Cool! I’ve got some tips on using PS:
The transfer setting is your best friend. What it does is makes the brush size relative to how hard you press. It also makes the edges fuzzier the harder you press. It’s under Window->Brush, or what looks like a cup with 3 brushes in it on the right side. Then in that menu, it’s Transfer on the left of the box. Give it a whirl.
I like to lower the opacity and flow of my brushes (found near the top under the menu items) so I get a better, more natural buildup of values/colors. It blends things a little better, too.
If there’s a value range you like and want to use, the Alt key (Windows) or Command key (Mac) to color pick the range and then continue laying down, if that makes sense. Using that in tandem with low opacity and flow is a great way to build up your work.
Shortcuts (on Windows, most likely translatable to Mac):
- B – Brush
- Z – Zoom
- E – Eraser
- R – Rotate
- Spacebar – Panning
- X – Switch Foreground and Background colors (useful when using a couple of colors)
- L – Lasso Tool
- M – Marquee Tool (Shift+M to cycle through Rectangular and Elliptical)
- C – Crop
- W – Wand Selection Tool (click and it selects what it thinks you want in the whole scene)
- V – Move Tool
- CTRL+SHIFT+N – New Layer
- CTRL+J – Copy Layer Selected
- CTRL+E – Merge Selected Layer Down
- ALT+Right Click and Hold – Change Brush Size and Hardness (L&R for size, Up&Down for hardness)
- P – Pen Tool
- G – Gradient and Fill Bucket (Shift+G to cycle)
- CTRL+N – New document
- T – Text Tool
- CTRL+U – Hue/Saturation sliders
- CTRL+L – Levels
- CTRL+B – Color Balance
- CTRL+Z – Flip between final action and previous action
- CTRL+ALT+Z – Move back along actions
- CTRL+SHIFT+Z – Move forward along actions
There are plenty more, but these are what I use by pretty much pure instinct, plus a few extra you might find useful. Poke around in the brush settings, too. See what happens.
Also, each layer has some settings you can mess around with, and they can be found toward the top of the Layers tab. I don’t really mess with Blend Modes very much because I don’t really understand what they do. I tend to keep the blend layers on Normal. Sometimes I’ll mess with the Opacity next to the Blending Modes. Under the Blend Modes are things I use fairly often. The first thing next to “Lock:” is Alpha Lock. It looks like a checker board. What that does is if there’s anything drawn on that layer and there are transparent pixels, it’ll make it so you can only draw on the nontransparent pixels. Handy for when you want to change the color of something completely without having to redraw it or constraining your brush strokes to one area. Next is a brush icon, and I have no clue what that does; never messed with it. Same for the move icon; never really needed to use it. Next to that looks like a lock, and what that does is it locks that layer from any more editing so you don’t accidentally work on a layer you didn’t mean to work on. Very handy.
Now, for the layers themselves, if you right click on them, you’ll see a whole bunch of things pop up. What I like to do is make a layer a clipping mask, which means it’ll constrain the brush strokes to the lower layer, like the Alpha Lock. With this, you can stack a bunch of clipping masks to a “base” layer and not have to worry about going outside the lines. If you do undo the clipping mask, all the strokes you made that look like they were hidden will be visible again, so keep that in mind. Never really had an impact on what I was doing, personally. If you add a new layer between clipping mask layers, it should automatically make it a clipping mask layer. You can select multiple layers and make them into clipping masks if things get messed up.
At the bottom of the Layers tab, there are some more settings. First, the one that looks like a chain is Link Layers. If you have multiple layers that you want to move, you know you need them all to move and stay together, you can link them together and move just one layer. Handy if you have a bunch of layers. The fx next to it is Layer Styles, so adding things like drop shadows, glows, bevels, etc. Useful for things like text. If you double click to the right side of a layer, that menu will pop up. Next is a Layer Mask, and this functions a bit differently. What it does is adds a second window next to the layer you applied the Layer Mask to, and anything that is white in that second window is visible, anything that is black is not visible. This is what they call nondestructive editing because it doesn’t delete pixels from the layer, it’s just hiding them. Useful for things like photoediting when you don’t want to lose the data of the image you’re editing. The next one I don’t use, but from the description I’m guessing it’s to add an adjustment layer. Then there’s a folder, for when you want to sort your layers into groups (CTRL+G), so like a group for hair, clothes, skin, etc. Next to that is the New Layer button, then a trash can for Delete if you want to delete layers. You can drag and drop the layers onto the trash can, too.
I hope all this makes sense figuring out PS for you. A lot of the hot keys I figured out accidentally, but man, they really do help speed up my workflow. Mess around with the brush settings, see if you can get something you’re a little more comfortable with, too. Let me know if you have any questions about what I explained or PS, too! Good luck!
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