Pressing the Spacebar will temporarily turn on the Hand Tool – therefore allowing you to move what you are working on around. As soon as you let go of the space bar, whatever tool you were using reappears.

Taking a beginners course at a local community collage is a great way to get a basic understanding for what the program is capable of doing.

If you need to open another document you have already worked on in Photoshop, but is not currently open, all you have to do is double click in the gray background area and you will be able to find the file to open it.

Save, save and save again! You can never save often enough. Also, saving different versions of your project with different names helps to prevent you from saving over something you just did.

If you want to do a quick comparison of a before and after – in the history pallet there is a little camera – click on it. This will save what your project currently looks like. Make your changes and take another snapshot. Go to the top of the history pallet and toggle back and forth between the two snapshots. Keep in mind that the history pallet only goes but so far back.

There are hundreds of websites devoted to Photoshop tutorials. Take advantage of this and books to learn as much as you can about the program.

Each one of the tools in the tool box has a corresponding “shift + letter” combination. If you are using, for example the “Type” tool and you want to now use the paint brush, pressing the “shift + b” keys will toggle over to that tool. To go back to the Type tool all you need to press is the “shift + t” keys.

Other good to know keyboard combinations for Photoshop include:
Shift + S – to save a file
Shift + O – to open an already existing file
Control + N – to open a new file
Control + P – for a print preview

No matter what you are working on in Photoshop – be it a photograph or something you are creating from scratch – it is best to start as large as possible and then make a copy that is smaller for whatever you need it for. The larger the file is, the more you have to work with to make it look as good as possible.

Photoshop allows you the luxury to display only the tool pallets that you will need to do certain projects. This is called saving your workspace and to do it just choose Window> Workspace> Save Workspace

Once you have made a selection you get the “marching ants” – if you want to work in that selected area – but not have to look at the “ants” all you have to do is hit “Control+H”, or “Command+H” on a Mac. To make them re-appear just hit the same key combination again.

Another keyboard shortcut for Photoshop – If you want to zoom in on what you are working on press “Ctrl + =”. If you want to zoom out on what you are working on, press “Ctrl + -”

Want to temporarily hide all of your tool palettes so you can see all of your work? The quickest way to do this is to hit TAB.

Before editing a photo duplicate the layer so you have something to go back to and see your progress.