Dane Sanders' CutFrame TV features a number of awesome videos by Dane and other fantastic photographers. At Pictage Partner Conference in 2006, Jessica Claire made this short video demonstrating how she takes an image from "blah" to "wow" in Photoshop. I may have posted this previously...but it's worth repeating! :)

Not to be confused with Craig's List :), Craig's Actions are Photoshop actions that are highly regarded in a number of photography publications and have received many favorable reviews on other photo web-sites. To learn more about Craig Minielly and the amazing creative and time-saving actions he has developed, go to his web-site...

http://www.craigsactions.com/

You can get several free actions by providing your name and e-mail address -- you can opt in to receive newsletters and special announcements from Craig. Here is the link to receive free actions...

http://www.craigsactions.com/Downloads/CActionsDownloads.html

Enjoy!

Humans are such creatures of habit. Forever and a day I've been taking the "long way" to renaming layers in Photoshop. Why does one rename layers? Well...for starters...to help you remember a little more about either what action you performed on that layer...or what creative affect you applied on that layer. Too often we start out with just a duplicate layer and when we go back to a project and see a layer called "duplicate layer" it can be a challenge to quickly determine what you did on that layer.

There are multiple ways to rename layers...you can right click the layer on the layer palette and select properties, you can right click on the actual image and select properties to rename the layer (the active layer will be selected)...OR...and I just discovered this little short-cut...if you can click directly on the layer description in the layer palette...and you can edit / rename directly -- a small but significant time saver in my book! :)

I'm kind of embarassed that it took me so long to find...but here is photoshop guru Scott Kelby's blog. (Yeah, I find his blog just in time for him to go on vacation for a few weeks! Leave it to me... LOL)

http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/

You can save yourself time and aggravation while editing in Photoshop by learning shortcuts. Here are two of my favorites...

To increase the size of a brush in Photoshop, simply click the [ key to make the brush smaller or ] to make the brush larger. To harden or soften the brush -- just try Shift+[ to soften the edge of the brush or Shift+] to harden the brush.

Happy editing!

Our friends at Adobe -- makers of wonderful image editing software products -- have a number of helpful short tutorials. Click here to watch a tutorials on using Adobe Bridge for efficient file browsing.