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

This week let's take a look at some random tips that, when combined, can make Photoshop an effective program for organizing images and producing slide shows.

First off, to open multiple images in Photoshop, drag the files onto the Photoshop icon on your hard drive. Then, once they are open, you can Shift-click on the full screen mode icon (near the bottom of your Tool palette, there are three icons that appear side by side, and this would be the right-most icon) to get all of the open images into full screen mode. Then, press Tab to hide your palettes so you can concentrate on your image. Now you can type Control-Tab (on both Mac and Windows) to cycle through the open images, in effect creating a slide show. Once you're done with your show, you can type Option-Command-W (Alt-Ctrl-W in Windows) to close all the documents at once.

Or, if you'd rather have all your "slides" in a single document, then put them all in one document with one "slide" per layer. Once you have the layers set up, Option-click on the eyeball for the layer that is active (Alt-click in Windows)óso only that layer will be visible. Now, hold down the Option key (Alt in Windows) and use the bracket keys ][ to move forward or back in your slide show. Take note, this will only work if the layer that is active is the only one that is visible.

Ok, now let's take a look at some Mac specific tips that can help your organize your images. If you've opened an image that is buried deep in the folder structure of your hard drive, you can quickly navigate to that folder by Option-clicking on the name of the file at the top of the document. If you choose the folder name from the pop-up menu that appears, that folder will open in the Finder. You can also click on the thumbnail picture that appears in the title bar on your image, pause for a second and then drag that thumbnail to a location on your hard drive. That will physically move the file as if you did that in the Finder. If you hold Option while dragging that thumbnail, then you will drag a copy. That icon will be grayed out if you havenít saved your file since the last changes you've made.

I just got back from presenting a one day web seminar in Orlando and I'm looking forward to my first "Up to Speed with Photoshop 6.0" class this week in Denver. Within the next week or so, I plan on adding a dozen or so magazine articles to the ones that are already available at www.digitalmastery.com/companionsite/resources

Have a great week.

-Ben Willmore
Founder, Digital Mastery