What’s the fastest way to straighten a crooked or tilted photograph? This is one of those classic bread-and-butter Photoshop tips that sometimes slips through even the most experienced designer’s bag of tricks.

Select the tape measure tool (it shares space with the eyedropper in Photoshop’s toolbox) and drag a line across part of your image that should be straight horizontal or vertical. Then choose Image > Rotate Canvas > Arbitrary.

Photoshop auto-calculates the value required to straighten your image. Click OK and your image is all squared up.

You are designing a website for a client (maybe you partner with a web developer who does the coding for you). How do you test your final design to make sure everything looks correct on all the different web browsers and operating systems out there? Unless you have a studio filled with testing computers, you […]

Most people know how to use the Apple (Cmd) key with “+” and “-” to zoom in and out within a Photoshop document. But if you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, there is a faster way. Hold down OPTION when you spin your mouse’s scroll wheel, and Photoshop zooms in and out on […]

PDFs have become a prevalent way to provide proofs for clients. But switching to PDFs disrupts the tradition of adding studio-branded “proof” stickers or checklists to a client’s hard copy proofs. Worse, some some creative teams have reported problems with restless clients jumping the gun and using those PDFs as printer-ready digital art. Here is […]

Back in Issue #57 of our tips email, we demonstrated a fun technique for creating realistic water droplets using layer styles in Adobe Photoshop. The effect was created using a combination of four different layer style settings. The effect looks good with droplets. But when we apply that same set of layer styles to type, […]

Ever need to track down exactly which font was used in a client’s old logo? You can make that task much easier, using the great WhatTheFont tool on the MyFonts website. Upload a scanned image of the typography in question and this website will automatically generate a list of the closest matches in their huge […]

Many OpenType fonts include a collection of alternative character glyphs which can be used to add an extra flourish to your typography. This is particularly useful in Adobe’s OpenType script fonts such as Bickham Script.

Designers in Seattle may appreciate why this tip spoke to us this week. We’ve been looking out over a rainy Seattle skyline for most of the month. If you’d like to recreate your own rainy window scene, check out the ingenious Rainy Day Photoshop actions from Panos FX. This action set works in Photoshop CS […]

Once you start designing web pages using CSS, you’ll probably want to go hunting for a good reference sheet to keep all those technical details handy. (For example, how do I add extra margin to the left of my placed graphic?). We’ll save you the time. Don’t let the website name fool you. Dave Child […]

One of the classic questions every designer asks while learning how to design web pages using CSS: “How do I create multi-column layouts?” Alessandro Fulciniti’s Layout Gala is a great place for hands-on learners to start. You’ll find 40 variations on a simple 3-column layout, each with valid CSS and HTML. Download a couple files […]