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In a previous post, I talked about how beneficial it could be to embed smart objects into a document in Adobe Photoshop. The reasoning I gave for this was that it would be helpful in, say, a magazine layout to have the ability to create “placeholder” images inside the overall file. If you didn’t have the full resolution image at a specific time, you could always place an object in the layout and call in the final image later on. That final image would take on the same transformations and alterations as the original placed object. It’s really an interesting post. If you’d like to read it, please do so. Especially if you handle any type of layout work.

Using Smart Objects as Placeholders in Adobe Photoshop

In today’s post, I’m going to talk about something similar to the topic I just described above. What I’d like to discuss is called Linking as opposed to Embedding. The two ideas are closely related but offer different advantages. When choosing one over the other, it’s important to recognize these advantages.

To kick things off, I’m going to go ahead and Place a photo into my empty document as a Smart Object. I’ll place it as an “embedded” file. To do this, I’ll head up to the File > Place Embedded menu item and select it. Again, if you aren’t all too familiar with Placing files as Smart Objects, I encourage you to read this post.

When I do this, I end up with an embedded object that looks like this:

Since this new placement was transformed into a Smart Object, I can expand it to meet the edges of the document without any loss of quality. I set the document up as the same size as the image, so it should be perfect.

See, just as I suspected. Great quality.

If you want to learn more about Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop, be sure to read the posts I list below. They’ll give you a nice background on the topic.

What are Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop?

The Difference Between Duplicate Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop

Editing RAW Files as Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop

Converting Multiple Layers into a Smart Object in Adobe Photoshop

Once you place an embedded Smart Object into a document in Photoshop, the file is severed from its source and is now completely independent. If you make any changes to this Smart Object, the source file will remain as it was before you embedded it. You can save the document you’re working on in Photoshop, place it on a USB drive, walk down the road and work on it on your friend’s computer. In no way do you need to ever see the source file that you embedded from ever again. It’s been duplicated and the only version that matters is now stored inside the PSD file you’re currently working on. I say this with emphasis because it matters. This is one of the primary differences between bringing files into a document as embedded versus linked.

To make things interesting, I’m going to head back up to the File menu, but this time, I’m going to select Place Linked.

I’ll choose some gray text that I typed out earlier and saved as a PSD file. The text says “FLIGHT.” This means nothing. I merely wanted to create another document to demonstrate how it can be linked to.

I’ll apply the Linear Burn blending mode to it as well. This will give the text a cool appearance against the photo background.

Now, I want to show you the difference in layer icons between Linked and Embedded Smart Objects. If we take a look in the Layers panel, we can see the two different styles. The first layer – the text file – has a small chain link icon and the second layer – the jet photo – has an embedded icon. Take a look.

I already told you that if we went ahead and made a change to the embedded Smart Object, no change would occur in the original source file for the embed. Let’s now look at what happens if we change the linked Smart Object inside of our working document. I’ll go to the Layer > Smart Objects > Edit Contents menu item and select it.

As a quick workaround to the tediousness of choosing this menu item, I could have just as easily double-clicked on the smart object thumbnail in the Layers panel.

When either of these things are done, the original text layer appears as a new tab inside the workspace.

From here, I can go up to the Character panel and choose the color picker. For the sake of demonstration, I’ll select something bold. Perhaps a dark red.

Now, I’ll save this text file by going up to the File > Save menu item and selecting it. I’ll also X out the text tab and go back to the document I was initially working on. I’d like to see the changes.

Yup, I’d say that’s a change.

Okay, here’s the cool part. I’m going to show you two different views of my install of Adobe Bridge. I’m displaying inside of the folder that houses the files I’m currently working on. specifically, I’d like you to take a look at the text file. Before I made any changes to it, the text was gray. After I edited the color in Photoshop, from inside of my working document, the source file text changed to dark red.

What this demonstrates is that if you change anything to a Smart Object after it’s been linked to another document, the source file is changed as well. This is the primary difference between embedded Smart Objects and linked Smart Objects. One doesn’t change the source and the other does.

Now that we know the difference between embedded and linked Smart Objects, I’ll show you how to update an embedded Smart Object to a linked one and a linked Smart Object to an embedded one. It’s very simple, so this should be fast.

The first thing I’ll do is right-click on either an embedded or linked layer in the Layers panel. Not the thumbnail, but the layer itself. When I do that, a menu appears. Inside that menu, there are a few choices.

If you right-click on a linked Smart Object layer, your choice will say Embed Linked and if you right-click on an embedded Smart Object, your choice will say Convert to Linked. Whichever you choose will simply swap how you initially placed the file.

What I’ve shown you above is all well and good, but there’s one huge problem. I suppose if you’re the only one to ever work on the group of files that you’ve embedded and linked, things would be fine. But what if you needed to email them to someone else to continue working on? Wouldn’t that break the placed linked Smart Objects? Yes, it would.

To work around this, Photoshop offers a feature that allows us to Package the group of files that are used in a project. It takes stock of which files are used and includes them into a folder of their own. This way, they can be sent off and shipped around without worry of them losing their links to one another.

To package a group of files, I’ll head up to the File > Package menu item and select it.

Note: This option only appears after you save the file. If it’s unsaved, the Package option will be grayed out.

Once I choose this item, I can select my destination.

Now, if I take a look in the folder I’m working on in Adobe Bridge, I can see the newly created packaged folder.

If I click into that, I’ll see the file I’m working on and another folder called Links.

And if I click into that, I’ll see the file that I placed as a linked Smart Object. Nice!

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The ability to sharpen photos in Adobe Photoshop has been available for a very long time. This ability has also gone through quite a few iterations. In the earlier days, we could choose one of the three more basic sharpening filters and either stick with what it gave us or sharpen again and again, using the same filter. Today though, we’ve got options. Lots and lots of options. And in my opinion, sharpening has come such a long way, it’s turned into sort an effect filter, as opposed to something that’s simply used to clean up semi-blurry photos.

In this post, I’m going to talk about the three best methods for sharpening photos inside Photoshop. The first one is good, the second is better and the third is even better than that. So, if you’ve got images that need some cleaning up, continue reading this post to learn something new about how to go about taking your photos to the next level.

The Sharpen Filters

Access to the first and third methods for sharpening photos can be found under the Filter > Sharpen menu items.

The second sharpening method we’re going to look at can be found under the Filter > Camera Raw Filter menu item.

I’m considering this second method one that Photoshop offers because it’s accessed through Photoshop and is a plugin that Photoshop uses. I’ll most likely write a few posts later on that cover the sharpening capabilities of Camera Raw, but for now, this topic will be filed under the Photoshop category.

If you look up two screenshots, you’ll notice that some of the sharpening filters contained under the Filter > Sharpen menu are simply words without the three dots after them. These are the filters that have been around forever. If you click on one of these menu items, the sharpening will be applied. If you do this and then look at your result and aren’t happy with it, you can either click the filter again or undo it. As you may have guessed, there’s not a lot of flexibility with these options. And if you can’t see the screenshot clearly, the items I’m referring to are Sharpen, Sharpen Edges and Sharpen More. Now, don’t get me wrong. For an overall picture cleanup and to add some crispness to it, these are great. For a preview and options, these aren’t. I still use these three filters all the time though, so don’t discount them too much. They just aren’t the three best options.

Tip: When you see a menu item in Adobe Photoshop that’s followed by three dots (Menu Item…), it means that, if clicked, a dialog box with further options will appear on your screen. If the menu item doesn’t have the three dots following it, whatever the function of that menu item is will be applied directly without further manipulation.

Unsharp Mask

As I go about editing the example photo with the following filters, I want you to take notice of what the options can potentially accomplish, rather than how they affect the photo I’m working with. Since every photo is unique, the potential of a filter is much more important than what’s going on in the screenshots that follow. Also, try to remember, or better yet, write down, what the options contained in the dialog boxes are capable of. You’ll be working with these in the future, so it’s a good idea to develop a mental background of the tools.

The first filter I’ll be covering is called Unsharp Mask. Before I show you anything, I’m going to be sure the view of the photo is at 100% inside Photoshop. This way, I’ll have an accurate pixel by pixel representation of what I’m about to work on. Next, I’ll move the photo around until something detailed is at the center of the screen. I wouldn’t want to sharpen a blue sky. I’d much rather see something that’s got some detail to it. Finally, I’ll head up to the Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask menu item and select it. What follows is the Unsharp Mask dialog box.

Much of what sharpening filters do is create contrast between light and dark pixels. Photoshop looks for edges and defines those edges to the tune of your commands. This is why you see sliders in the dialog box above.

As you can see, we’ve got three sliders here. I”m going to go through what each one controls.

Amount: This slider controls how much a pixel is either lightened or darkened when it’s found to be along an edge. There are a few things Photoshop has to take care of here. First, it defines the edge and then, according to the position of the slider, it adjusts luminosity of pixels around it. If you keep the slider to the left, the pixels will be less altered and if you move the slider to the right, they’ll be more altered.

If there’s any grain in your photo, that grain will become accentuated. This is part of the reason I chose this particular photo to work with. I created some grain in the photo to show you what happens when you adjust the amount of sharpening too much. Take a look below.

By over sharpening the photo, you can see that we’ve lost some detail. Although, this may be a cool effect if it’s what you’re after. I’d say we need to push this slider back some.

Radius: When adjusting the Radius slider, you’re telling Photoshop where you want it to look when adjusting the pixels in the photo. A small radius (to the left) says that you want a small area around each pixel to be lightened or darkened and a large radius (to the right) says that you want a large area to be lightened or darkened. So basically, we now understand the controls for how much we want a pixel to be adjusted and how far the adjustment reach is supposed to be. I’ll go ahead and push the Radius slider all the way to the right to show you what happens when the radius is as large as possible.

In the case above, much more of the photo was altered. Instead of keeping the lightened and darkened pixels localized, they were spread out, adding contrast to a larger area of the image. Again, a neat effect if that’s what you want.

Threshold: When you adjust the Threshold slider, you’re telling Photoshop when to look at a pixel. Let’s say you have two pixels right next to each other. One is 90% white (light) and one is 10% white (dark). You can adjust the threshold to say that you only want Photoshop to look at and alter the brightness of a pixel when the difference between it and the one next to it becomes 80% white and 20% white. So, if you have two pixels, like there are in the first scenario, Photoshop would ignore them. But, if you had two more than fell in to the threshold of the second scenario, Photoshop would pick up on them and edit them according to the settings determined by the first two sliders. A low threshold (to the left) will tell Photoshop to edit more pixels and a high threshold (to the right) will tell Photoshop to edit fewer pixels. In the screenshot below, I pushed the slider all to way to the right, therefore sort of muting out the edges of the photo. There’s a higher threshold, so fewer pixels were altered.

When you adjust all three sliders, you can acquire the sharpening you’re looking for, assuming there isn’t much noise in the photo. In general, you want a higher Amount (400), a lower Radius (0.3) and a very low Threshold (0).

Camera Raw Sharpening

If you head up to the Filter > Camera Raw Filter and select it, Adobe Camera Raw will open. Once open, head down to the lower left corner and click the drop-down box. Select 100%. Again, we want the most accurate view of our photo before doing any sharpening.

Next, click on the Detail panel in the right column. It’s the third tab in from the left.

Inside this panel, we’re going to be focusing on the top Sharpening section. If you take a look, you’ll likely see some familiar sliders as well as some that aren’t so familiar. I’ll go over each slider below.

Amount: Same definition as above.

Radius: Same definition as above.

Detail: The Detail slider controls how much Camera Raw sharpens what’s called noise. It looks at the differences between pixels in very small areas and adjusts the contrast between them. So if you’ve got a photo with some grain in it and you push the Detail slider to the right, you’ll actually accentuate that grain. In general, you wouldn’t want this to happen, so you’d keep the slider to the left. Although (again), it could make your image look better in some cases, so you’ll need to experiment with it. In the screenshot below, I pushed this slider to the right as far as it would go. There isn’t much noise to sharpen in the photo I’m using. The noise has gotten so large, by this point, it would be considered specks.

Masking: If you push the Masking slider to the right and to the left, you’ll notice that not a lot happens. It’s not until you hold down the Alt (Option – Mac) key on your keyboard for you to see the true power of this tool.

I’ll copy and paste this tool’s explanation straight from Adobe:

Masking – Controls an edge mask. With a setting of zero (0), everything in the image receives the same amount of sharpening. With a setting of 100, sharpening is mostly restricted to those areas near the strongest edges. Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while dragging this slider to see the areas to be sharpened (white) versus the areas masked out (black).

In simpler terms, with the Masking slider, you can control the general areas that you want sharpened in your image. And the view is ultra clear because of the fact that the image has changed to black and white. That’s pretty good.

If you’d like to see Adobe’s definitions for each of the sharpening sliders in Camera Raw, follow the link below.

Sharpening and Noise Reduction in Adobe Camera Raw

Smart Sharpen

In Photoshop, if you head up to the Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen, you see that a dialog box appears. This is the Smart Sharpen dialog. This tool is on par with the one found in Camera Raw.

In today’s post, I’ll be covering only the top area of this dialog. The lower area, which controls shadows and highlights is beyond this post. That deserves a post all of its own. Also, the noise reduction section of the Detail panel in Camera Raw will be discussed at another time as well, since it’s a topic of it’s own. Although, I will be touching on noise reduction in this post below.

If you look at the above screenshot, you’ll see that the first two sliders are the same as what we’re now used to seeing. These are the mainstays. What’s new is the Reduce Noise slider, which works in conjunction with the first two sliders. If your photo has noise in it, you can push this slider to the right to lessen the visible noise. The reason this option is so powerful when it’s situated with the other two sharpening sliders is that you can see if you’re actually making the noise worse by adjusting the amount and radius of the sharpening. Otherwise, you’d have to make all these adjustments separately, which be quite the cumbersome task.

Another new feature that we’re seeing is the Remove drop-down box.

Inside this drop-down, there are three options:

Gaussian Blur: Use this option if you want Photoshop to try to remove an overall blur. This may be caused by a slightly out of focus camera or something like that.

Lens Blur: If you take a photo in which you were moving, causing slight blur, Photoshop can attempt to remove this type of blur when you choose this option. This is perfect when you want to correct camera shake.

Motion Blur: When you take a photo of an object that’s moving, you can sharpen that movement. Choose the Motion Blur option in the drop-down and Photoshop will attempt to take some of the blur caused by that movement out of the photo. What’s particularly powerful is having the ability to indicate which direction the movement is traveling. This option can truly assist when removing motion blur.

As with anything else in photo editing applications, I can’t tell you what to do to sharpen your photos. This post was meant to introduce you to the various options available in the three best sharpening tools in Adobe Photoshop. With the knowledge you gained here, you can decide, based on the type of sharpening your photo needs, which tool is the most appropriate.

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When it comes to selecting nice solid areas of a photograph, nothing beats the Magic Wand Tool. It’s fast, accurate and customizable. In reality, there aren’t many alternative tools in Adobe Photoshop that are as intuitive and flexible as this one is.

In today’s post, I’m going to introduce you to the Magic Wand Tool. I’ll show you where to find it, how to adjust some of its settings in the options bar and then how you can go about using it in a real life project. For the project, I’ll be using the photo you see above. Don’t worry, I’ll be throwing in a few cool tricks to give you more of a feel of what you can do once you’ve got something selected.

Original Photo

This is the original photo I’ll be using for this post. I already edited it in Adobe Camera Raw, so it’s got some more contrast and color than the original did. It’s the perfect picture to demonstrate how the Magic Wand Tool works.

How To Access the Magic Wand Tool

In order to access the Magic Wand Tool, you’ll need to head over to the left vertical toolbar. From there, it’s in the 4th slot down, under the Quick Selection Tool. To get to the Magic Wand Tool, you’ll need to drag the Quick Selection Tool out to the right and then select the tool below it.

I’ve got the location of the tool circled in red in the above screenshot.

If you’ll notice, when you select the Magic Wand Tool, the options bar at the top of Photoshop will change. I’ve got the appropriate one enclosed in red below.

Magic Wand Tool Options

Before we begin anything, we need to become familiar with the options of this particular tool. It’s with these settings that we’ll obtain the most accurate selections.

Since I’ve already covered the first four options (the type of selections) in previous posts, I’ll skip them here. For now, just know that when you first begin making any selections with the Magic Wand Tool, be sure that the first square is chosen – the New Selection square. And if you roll over the three others to the right of this one, you’ll quickly realize what they do. If you want to learn more about these options, please read this post:

Selecting Text with the Magnetic Lasso Tool in Adobe Photoshop

Sample Size

The next option you’ll need to concern yourself with is the Sample Size.

This option controls exactly what it sounds like it controls – the sample in which this tool is to bind it’s selection to. If it’s to use only one pixel as a sample, that’s very limited. The selection will be very small. If you increase the number of pixels that are included in the sample, the selection will grow. If you choose the largest sample size, currently 101 by 101 average, you’ll be taking a sample of the average tone and color of an area. You’ll need to experiment with these averages to see which best fits your own project.

To demonstrate how Sample Size can impact a selection, I’ll show you a few screenshots. In the first screenshot, the Sample Size is set to Point Sample. This is where the selection tool tests the tone and color of only 1 pixel (directly from the center of the small red circle). This is the selection that’s made.

If I increase the Sample Size to something more moderate, such as 11 by 11 average, the tool is testing the average tone and color of an 11 pixel by 11 pixel area. Here is the resulting selection.

Finally, if I increase the Sample Size to the largest setting, the 101 by 101 average, the tool tests the average tone and color of a 101 pixel by 101 pixel area. This is the resulting selection.

As you can see from the above screenshots, the selected areas grew alongside the increase of the sample size.

Tolerance

The Tolerance option is the cousin of the Sample Size option. Here’s how it works – the Tolerance option setting is the data Photoshop uses to decide which tones and colors of an image can be used in a selection. If we set the Tolerance value to 1, Photoshop will only use the one tone and color from the one pixel that’s clicked. Again, the selection area will be very small, unless, of course, there are many solid areas in the image (and a solid area is clicked on). If we raise the Tolerance value to 20, Photoshop will use the tone and color of the 1 pixel that’s clicked, and in addition, will use the tones and colors of any pixels that are 20 shades darker and 20 shades brighter than that 1 pixel. As you may have already guessed, the selection area would be larger this time around. If we increased the Tolerance value again, the same thing would happen and the selection area would continue to grow.

I was going to include screenshots of this happening, just as I did above, but when I did this, the screenshots look almost identical to those above, so I left them out. It’s really the same concept.

Anti-Alias

Anti-aliasing is a simple concept to understand. In the most basic sense, it’s the smoothing out of something. If you make a selection with this option unchecked, the selection edges may be somewhat jagged. If you check this option off, Photoshop will smooth out the edges by averaging their values. Picture it this way – if your selection area is figuratively black and white, Photoshop will look for some gray to moderate the sharpness of the selection edge blockiness.

This isn’t something you should concern yourself with too much. My advice it to keep this option checked. It’ll make your selections look better overall.

Contiguous

Whether the Contiguous option is turned on or off can have huge consequences. The demo photo for this post will show you exactly what those consequences are.

The definition of contiguous is: sharing a common border; touching. So, if the Contiguous option is checked off, any selection made will be localized, even if the same tonal and color values are found elsewhere in the image, but are separated by a division. Take a look at this screenshot. I’ll keep the Contiguous option checked.

I clicked on an area of black below the smoke. As you can see, only that black area is selected. Now, I’ll uncheck the Contiguous box and click in the same area.

Look what’s selected now. Not only the one area that’s identified by Photoshop, based on the option values in the options bar, but all similar areas. The fact that they’re divided and separated by lines and objects no longer matters. Personally, I keep the Contiguous option checked off because I like the control of making a selection and then holding down the Shift key on my keyboard to expand that selection. I don’t like it when it’s expanded automatically.

Sample All Layers

By default, Photoshop only looks at the visible layer you’re making a selection in. If you check the Sample All Layers box though, Photoshop will analyze and select from any layers you happen to have included in your project, whether they’re visible or not.

The Selection Project

In this final section, I’m going to run through a quick project that can help you understand how the Magic Wand Tool can assist with making selection in an example photograph, such as the one I’m using in this post. You may have already come to the conclusion that smoke is one of those tricky things to select in Photoshop. It’s got weird edges and is filled with tons of colors and gradients. Let’s just say, if I wanted to select the smoke, I’d be sitting here for a good part of the day.

My goal with this project is to select and change the color of the smoke in the photo. I’m not concerned with what color I change it to – I merely want it changed. And since there are solid areas of the photo, I’m going to use them to my advantage.

Making My Selections

To ultimately select the smoke areas of the photo, I’m going to select the top or bottom solid black area with the Magic Wand Tool. I’ll set my Sample Size to 5 by 5 average, the Tolerance to 10, keep Anti-aliasing and Contiguous activated and turn off Sample All Layers. Once I have one large solid black area selected, I’ll hold down the Shift key on my keyboard and select the other large solid black area. This is the output. Look closely at the marching ants.

Currently, the smoke is not selected. The large black areas are. To make everything but the large black areas selected, I’ll head up to the Select > Inverse menu item and click.

This will simply reverse the selections. What’s not selected will be and what’s selected won’t be. Here’s the output of that.

Making an Adjustment

Now that the cigarette and the smoke are selected, I’ll go to the Hue/Saturation icon in the Adjustments panel and click on it. That will create an adjustment layer and will pop the corresponding Properties panel open. From there, I’ll simply move the Hue slider to the right.

This changed the color of the smoke without changing much else. Job well done. It was simple too, when the principles of the selection tool were followed.

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After working with blending modes in Adobe Photoshop for a while, you’ll come to realize that navigating between the different modes can become quite cumbersome. Don’t get me wrong – it’s not like getting from one to the next with your mouse is tragically difficult or anything, but I think most designers, editors and photographers would agree that if they could somehow jump from one to the next using keyboard shortcuts, they could speed up their workflow quite a bit. Especially if they are avid blending mode people.

When I edit photos, I oftentimes limit myself to a few blending modes. If I’m aligning duplicate layers, I use the Difference mode. If I’m changing the style of a photo, I may take advantage of the Multiply, Screen or Overlay modes. Realistically though, there aren’t many more than what I just listed that I use on a regular basis. I think this is a case for many of us. If we typically take advantage of only three or four blend modes, why not learn and memorize some keyboard shortcuts that have the potential of speeding up our editing and designing?

In this post, I’m going to show you three things. First, I’m going to list out the keyboard shortcuts that can quickly navigate you to any blending mode you want in Adobe Photoshop. No more wandering over to the Layers panel with your mouse to click that drop-down box and clicking one after another after another. Learn as many as you want. The choice is yours.

Second, I’ll let you know about a quick shortcut that will allow you to quickly cycle through the blending modes, one after another, the way they’re listed in the drop-down. This is a fast tip that you’ll remember forever.

Lastly, I’ll give you a link that will send you to a page that covers all of Photoshop’s default keyboard shortcuts. This is the granddaddy of them all list. You may want to bookmark this post because there’s going to be some good content in it.

Blending Mode Keyboard Shortcuts

As promised, I’m giving you the list of blending mode shortcuts. This is the the basic one that will cover almost everyone’s needs. There’s actually another one that can be found here that covers a few more. Just scroll down to the Keys For Blending Modes section. Again, 99% of us only use a few of these. Just concern yourselves with one or two for today and then more as time goes on. I find that writing them down on a sticky note and attaching that to my computer or monitor helps.

Also, the following shortcuts are for Windows users. If you’re a Mac user, simply replace the Alt with Option.

Normal: Shift+Alt+N
Dissolve: Shift+Alt+I

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Darken: Shift+Alt+K
Multiply: Shift+Alt+M
Color Burn: Shift+Alt+B
Linear Burn: Shift+Alt+A

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Lighten: Shift+Alt+G
Screen: Shift+Alt+S
Color Dodge: Shift+Alt+D
Linear Dodge: Shift+Alt+W

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Overlay: Shift+Alt+O
Soft Light: Shift+Alt+F
Hard Light: Shift+Alt+H
Vivid Light: Shift+Alt+V
Linear Light: Shift+Alt+J
Pin Light: Shift+Alt+Z
Hard Mix: Shift+Alt+L

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Difference: Shift+Alt+E
Exclusion: Shift+Alt+X

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Hue: Shift+Alt+U
Saturation: Shift+Alt+T
Color: Shift+Alt+C
Luminosity: Shift+Alt+Y

Cycling Through Blend Modes Quickly

Back when I had no idea which blend modes did what, I used to quickly cycle through them all with my keyboard to get more of a grasp of what was going on. I’m not sure if this helped me at all because I don’t recall ever choosing one over another. I think there was a bit of a lack of commitment in those experimental days. Either way, quickly flying through all the blend modes, in order, can be helpful. It’s for this reason that I’ll give you the keyboard shortcut to do this.

Click Shift++ to cycle down the list of modes and Shift+- to cycle back up. Also, be sure to select a tool that doesn’t use blending modes itself. Since these keyboard shortcuts work on all blend modes, if I were to select the Brush Tool or the Paint Bucket Tool and then use these, their modes would change, not the one in the Layers panel. I like to click the Move Tool (V) before cycling through the Layers panel modes. Unless, of course, you want to use the other tool modes. That’s up to you.

Now, I do want to share something else regarding cycling through the blend modes. If you head over to any blend mode drop-down and click a mode with your mouse pointer and then click your up arrow or down arrow, you’ll be able to quickly move up and down the list. The difference between this method and the one I just told you about above is that you’ll need to use your mouse at least once for this one, which sort of negates the logic behind keyboard shortcuts. I’ve seen people coast through their keyboards like it’s nobody’s business. The last thing they want to do it click something with their mouse if they can help it.

More Adobe Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

The last piece of information I’d like to share with you today is a link to Adobe’s master list of keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop. You should definitely save this page because these shortcuts may come in handy down the road, especially when you want to create custom ones inside your own Photoshop install.

Default Keyboard Shortcuts in Adobe Photoshop

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If you’ve ever put multiple images together in a layout of some sort, this post may be of great help to you. What I’m talking about here are, perhaps, layouts for postcards, magazines, newspapers, etc…the types of things that you’ve well specified, but haven’t yet obtained the final images for. In cases like this, it’s oftentimes helpful to put the entire project together with placeholder images and then replace those images, or swap them out for the real ones, later on. This type of thing is totally doable and very simple. It’s actually just a few more steps than you would have taken otherwise.

In today’s post, I’m going to show you how to place specifically sized photos into a project as Smart Objects. Then, I’ll demonstrate how to replace those Smart Objects with other images. The new images will need to be of the same dimensions as the originals, but the neat thing is, they’ll follow any transformations given to those originals. Don’t worry, I’ll explain exactly what I’m talking about down below. Let’s just say – if I place one picture in a project as a Smart Object and then transform it multiple times, I can replace that picture with another and the same transformations will be applied to the new one with no additional work on my part. It’s really cool.

Beginning the Project

To kick things off, I’m going to create an empty document with the dimensions of 1000×667 pixels. This is what I typically use for this blog. Next, I’m going to head up to the File > Place Embedded menu item and select it.

When I do that, I can navigate to the folder that holds my images. Now, I want to let you know that I’ll be working with 5 images today. I’ve already sized all of them to 1000×667 pixels. I’ll be placing 4 images in the document initially and then I’ll use the final image for the replacement demonstration.

Placing an Image

When I select an image from the folder and click Place, it’ll appear in my new document. It’ll also be placed as a Smart Object and will be transformable. Take a look at the layer in the Layers panel. You can see the small Smart Object icon in the layer. Actually, when you initially place the image, the Smart Object icon won’t be visible in the Layers panel. It’s not until you hit Enter on your keyboard to accept the placement that the icon appears. This screenshot is right after I placed the image. Take notice of the image layer in the Layers panel. There’s no icon.

And this screenshot is after I hit Enter on my keyboard to accept the placement. Now the Smart Object icon appears.

From here, I’ll go through this step and few more times until 4 images are placed in my document.

Now, if you aren’t familiar with how awesome Smart Objects are, I suggest you read my posts on the topic. It’s worth it to get caught up on this stuff because Smart Objects are the cat’s meow and can help your editing out immensely.

What are Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop?

Converting Multiple Layers into a Smart Object in Adobe Photoshop

Editing RAW Files as Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop

The Difference Between Duplicate Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop

Creating My Layout

I’m going to do a bit of transforming to these Smart Objects now. I’m going to reduce their sizes by 50% and arrange them in the corners of the document. I’ll also add some thin white lines to separate each of the pictures. There’s nothing special about this step. I’ve done a lot of transforming on this blog, so if you want to read up on it, please feel free.

Using the Transform & Free Transform Tools in Adobe Photoshop

As a small tip, the fastest method for transforming these layers is to select all of them at the same time, hit Ctrl+T on your keyboard to turn on Free Transform mode and then type 50% in the Width and Height fields in the option bar. When that’s done, simply hit Enter on your keyboard. This will resize everything, making life much easier.

I’ll then arrange the images like I mentioned above and add the white lines. Here’s what I have so far.

Replacing a Smart Object

So far, what I’ve done in this project has been setup. The real power comes in this section. I currently have four Smart Objects that have been “placed” in my document. What this means is that each of these Smart Objects can be considered a placeholder. Since I initially placed the photos as Smart Objects and then transformed them and repositioned them, if I want to replace any or all of the Smart Objects with the same initially sized photo or photos, I could do that. Any new photo will be positioned in the same spot as the one I’m replacing and will appear as a Smart Object with the same transformation properties. In this project, all I’ve done is resized the layers, but if I had done many more transformations, they would all apply to the new Smart Object as well. This is why this method is so valuable. It’s a time saver.

I’ve decided that I don’t like the bird image. I have another image that’s 1000×667 pixels and I’d like that in my layout instead. To swap out the bird and bring in my new image, I’m going to first select the layer I’d like to replace over in the Layers panel, then head up to the Layers > Smart Objects > Replace Contents menu item and select it.

When I do that, the folder with my images pops up again, allowing my to select the cat photo.

Once selected, I can click Place and watch what happens.

Check that out – the bird is gone and the cat has arrived.

And if I take a look at the Layers panel, I can see that the Bird layer has been replaced with the Cat layer. The best part is, the Cat layer has been automatically resized and is positioned exactly where the Bird layer was. That’s pretty awesome.

I’m sure you can see the benefit of this. With this method, you can prepare layouts far ahead of time, with no need of the final, high resolution images. When you get the images, you can easily swap out the placeholder photos with the new ones.

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If you’ve enjoyed today’s post and found it helpful, please share it with a friend. Also, if you’d like to continue learning and would like our posts sent directly to your email inbox, simply sign up for our newsletter. We’ll send each and every post directly to you. Thanks!