The Photoshop scratch disk is your hard drive. Photoshop uses your hard drive as temporary “swap” space, or virtual memory, when your system does not have enough RAM to perform an operation. If you only have one hard drive or partition in your computer, then the scratch disk will be the drive where your operating system is installed (the C drive on a Windows system).

Setting Up Scratch Disks
You can change the scratch disk location and add multiple scratch disks from Photoshop Preferences. Many power users like to create a dedicated hard drive partition for the Photoshop scratch disk. Although Photoshop will function with a single scratch disk on the system partition, you can improve performance by setting the scratch disk to be the fastest drive in your system. Other useful guidelines for setting scratch disks are to avoid using the same drive where your operating system is installed, avoid using a drive where the files you edit are stored, and don’t use network or removable drives for a scratch disk.

Delete Photoshop Temp Files
If Photoshop is shut down improperly or crashes in the middle of an editing session, this can leave fairly large temporary files behind on your scratch disk. Photoshop’s temp files are typically named ~PST####.tmp on Windows and Temp#### on Macintosh, where #### is a series of numbers. These are safe to delete.

Clear Disk Space
If you’re getting an error message that the scratch disk is full, it usually means you need to clear some space on whatever drive is defined as the scratch disk in Photoshop Preferences, or add additional drives for Photoshop to use as scratch space.

Defragment Your Hard Disk
It is also possible to get the “scratch disk is full” error, even if the scratch disk drive has free space. This is because Photoshop requires contiguous, unfragmented free space on the scratch disk drive. If you are getting the “scratch disk is full” error message and your scratch disk drive does show a good amount of free space, you may need to run a disk defragmentation utility.

Scratch Disk Errors When Cropping
If you are getting a “scratch disk full” error when attempting to crop an image, it’s likely that you inadvertently have size and resolution values entered in the options bar for the crop tool, or you entered values in the wrong units. For instance, entering dimensions of 1200 x 1600 when your units are set to inches instead of pixels is going to create a huge file that could trigger the scratch disk full message. The solution is to press clear in the options bar after selecting the crop tool but before dragging a crop selection.

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This tutorial will teach you how to save an image or picture and use it as a new pattern in Photoshop. And next time, whenever you’re working with larger canvas, you can just use the Fill Layer feature in Photoshop to set the pattern as your background.

1. Open the image you want to use as pattern.

2. Then, go to Edit > Define Pattern. Type in the name you want for the new pattern and click OK.

3. Now, we want to use the new pattern as a background in our new project. Open a new document, whatever the size is up to you.

4. Go to Layer > New Fill Layer > Pattern. You’ll see this small window.

Click OK and you’ll see another window for you to select the pattern you want to use. Choose the pattern you created just now and click OK.

And you’ll have a nice background for your new project.

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This Photoshop tutorial is about customizing the interface of the Photoshop.  This is one of the best features available to the user. This is because every user has their own way of doing things, keeping this in mind the software has provided a totally customizable interface. By using this any user can use Photoshop CS4 in a way which suits them.

The Photoshop CS4 tutorial for custom interface is really simple. This is done as follows, as we know that we have various panels at the right  hand side of the interface, some of them being layers, channels paths etc. you  will eventually find that you use some of the panels more frequently than the others, while some u may never use. Keeping this in mind the Photoshop has devised an ingenious way to make the interface user friendly. What you do is that when you open any panel you can see tabs at the right top corner of the panel and u can switch from panel to panel by clicking on them, so what you do is that you can click on the tabs and actually drag them out of the panel resulting in a new panel consisting of only one tab.

You can also merge more panels into a single panel. This Photoshop CS4 tutorial is done by dragging the panel into another when this happens there appears a blue glow in the panel below, drop your panel into it and you will find that the panels have merged hence condensing the workspace. You can also separate out the unwanted panels and close them off saving only the used ones with you. You can also drag the panels to the left corner and drop them beyond the tool box; here you will see that you can arrange the panels as you please. This Photoshop CS4 tutorial will mean nothing if you do not want to be more creative and efficient.

When you are comfortable using a specific customized interface you can actually save the settings for further use. This can be done by going to the menu “windows” click on “workspace” and then “Save workspace” by doing this you can directly have the settings the next time you use the interface. If you want to reset the settings or change to some other predefined interface you can go to the button on the top left corner called “Essentials” and click on it,  you will see that the default interface is restored. You can select any other interface too.

In Photoshop CS4 we can also customize the entire menu at the top. This is done by going to the menu “File” and then “Menus” here you can add or delete any menu required by the user. It is very easy to use. You can also change the color of the menus from that dialog box reminding you to use the option more frequently or for any other use.

In this way the Photoshop interface is very flexible and easy to modify as per the needs of the user.

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Learn the fundamentals of Adobe Photoshop by viewing our collection of tutorials.

Photoshop Tutorials at Melissa Clifton
Enjoy this impressive showcase of free Photoshop tutorials, 2D and 3D animation, illustration, concept art and character design by New Zealand artists.

PHOTOSHOP Tutorials and Training
Photoshop tutorial web sites visited by DTG readers, and students…. in the Photoshop department of The Design and Publishing Center, featuring DTG

Photoshop Tips & Tricks
Photoshop carving wood A reader wrote in with a client who wants his web site menu buttons to be on a tree looking hand-carved.

Photoshop Tutorials – Adobe Photo Shop Tutorial – CS2 Video Training
Photoshop Tutorials making it super easy to create cool effects and graphics using CS2 Video Training with Adobe Photo Shop Tutorials Expert Shane Goldberg.

Photoshop Tutorials, Tips, Tricks, News and Reviews Photoshop Lab
Digital Painting with Light Photoshop Tutorial Painting with Light Like dodge and burn on steroids.

Tutorials Photoshop Lab
This tutorial will show you how to create some of the more popular “Web 2.0″ design effects using Photoshop.

Worth1000.com Photoshop Contests
With more than 80 all-original Photoshop tutorials not available online.

TutorialMan.com
Find The Best Free Photoshop Tutorials.

GreyCobra Productions Inc.
The site may be down for some time, but rest assured that we will return with our extensive tutorial database in the future!

Photoshop Tutorials Hands-On Training by DocOzone
Features techniques and tips to become skilled at just about anything that concerns Photoshop.

Online learning resource
Latest Tutorials Category: Third Party Plugin Title: SiteGrinder 2 Photoshop Plugin Category: Automation Title: Sequential Batch Renaming

Tutorials Garden Photoshop, PHP, Flash, CSS, XHTML
Tutorials Garden offers free tutorials on variety of softwares and tools.

TechTV Tutorials
Bert Monroy is the show’s Photoshop Guru and demonstrates a new technique every time he is a guest.

Adobe – Photoshop Design Center
This video shows you how to import layered Photoshop files into After Effects.

Adobe Photo Shop Tutorial 7, cs, cs2, GIMP tutorial, PNG Icons
We have a large set of tutorials on Adobe photoshop and the GIMP. These Photoshop Tutorials hold good for both novice and advanced users.

Photoshop Tutorials videos
Creative PhotoShop tutorials on CD, and a gallery.

Photoshop tutorials,
free Adobe Photoshop guides
Hundreds of hand-picked, quality Adobe Photoshop guides and tutorials including text effects, photo manipulation, website and interface design, web buttons,
etc.

Photoshop Tutorials Best 2006 New Tutorials List
Photoshop Web Graphichs and Web Layout Tutorials Contents ShapesWorkspace Intro, Screen Modes, etc.

80four
Free Adobe Photoshop Tutorials, and Html Tutorials. Also Video tutorials and Articles.

Free Photoshop Tutorials
At PhotoshopPoint you can find free Photoshop tutorials in many different categories.

Magic’s Photoshop Tutorials
Quite extensive and helpful tutorials and workshop.

Free Photoshop, Flash, Asp, Css & XHTML, JavaScript etc.
This tutorial will help you to learn how to create a High tech menu in photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop Tutorials
PageCruve.com – now listing 62 Adobe Photoshop tutorials.

Photoshop tutorials, tips and tricks tutorialwiz.com
Tutorialwiz.com – FREE Adobe Photoshop tutorials, tips and Tricks.

Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop
Tutorials & Lessons
Adobe Illustrator Tutorials, Photoshop Tutorials & Illustration Lessons. Computer graphics, 2D, 3D CAD & Technical Illustration art and digital
art.

Photoshop Tutorials, Flash Tutorials, Programming Tutorials
Online directory of the best free tutorials from around the web!

Photoshop Tutorials, Flash Tutorials and More!
Pixel2life is the largest tutorial search engine on the internet catering to graphic designers and programmers.

Photoshop Tutorials – Search for Photoshop Tutorials on Pixel2Life
PhotoshopSupport.com features free Photoshop tutorials by Jennifer Apple, free Photoshop video tutorials, and a daily Photoshop Blog.

Photoshop, PHP, HTML/CSS Tutorials
SweDesignz offers over 150 content rich photoshop tutorials. We our one of the largest photoshop tutorial sites on the net!

Photo Effects, Photo Editing, Drawing
Anime Pictures, Photo Effects, Photo Editing, Drawing, Designing, Web Graphics Layouts, Animation, Buttons, Color, Photo Retouch, Text Effects etc.

Photoshop Contests and Photoshop Tutorials
Login and show your photoshop art in our high resolution photoshop contests and learn from our excellent photoshop tutorials!

Designer Today Graphic Design Magazine
Making Patterns from Stripes

Easy to follow photoshop tutorials
Welcome to pstut.com, we are dedicated to bringing you tutorials on how to use Photoshop the world leading graphics editing software from adobe.

Photoshop Tutorials
Photoshop tutorials from Vertustech, featuring Flud Mask and Colour Mask software. Free Photoshop tutorials for beginners.

Learn Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop Tutorials – Experts Show You How: Instructional Training Videos, Tips and Shortcuts. Learn Photoshop in Hours, Not Days.

Photoshop News, Tutorials and other Resources
Photoshop tutorial and help website with current photoshop related news and forum.

Photoshop CS Tutorials including Text Effects Tutorials
Welcome to photoshopcstutorial.com where we offer Photoshop CS Tutorials, Photo Effects Tutorials, Text Effects Tutorials, Photo Manipulation Tutorials, etc.

Photoshop Tutorial
Buttons Photoshop tutorials are probably one of the hottest categories in any Photoshop tutorials site.

Photoshop 7.0 Dreamweaver Flash MX tutorials full web designer course
Photoshop tutorials, Flash tutorials and Dreamweaver tutorials to be a professional web designer. Photoshop 7.0 tutorials to design attractive Home Page.

Photoshop Video Books
Photoshop tutorials packed with video clips. Paint Shop Pro Video Tutorials. See screenshot browse photoshop tutorials online browse online tutorials

Photoshop & ImageReady, Tutorials, Actions, & Tips & Tricks
Photoshop and ImageReady Tutorials, Articles, Actions, Tips and Tricks, Keyboard Shortcuts, Special Effects, and Easter Eggs.

Adobe Software Tutorials
Adobe Digital Art Graphics Community: Adobe Software – Learning Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Flash, Effect, InDesign, GoLive, Acrobat Reader,

Al Mackey’s Photoshop Tutorial
This tutorial is aimed at people who are artistically inclined, but may not know much about digital paint programs, and covers digital inking, coloring, etc.

FreshTuts : Fresh Tutorials For Photoshop – The Freshest Tutorials
Learn It 2 Photoshop, Illustrator and ImageReady Tutorials.

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Have you ever wanted to completely brand your Twitter Profile but didn’t either have the time or know how to do it in Photoshop or Gimp? With MyTweetSpace you can easily do that.

Smushit is a service that goes beyond the limitations of Photoshop, Fireworks & Co. It uses image format specific non-lossy image optimization tools to squeeze the last bytes out of your images – without changing their look or visual quality. You’ll get a report of how many bytes you can save by optimizing your images and all the changed images as a single zip for download.

At Photoshop Express you can quickly and easily accentuate your photos with easy-to-use options for resizing, cropping, sharpening, and more. Make your photos pop with fun, eye-catching effects and enhancements. Then share your photos in My Gallery, where you can create customized photo displays, or upload them to your Facebook page, blog, or anywhere else online.

FlickrShop is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that allows you to upload images to Flickr photo sharing website directly from Adobe Photoshop. No need to save your image to a temporary file, no more switching between applications – just open your image, tweak it in Photoshop and share it with the world via Flickr.

CutMyPic is an application that allows it’s users to upload a picture, crop it, round the corners, and add a drop shadow, all in a couple of clicks. You can then either save it or send it to a friend. The site focuses on simplicity and speed.

Any suggestions, ideas? Feel free to comment on this article!

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PhotoPresets for Photoshop Lightroom by Jack Davis

Many photographers are experiencing the power and flexibility of the recently released Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, a breakthrough image management and processing tool designed for photographers. To expand the creative possibilities OnOneSoftware are pleased to offer PhotoPresets with One-Click Wow! a dynamite collection of development presets created by renowned Photoshop educator, author and photographer Jack Davis. And the best part is the price, free.

Designed to work the way you work, the PhotoPresets with One-Click WOW! tackle only one development parameter allowing you to optimize your image at each step to create the look you really want without sacrificing any quality. Rather than bloated presets that control all the variables at once and make adjustments that you may not like and you have to hunt down to fix. You start with adjusting your images color and tone and then can add effects like black and white conversions, tinting, split-toning and vignetting. With XX presets in X categories the number of combinations is astounding. Here are some examples of what you can do with PhotoPresets with One-Click WOW!

System Requirements

Windows

• Windows XP with SP2 or later
• 1 GHz processor or faster
• 1GB of RAM or more
• 2MB of disk space
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0

Macintosh

• Mac OS X 10.4 or later
• 1 GHz processor or faster
• 1GB of RAM or more
• 2MB of disk space
• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.0

Download the presets here.

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There are thousands of tutorials on the web on how to create a Web 2.0 styled logo. I came across one that has a small but very useful bonus. At Hongkiat’s blog there is an excellent tutorial on how to create the infamous Web 2.0 logos and a styles preset download for Photoshop with several styles to create the logos. In the tutorial you can learn how to create these logos.

Head on over to Honkkiat’s blog to download the styles preset and take the tutorial. You will soon be able to create your very own Web 2.0 logo.

If you need inspiration when creating your Web 2.0 logo then check out Go2Web20.net where you can find hundreds of Web 2.0 logos.

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Many dedicated Photoshop users can get substantial speed gains from their existing equipment by simply optimizing their computer and software so that it runs Photoshop more efficiently.

Here is a quick collection of speed-enhancing tips for getting the most efficient usage out of your software and computer:

Allocate a Scratch Disk
Photoshop uses RAM memory to run itself, store picture information, and to save undo and History State steps. Unless you are working with particularly small photo files it won’t take too many editing changes before the RAM is completely used up. At this point Photoshop cleverly uses a portion of hard drive space as “fake” RAM. This is not a new idea. Most operating systems use the same approach (called Virtual Memory) to ensure that enough memory is available for running essential programs. Photoshop calls this extra memory a “Scratch Disk”, and correctly setting up the disk will provide immediate speed and efficient benefits.

To set your Scratch Disk, select Edit>Preferences>Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks. Then choose a drive that has the most free space from those listed in the pop-up menu. If you have other drives listed you can also allocate these as extra Scratch Disks. Photoshop will make use of the drive listed first until it is full and then move to the next drive, even if more memory is needed. Most imaging professionals who regularly work with large files install a specific “fast access” drive just to be used as a Scratch Disk by Photoshop.

Set RAM percentage
Photoshop shares the RAM on your computer with the operating system (Windows or Mac OS X) and any other programs running at the same time. The percentage designated in the Photoshop Memory & Image Cache preferences determines the upper amount of RAM memory that can be used by Photoshop. Most new users push this setting as high as possible, some as much as 90 percent, thinking that this will speed up the processing of their files.

Unfortunately if this allocation is set too high, the operating system, as well as Photoshop, may need to move information from the fast RAM memory to the slower hard drive memory while processing. This action is called “page swapping” as the data is moved back and forth between the different memory spaces, and results in Photoshop actually running slower.

If you experience slower performance when raising the percentage of RAM allocated to Photoshop, try reducing the total amount to 50-60 percent for systems with up to 2GB, and 70 percent for computers with 4GB of RAM. Remember that you have to restart Photoshop after making any memory changes to ensure that these alterations will take effect.

Defragment your drives
As images and files are saved and resaved to disk they tend to become fragmented. This means that rather than the whole file being saved in one continuous space on the hard drive the information is broken into bits and stored in several locations (where ever there is empty disk space). Later, when the file is reopened, the document is reconstructed from each of the individual pieces. This file fragmentation slows down the opening and saving of files, as well as the running of programs such as Photoshop, if they were fragmented when initially installed. You can overcome this problem by regularly defragmenting the drives you use to store your images and load your programs.

To defragment a drive in Windows XP: Click Start>All Programs>Accessories> System Tools>Disk Defragmenter. Choose the drive to be defragmented and then select the Defragment button.

To defragment a drive in Mac OS X: Despite the fact that the latest version of Mac OS X contains automatic defragmentation of files smaller than 20MB, most Apple users prefer to defrag their drives with third-party utilities.

Minimize History States
The Photoshop History palette is a great feature, especially if you make mistakes as often as I do. Each successive edit is recorded as a step in the palette, enabling you to step back through the changes, gradually reversing your edits as you go. But this great feature does come at a cost. Each step uses memory resources and, when you make complex changes to large files, you can imagine how much memory is used to store a collection of steps.

Thankfully Adobe provides a setting in the Edit>Preferences>General dialog that can be used to alter the number of History States (or undo steps) stored by your system. By default it is set to 20, but if you find that Photoshop is running slowly after making a few editing changes then try reducing the number. Less History States does mean less opportunity to reverse editing changes, but this action frees up memory resources and can bring new life back to a slow running machine.

Reduce the number of open files
It may seem like stating the obvious, but the more pictures you have open in Photoshop the more of the total resources of the machine is taken up just maintaining each open file. When you add in the memory used to ensure undo or multiple History States for each file, it is not too hard to imagine that you will very quickly run out of RAM, forcing Photoshop to use the much slower Scratch Disk space. To speed up the processing, make sure that you only open (and keep open) files that are essential for your current editing task.

Run Photoshop by itself
A simple measure to speed up Photoshop is to make sure that no other programs are running at the same time. Seemingly simple utilities such as iTunes, Outlook, and Word all chew up memory and processor resources that could be used to drive Photoshop more efficiently. The golden rule is that if the program is not essential for the editing task then close the software. Click on the photo below to enlarge.

Alter the tile size
When Photoshop processes a photo it splits the picture into smaller image sections called tiles, and works on each in turn. By default the size of each of these tiles is 132KB. You can increase the amount of memory used for the processing of each tile by activating the Bigger Tiles plug-in.

To enable the Bigger Tiles plug-in: Close Photoshop and find the ~Bigger Tiles plug-in file in the following directories:
Mac OS: Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Plug-Ins/Adobe Photoshop Only/Extensions/Bigger Tiles
Windows: Program Files/Adobe/Adobe Photoshop CS2/Plug-Ins /Adobe Photoshop Only/Extensions/Bigger Tiles
Now rename the file and in the process remove the tilde (~) from the title. Restart Photoshop. Now if you assign from 261MB to 1GB of RAM in the Memory & Image Cache preference, the tile size increases to 260KB. Increasing the allocation to more than 1GB increases the tile size to 1MB. Larger tile sizes reduce the amount of time Photoshop takes to process an image, especially on computers with more than 1GB of RAM.

Scratch Disk vs. Virtual Memory
Both Photoshop and the Windows XP operating system use hard drive space as extra “fake” RAM. Adobe recommends that Photoshop Scratch Disks be positioned on a different drive to the one used by Windows for its Virtual Memory system. On most setups the Windows swap file is stored on the Startup or C drive. To help with overall Photoshop and Windows performance, ensure that you don’t position the Scratch Disk on the same drive. To set the location of your Scratch Disk select Edit>Preferences>Plug-Ins & Scratch Disks and choose the drive to use from the drop-down menu. Remember don’t select Startup or C drive unless you have no other choices.

Alter the Image Cache setting
Photoshop uses a special Image Cache to help redraw high-resolution images quickly. Instead of displaying all the information contained in these big files, Photoshop creates lower-resolution versions of the photo that are then used to update the screen quickly.

You can elect to store from 1-8 cached versions of the photo. A value of 1 disables the caching. Higher values store multiple versions of the file, which in turn produces faster screen redraws. The default setting is 4, but inputting higher numbers will help speed up the redraw process.

When a high cache number is set, it will take longer to open files as Photoshop creates the low-resolution versions of the photo at this point. To alter the Image Cache setting select Edit>Preferences> Memory & Image Cache and enter a value from 1-8 in the Cache Levels text box.

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I was always baffled by the fact that Photoshop’s Picture Package command did not offer an option for three 4×6′s on a page. Little did I know, it’s extremely easy to customize these layouts and create your own just by editing a plain text file. These instructions also work for Photoshop Elements and Photoshop Album.

1. Important: Mac OS X users much first apply an update to Photoshop before attempting to customize the Picture Package layouts. Information and and a download link can be found at http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/
2. Copy the next five lines and paste them into a text editor, like NotePad or SimpleText:

# I 8 10
Letter (3) 4×6
0 0 6 4
0 4 4 6
4 4 4 6

1. Name this file FourBySixes.txt
2. Copy the file to your Adobe\Photoshop X.0\Presets\Layouts folder where X represents your version of Photoshop.
3. Open Photoshop and try it!

Tips:

1. The ReadMe.txt file in the Layouts folder explains how to make your own custom picture package layouts.
2. If you’ve never used the automated Picture Package function in Photoshop 6 and up, it can be found under the File > Automate submenu.
3. Adobe Photoshop Album and Adobe Photoshop Elements use the same format for Picture Packager layouts, so this tip will also work in those programs.

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If you primarily use Adobe Photoshop for creating Web images, there are a few program changes you should make. These few tweaks will result in better Web graphics.

1. Go to File > Preferences > Saving Files

2. Set Image Previews to Never Save.

3. Go to File > Preferences > Units and Rulers

4. Set the Unit of measure to pixels.

5. Click one of the color swatches on the toolbar and check the box for Only Web-Safe Colors.

Image previews have been known to cause problems for AOL users viewing JPEG images through AOL’s default browser.

It also adds several bytes to the file size.

Pixels are the standard unit of measure for Web images.

72 pixels equal approximately one inch on a standard monitor.

Restricting the color palette to web-safe colors will ensure that colors will not shift or dither when your images are viewed on another computer.

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