If you are working in an image with a high zoom factor and do not want to zoom back and forth to see how it looks like in the overhall image, the best way to do this is to have 2 windows of the same image opened, you work in one which is zoomed, the other window, at full zie (or whatever you want) will immediatly reflect the changes you make in the zoomed window.
It seems there are 2 methods:
1- click on WINDOW/ARRANGE/NEW WINDOW FOR XXX.JPG (opened image name)
2- ight click on the Window title and then select Duplicate (thanks to Daimi)
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A great thing about photoshop CS and CS2 is the ability to create adjustment layers. Others version might do this as well but I cannot confirm. This tip is only confirmed for CS2, I do not have other versions to try it on.
What they are are layers created by clicking the ADJUSTMENT LAYER button at the bottom of the layer palette and will aftect all the layers bellow that adjustment layer. For example, you can create a LEVELS adjustment layer and all the layers below it will be adjusted, this is very useful in case you want to eliminate that adjustment later or change it, if you do that directly into your image layer, when you run out of history states, you cannot undo anymore.
Well now my tip, this is a cool feature but what if you only want to adjust one layer and not all the ones bellow the adjustment layer ?
1- select the image layer you want to adjust
2- click the adjustement layer button at the bottom of the layer palette and select which kind of adjustment you want to create. This will create an adjustment layer right over the image layer you had first selected.
3- While holding the ALT key of your keyboard LEFT click the line between the two layers in the layer palette (the cursor will change to two small circles when you do this) the adjustment layer will change to show a down poiting arrow on the left
There, now anything you do with that adjustment layer will only afect the layer to which it is linked. To UNLINK a layer, repeat step 3
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As you have seen in part one, you can have quite a bit of control over adjustment layers, but you can have even more.
You might want to only change a very specific spot of your image, like for example, brightning up the eyes of a person while keepin the rest darker, of course you can do what by duplicating your main layer and then aplying a layer mask, but this tmakes more time and makes your image need a lot more memory as the layers piles up. This might be a good solution.
When you create an adjustment layer, you will see the procedure you want, IE curves and then a mask layer to the right of it.
Well just treat that mask area sas any other mask and mask the adjustment layer efect, byt painting it black) over any spots wherre you do not want it!
For example you can use this to create a black&white image with just an element of it in color.
Note: for those who are not sure about the mask layer , the white is what is showing (transparent area of the mask, which is all of it by default) , when you paint black on the mask layer, that will become hidden by the mask layer.
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if your working with an image file that has an alpha channel, .tga, .tif, or .png are pretty much the only ones, then this tip will come in useful. first in photoshop import your image, then browse over to the channel tab, you then should see the rgb, red, green, and blue channels, and if your image has an alpha then alpha 1 should be at the bottom, go down to the alpha channel and ctrl-click the alpha layer, that selects the image, go back to the layers pallete and hit ctrl-j to make a new layer, the new layer should be the image on a transparent background. this trick can be used with levels and channels too but im not going to go into detail about that here, play around and see what you can come up with on your own, have fun
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A few little tricks can accelerate Your workflow in Photoshop. I've tried them in CS2 but some of them works even in ancient versions of PS.
Double click on Photoshop's desktop - brings up the Open dialog
CTRL+Double click on Photoshop's desktop - brings up the New Dialog
Pressing and holding down the ALT while Selecting Image->Duplicate... menu will create a duplication of the current document without asking its name
Most of the Adjustment and Filter dialogs the Cancel button become Reset if You press and hold the ALT key. So You can reset all values to the default without cancelling and reopening the dialog.
Pressing the SHIFT while dragging a layer from one document window to an other will center the new layer.
I've originally posted it in a form of a reply to a topic about managing brushes but Agon asked me to repost it here...
Here's the original post:
Hi.
There's no automatic way to enable/disable brushes however You can do it manually.
Put You favourite brush sets into individual folders inside the "[install dir]\Adobe Photoshop CS2\Presets\Brushes" directory and You can disable any of them putting a tilde "~" char into the directory name (eg. rename "MyBrushes" to "~MyBrushes"). Removing the tilde will re-enable the brush set when next time PhotoShop launched.
D
This technique works well with the Plugins too. You can disable individual plugins, folders or even directory trees putting the tilde in the front of the file/folder name.
And another tip come into my mind while I'm typing this...
Press and hold the CTRL and SHIFT while launching Photoshop and You'll got a nice dialog with the title: Choose an additional Plug-Ins folder...
And actually it does what it says... You can select a folder where some plugins should be and they will be available (besides of those in the default PlugIn location) for the current PhotoShop session...
When you have a landscape and the sky does not have quite the zap (impact) you remembered make a selction round the sky, feather it, hit Command J to move the selection to a new layer and the change the blending mode to multiply. Repeat if necessary.
Another method is to use the key combination option - command tilde (squiggle at top left hand corner of keyboard. Move the resulting luminosity mask to its own layer and change the blending mode to overlay (if effect is too much change it to soft light.) Also don't be afraid to drop the opacity if necessary.
I found an easy way to widen your creative ideas in photoshop. I downloaded hundreds of actions and went through each step by step.
Takes a time, but you can learn much more from the others than from any tutorials. Also you don't only learn from one perspective, but from many.
I found an easy way to widen your creative ideas in photoshop. I downloaded hundreds of actions and went through each step by step.
Takes a time, but you can learn much more from the others than from any tutorials. Also you don't only learn from one perspective, but from many.
Hope it helps.
PL. GIVE ME LINK FOR DOWNLOADED ATN. THANKS AT ADVANCE
Tips&Tricks: Photoshop 
New creative ideas - learning 
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