Setting Up Workplace

If you want to get most from Photoshop, you have to give something to it. If you won't think about Photoshop, it won't think about you. Remember that. There are preferences you can adjust to you tastes. But there are some system requirements you have to know about as well. And if you'll tune them right, your work will be more productive and fast.

These tips are more interesting for those who work with big files, because if you work with small documents, you may not care about anything. Even on a slow computer you won't get much speed increase if your image is about 100K.

If you work with files bigger than 20 MB, these recommendations will help you. Largest images I was working with were about 100 MB in size (that's A3 paper size at 300dpi).

So here are some tips for working with big files:

Give Photoshop as much RAM as you can. But leave some free RAM for system use (like 500K).

Set Disc Cache (in Memory control panel) to 32K.

Turn MMM (Modern Memory Manager) on if you're on PowerMac. I wouldn't recommend this if you use System version before 7.5.3.

Turn on 32-bit addressing if you're on 680x0 Mac. Otherwise you won't be able to use more than 16 MB of RAM (on different Macs this amount varies).

Turn off virtual memory. It slows everything down. Besides that Photoshop utilizes its own virtual memory techniques.

In Layers palette set Thumbnail Preview to «none» (in palette options). Reason for that is simple — Photoshop has to render all of your image to thumbnail preview size. If you have more than 1 layer, situation gets worse. Again, it's ok if your file is smaller than 15-20 MB. But imagine working with 500 MB image in 2 layers (friend of mine was working with file of this size without knowing this tip).

When you save such a file it takes about a minute or two just to write preview. Each time you change a pixel, Photoshop starts to render your image to thumbnail size, to display your changes in the layer palette. And it consumes huge amounts of time. Your time, by the way.

Not to loose your navigation abilities, name each layer descriptively. 

Using RAM Effectively

Note: this tip works for Mac OS 7.x — 9.x users only.

In our days having much of memory (RAM) is not a big problem. I have 768 MB, while I couldn't imagine this amount two years ago. It is common to have about 128 MB RAM (well, at least here, in Moscow, it is common).

Everyone thinks that if you give Photoshop 100 MB of available RAM, while working on a file of, say, 20 MB size, everything will be smooth and fast. Wrong, my dear.

That may be against logic, since everyone knows that Photoshop needs RAM 2 to 5 times the size of a file you're working on. If Photoshop can't find so much memory, it starts to use your hard disk. But if Photoshop does have so much RAM? Anyway, it uses hard disk as a scratch. Why? Ask Adobe, not me.

No program is perfect. Photoshop isn't an exception. But there is solution for this. It's not known to wide public and I've never seen it in any tips collection or in any manual.

Solution, like any useful things in our life is easy and effective. Use RAM Disk as a scratch.

Create RAM Disk in Memory control panel. Give it like 10-100 MB of RAM. That's enough (well, if you have more memory, you can give to RAM Disk). Then, open Photoshop, select Preferences:Scratch Disks and select RAM Disk as a primary scratch disk. Choosing dedicated hard disk as a secondary scratch disk is a good idea.

That's it. Restart Photoshop and start working faster. All those small operations that require strange disc accesses will go to the RAM Disk. And all other operations will be processed in memory, allocated to Photoshop itself.

Drop me a note if this trick works for you.

When the Scratch is Full...

Some day you'll face the warning on the screen, saying something like «Your scratch disk is full». But you know that free disk space is more than 3 times the size of file you're working on.

So you figure out, that you have to free up some space. But how? That is possible to do when you save a file. But Photoshop doesn't let you save it - it filled up your disk with the scratch. What to do?

The solution comes when you know a bit about how Photoshop works with disk space. It works bad. And to make some disk space free you have to create small file (like 3x3 pixels) and save it in Photoshop format. This file won't take any serious part of your disk. And Photoshop will flush the cache — i.e. the scratch. After this you'll be able to save the file that waits to be saved.

Prego!

Creating Drop Shadows

Drop shadow is a very simple effect and it is very easy to create this kind of shadow from virtually any object or graphic.

You can do drop shadows in Photoshop 2, but that is not an elegant way of doing them.

Layers, introduced in Photoshop 3 are the best way to create shadows. First, create any object, picture or photograph in a layer. If you start working on a solid background, you'll have problems with transparent spaces later. Transparent areas will be needed if you want your shadow to show through those areas. If you want to create a shadow around a photo, don't worry about transparency.

Anyway, before creating a shadow, make sure that foreground (object that makes shadow) is on the layer.

Then:

Create a copy of this layer.

Maker sure that new layer is under the original one.

Float the image in the new layer.

Select brush or airbrush.

Select the color — that will be the shadow's color.

Deselect image.

Then go to Filter menu, choose Blur, then Gaussian Blur.

Set required blur amount.

After that move blurred image according to your taste. Generally, lightsource should be in the upper-left part of the image. Conclusion — shadow should be in lower-right position.

Prego — your image has a drop shadow. Add sugar/salt/pepper/milk.

Similarly, you can create shadows to any objects or images.

Creating 3D Objects

Everything in this world that is three-dimentional, human eye always sees in 2 dimensions. All that we see in fact is screened on the small net in human eye that is called retina. Retina is just a screening surface which recepts reflections of light. And it is two-dimentional, of course.

This little explanation is needed to describe principle of objects we usually call 3-dimentional.

Unlike simple 2D geometrical figures, like circle or a square, 3D objects are emulating real-world figures that usually have all three dimentions. And you also have to know that 3D is what we see, not always what it really is.

Knowing all this you can create objects that look voluminous (not flat). If you add a shadow under an object, it will look like it's floating in the air. If you add right lightning to the circle you'll have a sphere — three-dimentional object.

Here are some examples:

In case of the letter “M” the best way of creating 3D effect is a drop shadow.

In case of a circle best tool is the airbrush. Use smaller brush sizes and select brighter color each time. Final effect looks like a sphere from a 3D program. In fact it is done in 20 seconds right in Photoshop.

Another interesting tip comes from Humie, who writes us that we “might want to know that there is an even easier way to do your spheres. First create a circle with the marquee tool. Keep the circle selected. Select two colors then select the gradient tool. Set the gradient tool to radial instead of linear. Then with the circle selected use the gradient tool inside of the circle. Hope this helps (maybe?)”

Creating Irregular Multicolor Gradients

Photoshop allows you to create linear and radial gradient fills from one color to another. After some time you'll be able to create linear gradients using more than two colors — not very easy to do it, but possible.

And if you need multicolor radial gradients, Photoshop offers you no standart tools.

Here comes our best friend — airbrush.

Create new brush size — like 300 or 400 pixels wide with edges smooth enough to paint blurry dots.

Creating Multicolor Gradients

If you want to create a cool multicolor gradient without much time spent, follow these steps.

Create a high quality grayscale image.

Use the gradient tool from darker to lighter (or vice versa) — either linear or radial.

After applying the gradient, change color mode to Indexed color (select it from the Mode menu) — but not less than 8-bit.

Then select any color table you want by choosing ColorTable option in the Mode menu. Good results can be achieved by choosing always-present-in-Photoshop Black Body (instant German flag gradient) or Spectrum color (instant lame effect) tables.

If you need another gradations, make color table by yourself.

After doing all this convert your image to RGB or CMYK and continue working on it.