|
More accurately this should be
called “7 Things Photoshop Does Automatically That Aren’t in the
Automate Menu”, but I found that title to be a bit lengthy. Of course,
Photoshop does many things “automatically”, but these are a few things
I find especially useful and easy-to-use, that you may not know about
yet. For the example images I’m going to use
a few shots my girlfriend took during a trip to Europe using her
point-and-shoot. I figure this to be the most ideal scenario for this
example.
1 Auto Color
Image > Adjustments > Auto Color or [Ctrl + Shift + B]
For those of us that are professionals in the color-correcting field,
this is a great feature to sometimes fix the poor colors a digital
camera can capture. This isn’t a perfect fix for all photos all the
time, but it can usually get you pointed in the right direction.
2 Auto Levels
Image > Adjustments > Auto Levels or [Ctrl + Shift + L]
This is another quick way to do some minor color-correcting on your
images. What this does is correct the black point and white point in
your image automatically. It’s looking for the nearest-to-white color
and setting that as the white point, then finding the nearest-to-black.
3 Auto Contrast
Image > Adjustments > Auto Contrast or [Ctrl + Alt + Shift + L]
Auto contrast is another quick adjustment for Photoshop to
automatically color correct your image. You usually don’t need to use
this with Auto Levels, but sometimes it helps for images that look a
bit more washed-out than you’d like.
4 Auto-Align Layers
Edit > Auto-Align Layers
This feature is pretty cool as it attempts to align the content on your
layers as close as Photoshop can figure out. When you run this command
you’ll get a set of options as to how you want Photoshop to try to
align. You’ll need to have your layers selected in the Layers palette
by Ctrl-clicking or Shift-clicking on the layers. This is pretty much
your savior for stitching together panoramas.
5 Auto-Blend Layers
Edit > Auto-blend Layers
Like Auto-Align, this feature is probably most useful in photography
situations. When stitching together a panorama, it will attempt to
match and blend the color across all of your layers to make sure your
stitch looks seamless.
6 Vertical + Horizontal Centering (and other alignment)
Layer > Align > (options)...
This one is great when mocking up a new website design. This will allow
you to align things vertically and horizontally to the center, left,
right and top. Make sure your text layer is higher in your layers
palette than the one you want to align with. Click on both layers by
control-clicking or shift-clicking.
6.5 Vertical + Horizontal Centering (to a selection)
Layer > Align to Selection > (options)...
If you don’t have another layer you want to align something to, you can
make a section and align your object to the selection. Just make sure
the layer you want to align is selected in the Layers palette before
going to the Layer menu.
7 Straighten Crooked Photos
Unlike the other actions in this article, this one takes a few more
steps. You’ll want to start with the Ruler tool (located under the
Eyedropper [I]) and draw a line for your horizontal axis to be straightened. After drawing your line, go to Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary.
Photoshop will have automatically entered the the angle in degrees
needed to straighten your image, so just click OK. After running this
you will have white areas in the corners, so be prepared to crop a bit.
|
