lesa's blog

Need a screen capture of just one window? Since we no longer have the ability to print one window, like we did in OS days of old, this trick is handy for doing just that.

Press Command + Shift + 4, then tap the spacebar. The cursor will turn into a camera which you can move around to select any open window.

Thanks to Aaron Adams for this handy tip!

Just like my beloved Mac, I can customize my Photoshop experience to an unbelievable level. For example, do you find the font preview list in Photoshop to be a little small for your tastes? How about the little labels in all the floating palettes? The fix is super simple in Photoshop CS2.

Choose Photoshop > Preferences > Type and pick a size from the pop-up menu, like so:

Maybe it's the way the planets are aligned, or perhaps you have a bit of foul karma coming home to roost; but, sometimes a Photoshop tool will refuse to work for no apparent reason. Could be the Eraser, could be the Airbrush, could be anthing.

Here's a little secret: when a tool refuses to work, it's usually because there's an active selection somewhere. That is, there are marching ants afoot in your document and you just don't see them. Deselect everything by pressing Command + D (PC: Control + D), then try the tool again.

I've been in the market for a good mouse for awhile. I had been using Apple's regular mouse for years, then switched to the Bluetooth version. The wireless aspect was certainly cool, though it felt really heavy for my hand. It also didn't seem to track very smoothly and every time I picked it up the batteries were dead (see? I'm not a MacMac after all).

Last weekend I went on a canoe trip, and had a *blast* taking pictures while being paddled all over the Harpeth River.

It was interesting to me that the best photos of the 100 or so I shot, were ones with inanimate objects, such as this one to the left.

I recently maxed out my PowerBook with 2 GB of RAM. My buddy Dave Cross turned me onto a neat little trick to make Photoshop take advantage of the newfound RAM surplus: enabling the Bigger Tiles plug-in.

This plug-in causes Photoshop to process image data in larger chunks, thereby reducing overall time necessary for many important deeds. Whee! You only want to do this if you have over 1 GB of physical RAM installed.

Welcome to the first in a series of Top 6 lists I'll be making for each book in which I tech edit, snap screen shots, or serve as full production editor (sometimes all three at once!).

Ever wonder why you don’t see new graphics you’ve created in your GoLive site window? Well, if you’ve spent some time creating them in Photoshop, Elements, or what have you, and saved those images into the proper folder locally on your hard drive, you may need to trek up to the Update menu and choose Refresh All. This tells GoLive to scan all the folders of your site locally to see if there have been changes (additions).

NOTE: On GoLive CS1, use the View menu or the following keyboard shortcuts: Option-Command-V (Mac) or Alt-Control-V (PC).

Want to give Adobe Elements more power for absolutely free? No problem! There are bunches of people out there who have written Actions that give Elements a few more of Photoshop's powers.

Do a Google search for Adobe Elements Extras and you'll find a host of sites offering free downloads. For instance:

To upgrade, or not to upgrade... that is the question. It feels like Adobe is firing upgrades at us faster and faster all the time, and for some it's a major decision on whether to spend the extra money on the latest version, or hold off till the next one. Hopefully this little top 10 list can help you make an informed decision.