Archive for April, 2011

Some Photoshop keyboard shortcuts I just learned

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

paletteimage by Lorrie McClanahan

I just did some research and found a bunch of neat commonly used keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop. Of course there are tons more that I’ll may learn over time, but already these ones are speeding up my work and teaching me cool new tricks.

Please let me know your favourite shortcuts!

Ctrl + Alt + Shift + K – Show Keyboard Commands

Zoom/View

H – Hand (or use Spacebar to pan around)
Z – Zoom tool
Spacebar – Pan
Ctrl + Spacebar – Temporary Zoom tool
F – Toggle full screen
TAB – Toggle panel visibilities
Ctrl + 0 – Fit to screen
Ctrl + Alt + 0 – Zoom to actual pixels (1:1)
Ctrl + keypad +/- – Zoom in/out
Ctrl + R – Toggle rulers
Ctrl + H – Show/hide guidelines/grid etc.

Movement/Selection

Ctrl + Click when Move tool is active – Select layer under cursor
Ctrl + Drag when a tool is selected – Move a layer
V – Move
M – Marquee (use Shift to make square selections. Also shift to add to selection and Alt to subtract from selection. Alt to centre on start point. Space to move whilst drawing selection.)
L – Lasso
Ctrl + A – Select All
Ctrl + D – Deselect
Ctrl + Shift + I – Invert selection
Ctrl + T – Free transform
Ctrl + Click layer thumbnail – Selects non-transparent pixels in layer
Move tool + Alt – Copies selection/layer
1->0 Tool opacity
Shift + 1->0 Tool flow
1->0 while layer selected – Layer opacity
Ctrl + H – Hide marching ants
Shift whilst moving – Constrain to vert or horiz movement
Ctrl + Shift + ; – Toggle snap
Ctrl + ; – Toggle guidelines
Ctrl + ‘ – Toggle grid

Tools

A – Selection tools (for path editing)
T – Text (Hold Ctrl to move text whilst typing)
B – Brush (Hold shift to cycle through brush tools. Works for other multi-tools as well)
E – Eraser
C – Crop Tool
I – Dropper
S – Stamp tool
Q – Quick mask
X – Swap foreground & background color
Alt + Backspace – Fill with foreground color
Ctrl + Backspace – Fill with background color
[] – Brush Size
Ctrl + Tab – Next Point on Curves Adjustment
Keypad Enter or Ctrl + Enter – End text entry

Layers

Ctrl + J – Create new layer from selected one (or selection, or current layer if nothing selected)
Ctrl + E – Merge down
Ctrl + G – Group layers
Ctrl + I (while layer mask selected) – Invert layer mask
Ctrl + Shift + N – New Layer
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + N – New Layer No Dialog
Ctrl + Shift + C – Copy Merged
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E – Stamp Visible

Spring Bonus is now available for PC and Mac

Friday, April 15th, 2011

BoxArt Lanscape

Hi all, my latest BlitzMax game, Spring Bonus, is now available for PC and Mac! Please try out the demo and tell your mums/moms, partners and friends 🙂

Click here to get the demo. (This game is DRM free!)

After leaving Big Fish Games in January I had an idea to convert my old Easter Bonus game to Mac so I could get it on the Mac App Store. But as I thought about it more, I realised that the game needed a complete overhaul in order to sell well in the modern casual market. So I embarked on a crazy mission to make Spring Bonus before Easter Sunday (April 24th). I hired an artist in Mexico, an art team in the Ukraine and a musician in Holland. Then I got my old Holiday Bonus code and completely upgraded it, made new Grey Alien Framework additions, and then crunched like crazy over the last month to get it made (last week I worked 85 hours, 70 the week before and so on).

Anyway, it actually got done on time (and has been localized into 8 non-English languages) and has been sent off to all the big portals, plus it will soon be coming out on iPad and Windows Phone 7 with the help of some people who are porting it for me.

I’m very proud of this game because it took such a mighty effort to get it done and I think it turned out well. The beta testers liked it a lot and I hope you do too. I also hope it sells well because it’s very important to my family.

Let me know what you think!

InGame1 InGame2
InGame4 Level End 1
Level End 2 Title Screen