Short Cuts: Quick Image Adjustments

Acquiring images off the internet doesn’t exactly give us the best pictures. Most of them are too washed out. Some are not bright enough. A few are just icky. Here are a few tips with a few clicks of the mouse or keyboard shortcuts that will make everyone think you’ve spent hours touching up the image.

(Win: CTRL / Mac: CMD)

AUTO LEVEL:

1. Original Image
2. Auto Level Adjusted

To adjust the Levels automatically: Press CTRL / SHIFT / L

AUTO COLOR:

1. Original Image
2. Auto Color Adjusted

To adjust Color automatically: Press CTRL / SHIFT / B

AUTO CURVES:

1. Original Image
2. Auto Curves Adjusted

To adjust Curves Automatically:

1. Press CTRL / M. Curves window will pop up,

2. press AUTO,

3. then OK.

Of course, these won’t work all of the time but in most cases instead of spending time adjusting the colors and/or contrast this affords us more time chopping.

Short Cuts: Zoom and Scroll

Zooming in and out of an image is crucial especially when details on a chop is required. So here are some tips that will save you those mouse trips to the tools and menus.

Open an image.
(Win:CTRL Mac:CMD)

Zoom IN: Press hold CTRL+SPACE. A magnifying glass with a + will appear. Click mouse button to zoom in. Clicking again will zoom in closer and so on.

K, now what if it zoomed you in the center of the image when you want it to zoom in the upper left?

Zoom OUT: Press hold ALT + SPACE. A magnifying glass with a – will appear. Click mouse button again as many times necessary to zoom out.

So we want to zoom in on the upper left. Press CTRL+SPACE and click/drag the mouse to an area where you want to zoom.

Scrolling can be combined with zooms. Sometimes you want to scroll up or down. Of course you can zoom out and then zoom back in to wherever you want to go next. But then that’s like 2 extra steps just to to go a few pixels down the current area youre working on.

If you just press the SPACEBAR a little hand will appear and you can drag up or down to scroll.

Let’s say we’re done. You wanna see the whole document now. Press CTRL and 0 (zero).

You can also zoom in and out using CTRL in combination with + (zoom in) or – (zoom out).

By learning these keyboard shortcuts early on means more time for the actual chopping and less time clicking on the toolbar and menus.