1. When working on a colour image, you can use the Paint Brush tool to selectively “paint away” colour to black and white. It can make one portion of your image really stand out. In the Paint Brush Options palette, change the blend mode to Colour, and paint away the colour

2. When using your magic wand tool you can press your Shift to add more to the selection, or press your Alt to take away from the selection.

3. If you have a lot of images to display, use Photoshop’s image gallery to build a webpage of images that are thumbnailed for you. FILE > Automate > Web Images Gallery

4. Double click on the ‘T’ on a Type layer in the Layers Palette to automatically select the entire text layer.

There are at least two ways to switch between the choice of measurement units that Photoshop displays.

5. Option one is to change them in your Preferences by choosing Units & Rulers (in Photoshop 7 under Mac OS 9, Preferences is found under the Edit menu) in the Photoshop menu under Preferences. At this point you can change the ruler units and click OK.

6. Option two is to open the Info Palette (go to the Window menu and choose Info) and click on the small triangle next to the cross in the lower left quadrant. This will bring up a menu that will permit you to change units.

7) To cycle through different screen modes, simply press the F key

8. By holding the Cmd/Ctrl key and clicking the mouse on that layer in the Layers palette, you can select only the pixels and not the transparency area of the layer

9. Do you have a layer style you like to use a lot? You can save that layer style as a style that will show up in your styles palette. In the Blending Options, just under OK and Cancel you’ll see ‘Save Style’. Name it and save it. You’ll then find this new style in the Styles palette. Note: the style must be in its own layer.

10. From time to time when you combine multiple images, there can be a bit of fringe around the edges of the composite images. Hide this with steps: Layers > Matting > Defringe. At the dialogue box, pick the default setting; should that not work, undo it, and try Defringe again at a setting of 2.

11) If you have too many layers, simply select the right layer by using the move tool (V). Right click the mouse over the layer and a drop down list will appear.

Otherwise, you can place your layers in layer sets. At the bottom of your layers palette, click the create new layers set (looks like a folder), name the new layer set, and just drag the layers you like in that set. Great for coping a set too. Just highlight the set right click and copy.

12. Press Shift-Command-M (Mac)/ Shift-Control-M (PC) to toggle between Photoshop and ImageReady.

13) To reach the Save for Web dialogue swiftly, press Shift-Command-Option-S (Mac)/ Shift-Control-Alt-S (PC).

14. Press Cmd/Ctrl J to duplicate your current layer.

15. To bring up the Extract dialogue box, press Command-Option-X (Mac)/ Control-Alt-X (PC). Within the Extract dialogue box, switch to the Extract Edge Highlighter tool by pressing the letter “b.”, the Fill tool by pressing the letter “k.”, and change the Edge Highlighter’s brush size by holding the ] key to make it larger and the [ to make it smaller.