The Photoshop Tip of the Week for the Clients and Friends of Ben Willmore
(www.digitalmastery.com):

I spent all last week lazing in the Bahamas enjoying a fully unplugged vacation. No laptop... no cell phone... heck, the place I stayed at only had a pay phone near the elevator. Now I'm back and feel rather refreshed and am ready to tackle the digital world again. I hope you are too, so, let's jump right in and explore Photoshop's filters.

Did you know that you could apply a filter multiple times by typing Command-F (Mac), or Ctrl-F (Windows)? Not only that, but you can add the Option key (Mac), or Alt key (Windows) to have it bring up a dialog box asking you for new settings to be used. (This only works with filters that present you with a dialog box when applying them for the first time).

If you find an underline flashing under the preview image, then the preview hasn't had a chance to update yet. If you see the same underline appearing under the preview checkbox, then the main image preview has not updated yet. You'll mainly see this when you're working on very large images.

And speaking of large images, when you're working with them you might want to make a small selection before experimenting with a filter. That way your screen will update quickly, and then once you've determined the best settings for the job, you can apply the filter to the entire image and go for coffee as it chugs away performing its particular magic.

If you don't use all the filters that come with Photoshop, and want to have a nice, steamlined filter menu with only your preferred filters, then you can open the Photoshop>Plug-Ins folder and add a tilde "~" to the beginning of any filter (or folder of filters) to disable them the next time you launch Photoshop.

If you've ever applied the Filter>Stylize>Emboss filter and were not happy with all the unwanted gray that comes with embossing, then you'll want to try this out. Right after applying the filter, choose Edit>Fade (Filter>Fade in older version of Photoshop) and set the pop-up menu to Hardlight. That will get rid off all that gray junk that shows up after applying the filter, giving you a simple embossed look using the original colors from the image.

Whenever I sharpen a color photograph, I always choose Edit>Fade and set the pop-up menu to Luminosity. That prevents the filter from creating vivid-colored halos around objects.

If you ever have to scan someone's signature and you'd like the result to be a bit bolder than the original, choose Filter>Other>Minimize. To make it thicker, choose Maximize from the same menu. I know it works the exact opposite as you'd think it would, but Photoshop is thinking about the white background on your image instead of the black lines that make up the signature.

The first filter under the Filter>Noise menu is designed to add noise to your image. All the other filters listed under that menu are designed for removing them. Use the Despeckle filter when you need to remove tiny specks. Use the Median filter (with a really low setting) to remove medium sized blobs (it's also good for rounding the corners of objects). The Dust and Scratches filter is useful for all kinds of noise.

If you're a fan of the Lens Flare filter, try this: When using the Filter>Render>Lens Flare filter, you can Option-click (Mac), or Alt-click (Windows, I think) the cross hair that appear to specify its exact location. Also, on this same subject, if you've ever tried to use the Lens Flare filter on an empty layer, you'll be thwarted with the error message, "Could not complete the Lens Flare command because the selected area is empty." To get around that create a new layer. Choose Edit>Fill and use 50% gray. Set the blending mode of that layer (at the top of the Layers palette) to Hardlight. Now run the filter on that layer.

If you ever use the Filter>Render>Clouds filter, try applying it while holding the Option key (Mac), or Alt key (Windows). That should force the filter to give you higher contrast clouds.

If you ever want it to look like a certain part of your image is made out of pixels that are larger than the rest of the image, then select the area and choose Filter>Pixelate>Mosaic.

Photoshop comes with over 100 filters, and the results you can get with them are endlessly interesting, so we'll be revisiting this topic in future tips. Talk to you next week.

-Ben Willmore