to bypass the Camera Raw dialog box and open the image using the last Camera Raw settings that were used to open that image (default settings if its never been opened before).

When working with numerical settings in Photoshop (like layer opacity, or width in the Image Size dialog box), click on the name of the setting (opacity, width, etc.) and drag to the left or right to change it. That trick doesn't work with every setting, but it should work on the vast majority of settings you encounter.

You can still type F in Photoshop CS to put your image in full-screen mode where it's surrounded with gray, but now you can use the Hand tool to move it around the screen. That means that it no longer has to be centered within the image window. You'll mainly notice this change when you're zoomed out to a point where the image does not fill the screen. You can temporarily access the Hand tool by pressing the Spacebar.

As with previous versions of Photoshop, you can hold Option (Mac), or Alt (Win) and click on one of the eyeball icons in the Layers palette to hide all layers except the one you're clicking on. But in Photoshop CS, Option/Alt-clicking a second time will only bring back the layers that were visible when you initially Option/Alt-clicked the eyeball icon. In previous versions it would make all layers visible no matter what. To make all the layers visible in Photoshop CS, Ctrl-click (Mac), or Right-click (Win) on the eyeball icon and choose Show/Hide All other Layers from the pop-up menu that appears.

If you like these tips, then I bet your Photoshop buddies would as well. Why not tell them to sign-up at www.digitalmastery.com/tips The more people there are signed up, the worse I feel when I procrastinate, so help me to get the list to grow so I can't possibly ignore my sacred duty of sending tips to you!

-Ben Willmore