I noticed so many of us use the trackpad as the primary input device.

I though it would be interesting to check out what trackpad gestures can you use in Photoshop. Here is what I found out:

1. Hold the Alt (Option) key and double finger track to zoom within the document in and out.
2. Hold the Apple (Cmd) key and zoom in and out your entire screen. Useful when you want to show something to a friend across the room.
3. Double tap and hold to start making a selection. Once you're happy with the size just release the trackpad and your selection becomes active after a second.
4. Tap with two fingers results in a CTRL-click or right mouse button click.
5. Double finger tracking allows you to scroll and pan within your document.

Unfortunately none of the cool stuff that works in OSX standard apps, such as the rotation with two finders, switching between active pages with three finger swipe or zooming by pinching works in Photoshop.

Ideally Apple should allow us to customize what we want each gesture to mean and we should be able to add new custom gestures too.

For example we could add a lot of Photoshop menu shortcuts as three finger gestures. Each new gesture would be drawn with three fingers and the shape would remind the first letter of the menu item. For example:

• Down and right: Levels
• Up, circle and bottom right: Refine edges
• S shape: Save
• Circle: Open, etc.
• Three finger horizontal swipe: Change between document
• Three finger double tap: Exposé application windows
• Three finger triple tap: Exposé all windows
• Finally when you would tap repeatedly on the trackpad with three fingers it would bring up a random stimulating screensaver that will help generate new ideas.

When I post tutorials at The Graphic Mac, I look for a few things. First, it must be somewhat simple to achieve the desired effect. I also look for how detailed the tutorial is in describing the steps necessary to achieve the effect. And finally, I try to decide if anyone would actually want or need to achieve those effects for day-to-day work. When I came across this tutorial, I was skeptical as to how detailed it would be, and how easy it would be to repeat the outcome. Well worry not.

Photoshop Roadmap has nailed it with this tutorial titled Realistic Chrome and Glossy Plastic Text Effect. The tutorial is both simple and detailed, requiring no special filters and only a simple download of a small preset file (if you want to avoid any guess work). Most of the heavy lifting is done using Photoshop layer effects such as drop shadow, inner shadow, and bevels. And the effect isn't so "out there" that I couldn't see using it for real design work.

As with most things in Photoshop, there are several ways to sharpen an image. One of my favorite ways is by using the High Pass filter:

1. Duplicate the layer you want to sharpen.
2. Go to Filter>Other>High Pass
3. Enter a radius of 1-10, click OK
4. On your layers palette, set the blending mode to Hard Light
5. Drop the layer opacity until you find the strength you like

I like this method because I can control it more. Also, it's not destructive since you can easily delete the duplicate layer you made. Hope this is useful for you!

Smart objects is extremely useful for designers putting together layouts in Photoshop. Not having to worry about resizing logos and other vector elements is a huge help.

You can not only transform and apply filters to these layers without destructing them, but also edit them in Illustrator and save them back right into Photoshop.

To edit the shapes of smart objects, find their layer that is marked with a small page icon in the lower right corner of the layer thumbnail and simply double click it. This action will open Illustrator where you can edit the untransformed version of the your vector. Once you save the file and return to Photoshop you will immediately see the modified smart object.

Use the Eye Dropper tool to sample any color on your screen by clicking and dragging from your document to anywhere on your screen, even outside of Photoshop.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein

*UPDATE* - I hear you guys! I wish Adobe included this feature in every program they make, but unfortunately, they don't; however, they DO include it in After Effects, Lightroom, Premiere Pro and Soundbooth (all CS3 versions). So, if you use any of these programs, make sure you take advantage of this great feature.
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Have you ever wanted to make adjustments on the fly? There are several ways to resize things such as indents for paragraphs, but here's one you may not be aware of. If you place your cursor right next to the box where you would normally enter a value, you will get a finger with a left/right pointing arrow, clicking on it and dragging left or right will increase/decrease the value. It works just about anywhere you would enter a value. Try it out!

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” - Albert Einstein

John Nack, Adobe's vocal Photoshop guru, has spilled the beans on Adobe's new Photoshop branding efforts with the announcement of their new logo and tag line.

Before everyone gets their hair up, you should note that they did NOT announce that they're changing the Photoshop icon, they're simply tying all their Photoshop products together for marketing purposes.

That being said, I don't like it. I don't mind the slogan at all. But why, with all the money and talent that Adobe has, did they settle for yet another stupid speech bubble, Web 2.0-style logo? What does the speech bubble have to do with Photoshop?

If you don't have a tripod and you're shooting hend-held in low light conditions you will probably end up with blurred images. Usually these images are blurred towards a specific direction. Because of the tiny shakes of your hand, you are basically applying a motion blur to your images.

You can help the situation with Photoshop's built-in Smart Sharpen filter. Just select the motion blur option in the drop down menu within the filter window.

If it direction and extent of the blur isn't obvious just experiment with the angle and the radius settings to find the best result. You should see dramatic improvements on your image.

I'm talking about the area around your images in Photoshop.

Sometimes you may want to check your image against different colors, especially black. You can quickly toggle between grey, black and a custom color by simply CTRL-Clicking the grey area. Alternatively you can of course right click if you have a mouse with at least two buttons.

If you want create a quick Andy Warhol style pop art painting out of your favorite photo follow these 8 quick steps.