If you’re working on an RGB document that you know will be converted to a CMYK document for press, there’s a way you can see both RGB and CMYK versions of your document while you’re working. That way, you can see how changes you make in the RGB image will actually look in your CMYK image–all in real time. Here’s how: While your image is open onscreen, go under the Window menu, under Arrange, and choose New Window. This opens another view of your existing document. Press Command-Y to show a CMYK preview of your image, then return to your original document and edit as normal. You’ll see your changes updated in the CMYK version as you work. Pretty slick!

Photoshop CS’s File Browser lets you set your own custom size for viewing your thumbnails (which is really great, because I’ve always felt the "Large Thumbnail" setting was never really large enough). But finding out where to set your own custom size is a bit trickier. To set your size, go to the File Browser, and in the File Browser’s own "mini-menubar" in the top left corner, go under the Edit menu and choose Preferences. In the field named "Custom Thumbnail Size" enter the width you’d like for your custom thumbnails (up to 1024 pixels wide). Once you click OK in your Preferences, go under the View menu and choose Custom Thumbnail Size.

If you want to move a brush from one location in the Brushes palette (or Brushes Picker), you can do it, but you can’t reorder it within the Brushes palette itself. Nah, that would be too easy (and too obvious). Instead, you have to go under the Edit menu and choose Preset Manager. Choose Brushes from the pop-up menu, and then click-and-drag the brushes around to your heart’s content. Be somewhat careful, however, because there is no "Undo" or "Cancel" button–only "Done." But don’t be afraid about losing the default brush set–you can always get it right back by going to the Brushes palette’s pop-down menu and choosing Reset Brushes.

Just about everyone has a different-sized monitor for their computer, and just about everyone sees your Web page in a different-sized browser window. (Some have it fill their entire screen, but most leave it set at the default size the browser manufacturer specified.) The point is that some people have a 21" monitor and some have a 15", and to make sure you never see a huge blank spot, browsers automatically tile (repeat vertically and horizontally) whatever size image you use as a background. They tile like tiles on your kitchen floor (you do have tile, don’t you? That carpet-in-the-kitchen thing gets really messy). Because we know the browser is going to tile our background, filling every inch of visible space, we don’t need to create huge backgrounds in Photoshop. Instead, we can create tiny little backgrounds that appear seamless when displayed on a page. This helps the file size stay small and helps the page load faster.

When you enter Quick Mask mode (by making a selection and pressing the letter "q"), the color red can display either what’s masked or what’s selected. By default, the color red shows the masked area. For some odd reason, I prefer having red show what’s selected, so if what you see on your screen in Quick Mask is the opposite of what you’d like, all you have to do is change a simple preference setting. To find the Quick Mask preferences, double-click on the Quick Mask icon (located in the Toolbox, directly below the Foreground and Background Color Swatches).

If you use the Replace Color command to select an area of color, and then replace the color in that area with another color, there’s a new feature (added in Photoshop CS) that will let you enter a numeric value for the color you want to edit (rather than just clicking around with the Eyedropper). When you open Replace Color (under Adjustments in the Image menu), you’ll find a Color Swatch in the Selection section. Click on it, and the standard Color Picker appears, where you can type in numeric values in the RGB, CMYK, etc. fields, or even choose Custom colors as your color to replace. Not too shabby!

To jump instantly to the Background layer in your Layers palette, press Shift-Option-Left Bracket. To jump to the top layer in your layers stack, press Shift-Option-Right Bracket. You can also jump to the Background layer from within your image itself when you’re using the Move tool by holding the Command key and clicking on any part of the Background layer in your image.

If you want to put a bend in the top or bottom of an object (or rasterized type for that matter), here’s a quick way to do it. Start by using Free Transform and rotate the image 90* CCW. This enables you to use the Shear filter (found under the Filter menu, under Distort) to bend the object to the left or right; but then after running the filter, you’ll need to rotate it back 90* CW to make it upright again.

When you’re dragging Photoshop layers between documents, have you noticed that if part of your layer extends outside the edge of your document window, Photoshop doesn’t delete those areas? Yep, it’s still there. For example, if you drag an image of a car over to a new document and position it so that only the front half is showing, the back half (even though you can’t see it) is still there. If you decide later that you want to show the whole car, you can simply drag the car further into your image window and the parts hidden off screen will appear. That’s good, right? Well, sometimes. Actually, it’s only good if you think that at some point you might need those parts. Otherwise, you’re eating up memory storing stuff that you don’t need. Want to get rid of all that excess image data? Press Command-A to Select All, then go under the Edit menu and choose Crop. Everything outside your image window gets cropped off, shrinking your file size in the process.

If you make a selection, deselect it, then go on about your business and later realize that you forgot to save that selection, you can get your last selection back, as long as you haven’t made another selection. Just go under the Select menu, choose Reselect, and the last selection you made will reappear.

A host of special type tweaking features (such as superscript, subscript, underline, etc.) now have their own keyboard shortcuts, which are similar to the shortcuts used in Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator (no big surprise there, eh?). For example, to superscript a number (or a symbol), you highlight the character and then press Shift-Command-+. For a list of these new shortcuts, just bring up the Character palette, type in some text, then look at the palette’s pop-down menu and the new shortcuts will appear beside the type features.

The Clouds filter renders a random cloud pattern based on your current Foreground color. The clouds generated by the Clouds filter are usually pretty light in density, so if you want darker clouds, instead of choosing the Clouds filter, choose the Difference Clouds filter.

The preview window in the Filter Gallery is pretty large, but you can make it even larger in two ways. First, the dialog itself is resizable–just grab the bottom right-hand corner of the dialog and stretch outward. Secondly, there’s an upward-facing black triangle button, just to the left of the OK button. Click on this button, and the list of effects is hidden from view and the Preview area expands into that space. The good thing is, you can still choose different filters, now you just do it from the pop-up menu just below the Cancel button.

There’s a little trick you can use that takes the layer you’re on and converts it into a new layer that is a flattened version of all your layers. It doesn’t actually flatten your layers; it gives you one single layer that looks the way your image would look if you flattened it at that point. To do this, start by creating a new blank layer, hold down the Option key (PC: Alt key), go under the Layers palette’s drop-down menu, and choose Merge Visible. A new "merged contents" image will appear in the new layer you created in your palette. Why would you need this? I have no earthly idea, but hey, you might need it one day, and now you know. However, you’ll never remember which page this tip was on, and it’ll take you hours to go through every tip in this book to find it, so maybe you’re better off just forgetting this tip now, while you’re still sane.