I use Photoshop for most my graphics on Crackerville.

I'm by no means an expert. I don't have the time to really dig in and learn all the ins and outs. If you have that kind of time, this page probably wont help you.

But if you just want skate by half-assed like me, here are some things I'd recommend learning:

• Keyboard Shortcuts: The mouse is intuitive but it slows you down once you've become an intermediate user. And the slower you get around in Photoshop (or any application, for that matter), the less you do. So instead of trying out 10 effects, you only try 8. Or instead of cleaning up 50 images in one sitting, you only do 30. You get less practice, produce less output, and in general the whole process is just that much more oppressive.

  Some Useful Windows Shortcuts

  • Copy image (ALT+PRINT SCR), New image (CTRL+N), Paste (CTRL+V). Notice how Photoshop sets the new image default size to match whatever is on the clipboard?
  • Zoom In: CTRL++ (Control plus the plus symbol)
  • Zoom Out: CTRL+- (control plus the minus symbol)
  • Deselect: CTRL+D
  • Toggle Hide Selection: CTRL+H
  • Select All: CTRL+A
  • Select Pixels: CTRL+A (to select all), then CTRL+up arrow (reduces selection to only pixels and nudges selection up), then CTRL+down arrow (to put the pixels back where they were).
• Graphic File Formats: At a bare minimum, I'd recommend a couple hours on Google learning about GIFs and JPGs, which make up most of the images you see on web pages. Maybe study long enough that the following sentences make sense to you:

  GIFs offer an alpha channel which facilitates transparency and can be stacked to create animated GIFs, but they can only handle 256 colors and GIF is also a proprietary format with a long history of legal issues. JPGs handle millions of colors and come in standard and "progressive" flavors but it's also a LOSSY format.

  If you're into digital photography, you might also want to learn about RAW and TIF file formats, which let you save more than 256 colors without losing any detail.

• Vector vs Raster: Virtually everything you'll be doing in PS will be done against raster graphics, but it's a good idea to understand what vector graphics are and why they rock in some applications (like illustration, fonts, and Macromedia's Flash), and why raster graphics are more analagous to the CCD in your digital camera, the triads of phosphor on your CRT monitor/television and even to your eyeball.
• Anti-Aliasing. I've seen *so many* powerpoint slides where someone copied an image from a light background and pasted it on a dark background and didn't know how to deal with the resulting "halo" of contrasting pixels around the copied image. This effect is caused by anti-aliasing, which normally works to make images look smoother and more natural but can do the exact opposite if you're not careful. In Photoshop you can work with layers to avoid anti-aliasing problems in the first place, or you can use Select >> Modify >> Contract to deal with them after-the-fact.
• Select >> Inverse: Great time-saver. If you want to make adjustments to a picture of a city skyline, for example, you can use the magic wand to select the sky then use Select >> Inverse so everything but the sky is selected. Much easier than trying to select everything but the sky.
• Quick Mask Mode: Here are two icons on the toolbar I ignored for the longest time that turned out to be totally cool. They let you flip between "standard mode" and "quick mask mode." You work in "standard mode" by default. When you switch to quick mask mode a red mask is applied to everything in your image that is not selected and you can use the paintbrush and eraser tools to add or remove parts of the mask.

Some Other Stuff

• If you're using Photoshop 4 or later, here's the action i use to add the Polaroid type frame and drop shadow to the random pix you see on the front page. Just save this to your computer and, from Photoshop choose "Load Actions" from the actions pallette to load. Depending on the picture, you may want to disable the "Image Size" (if it's smaller than 300 pixels wide) and/or the "Sharpen" steps. Here's a site that explains the process of exporting and importing actions.