Discover how these time-saving tools for Photoshop will get you out of the office sooner.
I own a photography business called Photos for Life, specializing in weddings. Most of the tools you see here were created by me to solve problems I ran into in the course of running my own photography business, and I thought they could help you, too. Judging by the fan mail, I think I was right!
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Photographic workflow can be a bear. There's no need to fear the monster however...my time-saving photoshop scripts will save you a lot more than 108 minutes!
One of the strengths of AutoLoader is it’s ability to run an action right after your image is loaded, right before it’s saved, or both. This is useful for applying a starting point for your retouching at the beginning, or doing things like resizing, sharpening, or modifying the colourspace at the end.
In this video, I’ll describe how to use actions with AutoLoader, potential problems, and how to get around them.
Keep Reading… »
Have you ever tried to back up your actions, and realized what a pain it is? Using the actions palette within Photoshop means selecting each action set one by one and exporting them individually. Such a waste of time. It also can’t be automated, so you can’t back up your actions as part of a regular backup procedure this way either.
Happily, there is another way 
The contents of the actions palette are stored in a special file, in a special folder on your hard drive. So all you need to do it back up that file, and your actions are backed up. Easy!
The file is called Actions Palette.psp and it lives in the preferences folder for Photoshop. Where to find this folder depends on what operating system you use.
On a mac, it’s in <your home folder>/Library/Preferences/Adobe Photoshop CS4 Settings
On a PC, I can’t keep track since it seems to vary with what version of Windows you are running. So search for “Actions Palette.psp” and you’ll find it.
Bonus: you can also copy this file to another computer, which copies all the actions from one to the other, in one simple file.
…Mike
The Adobe Extension Manager is designed to permit the easy installation of plugins. For Windows Vista and 7 users, it can cause troubles due to the way that user permission rights work. If you attempt to install one of my plugins and you get an error message that talks about about inappropriate permissions, this video is for you.
Assigning keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop is pretty straightforward, but as with most things if you don’t know exactly where to look, it can be elusive. In this video, I show you where to look
As far as I am concerned, a Wacom tablet is mandatory for anyone who does image manipulation. The level of precision is unmatched, the ergonomics are dead on (you basically are holding a pen) and the programmability is sweetness. I use a Wacom Intuos3 6″ x 11″ which is perfect for my wide screen. The tablet itself is wired to a USB port, but the stylus is not. I have three styluses, because at any one time I can only ever find one of them.
(At this point I should mention that my wife thinks I am crazy for posting about mice. To which I reply: Yep.) Keep Reading… »
Every once in a while, a new computer bit comes along…something you maybe weren’t expecting, and it makes your computing life so much easier that that going back is painful and frustrating. The Logitech MX Revolution is like that.
I’m a skeptical person, and I had my doubts about a $130 mouse. But after having used it, I can see how that $130 is, if not totally justifed, at least not out-of-this-world crazy. Keep Reading… »