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After running a filter in Photoshop, you can reduce the amount of effect the filter produced by clicking Edit in the menu bar and select Fade (filter name). This will bring up a dialog box which will allow you to customize the settings of the filter reduction.

Hold the Command key to prevent the Crop tool from snapping to the edge of your document. Turn on full screen mode (by typing "F") and then pull the cropping rectangle beyond the edge of your image to add space to your document (it will be filled with the current background color).

Thanks Craig!

One of the many vital resources any designer makes use of is stock photography sites. We would all love to have the budget for a photoshoot on each job, but the reality is that 90% of the jobs out there have a budget more condusive to Royalty Free photos. The problem is, of course, that stock photos tend to get "old" quickly. You see the same photos being used everywhere.

When you have several images open in PS you can scroll around them all at once if you press Shift-Space (or Shift and Hand tool). Great tool for small screens and especially useful if you are working on a big size document and you open a new window to work on a piece of it at 100%, but you prefer to see the whole document in the background scrolling in sync with your smaller window.

Creative Latitude is an interesting little site I came across a while back that offers a lit bit of everything.

In particular, I noticed the article titled Why Freelance by Ronnie Lebow, which some of you may find interesting.

You can copy items from multiple layers at a time in Photoshop by simply adding the Shift key to Command + C or selecting Copy from the Edit menu. Now when you paste, it will give you results as if you had flattened all your layers before making the copy command.

Did you know that if the scrollbars are present you can press and hold Apple-Alt (Cmd-Option) to drag the contents of a Finder window as if it was a PS document? Can't tell in what situation would you find it useful though. :)

Did you know that you can click on palette field titles (such as the layers settings percentage in the layers palette) in Photoshop to highlight the contents of the field or turn checkboxes on and off.

You'll also notice that your cursor turns into a Scrubby Slider. Move the cursor back & forth to adjust the fields amount.

Especially useful for those with large monitors using higher resolutions such as 1600x1200 where the buttons and fields are small and often times difficult to accurately click on.

Did you know that when you're using a tool that has a Slider, such as the layer settings in the Layers Palette, you can use the left and right arrow keys to increase or decrease the slider by 1%. You can also hold the Shift key down while pressing the arrow keys to increase or decrease the amount by 10% at a time. This is helpful when the area you're adjusting is subtle and you want to keep your eye on the image, instead of the slider.

Did you know that when you're in Photoshop, you can right click (Control + Click for those still using Apple's one button mouse) in a PS document to get a Contextual Menu pops up with features or options related to whatever tool you may have currently selected. Not a ground-breaking tip, but hopefully it'll save you a trip or two to the menu bar or tool palette.