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

This week there really isn't any kind of theme to my tips... it's just a random grab bag that allows me to show you some of the more unusual areas of Photoshop.

If you're ever working in CMYK mode and you have something on a layer that you'd like to be reproduced using only black ink (like a shadow), double-click on the layer's name and turn off the C, M and Y checkboxes. After you do that, you might need to darken the layer by choosing Image>Adjust>Levels and then move the middle slider towards the right.

If you'd like to force a large area of your image (that might be on multiple layers) to print with only black ink, then select the area you want to work with and then choose Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Channel Mixer. After you've named the layer, Photoshop should send you into the Channel Mixer Dialog box, where you'll want to turn on the Monochrome checkbox and then adjust the CMYK sliders until the result is dark enough.

If you ever get close to a guide or the edge of your document when you're moving a layer around, Photoshop will usually snap the edge of the layer to the guide. To prevent that, hold down the Ctrl key after you have started to drag (I have no idea how to do this on Windows... I tried every key combination I could think of and it didn't work). That will turn off Photoshop's snap feature for the length of time you hold the key. Or, if you hate the whole idea of snapping, then turn it off by choosing View>Snap and then the Ctrl key will temporarily turn it back on. The same techniques work when making selection or doing anything else that would cause something to snap to another object.

If you work with complicated documents that contain dozens or hundreds of layers, then you might want to choose Palette Options from the side menu of the Layers palette. In the dialog box that appears you can set the Thumbnail size to None and then your layers palette will Look quite a bit different. You'll no longer see any layer preview images and the layers will take up minimal space in the palette, but you can still access all of Photoshop's features. I don't suggest you use this mode in older versions of Photoshop because many of Photoshop's features were not accessible, but Adobe made some changes when they updated Photoshop and now everything works.

If you have a layer that has a bunch of empty space that looks like a checkerboard in the layers palette, then you can fill those empty layers by choosing Edit>Fill. All you have to do is set the Mode pop-up menu to Behind and then Photoshop will limit the change to the empty areas of that layer. If you need to do this a lot, then type Shift-Delete (Mac), or Shift-Backspace (Win) to access the Fill dialog box. Just make sure you set that menu back to Normal when you're done, otherwise that feature might get in your way if you don't notice it's turned on.

If you'd rather limit your fill to the areas of a layer that already contain information, then turn on the Preserve Transparency checkbox in the Edit>Fill dialog box. A quicker way to accomplish that would be to type Shift-Option-Delete (Mac) or Shift-Alt-Backspace (Win) to fill with your foreground color, or Shift-Command-Delete (Mac), or Shift-Alt-Backspace (Win) to fill with your background color. You can also type Shift-Command-Option-Delete (Mac), or Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (Win) to fill from the currently selected history state... but if you'd don't know about history states yet, then that wouldn't be all that useful.

Ok, here's one last tip: I was reminded of this one while I was teaching Photoshop Camp last week. If you're ever working in Photoshop and you notice a "#1" in the upper left corner of all your images, then you must have accidentally played with the Slice tool in Photoshop. To rid your documents of that number, choose View>Show>Slices.

Have a great week and be sure to check out this week's Photoshop Questions of the Week at www.digitalmastery.com/questions. Also, send your questions to questions@digitalmastery.com.

-Ben Willmore