I was recently doing a Lightroom/Photoshop processing demo and got asked about the appearance of the menus in my version of Photoshop.  How come some of the menu choices shown on my laptop were highlighted with different colors?  And how come the menus on the attendees’ computers had more choices than I had?  The answer was simple:  I had customized the menu choices for my particular needs.

Photoshop has seemingly a million options in each of its menus, but having so many choices can easily become overwhelming and daunting.  Just how many of these choices do you actually use?  I bet there are a lot of options that you never use, especially since Photoshop was not designed specifically for us photographers.  Why not hide the items you don’t need, and highlight the select ones you use the most?  You can easily do this by using the custom menu editor.  How do you access this special option?  Sure enough, it’s one of those many (but often overlooked) menu items.  In Photoshop click on Edit and look down at the bottom of the drop down list.

Click on Menus to open the custom menu editor, and make sure it is set for Application Menus.  Click the triangle in front of File, Edit, Image, Layer, etc., and you will see all the menu items under that particular header.  Click on the color option to add or change the highlight color for each item.  Click on the eyeball, the visibility icon, to show or hide each item.

Note the second line at the bottom:  “Show All Menu Items” will be appended to the bottom of a menu that contains hidden items.”  Those hidden items are, of course, the very ones you turned off by clicking the eyeball icon.

When you’re done, click save or save as.

You can see that I saved my choices as “John’s Menu.”  You can switch back to the original Photoshop version at any time by selecting “Photoshop Defaults” in the “Set” drop down.  You can make as many custom menus as you want, although I don’t know why one would do this.  To delete a custom menu, select it in “Set” and then click the trash icon.

1.  To tone down the whites in an image, select them using Color Range.  Add any adjustment layer, and change the layer blending mode to either Multiply or the slightly stronger Linear Burn.  Then drop the layer opacity to taste.

2.  When shooting frames for a panoramic, manually setting camera exposure is more precise than using an autoexposure mode.  Use the middle of the panoramic scene to set the base exposure.  If you’re shooting RAW files, you can leave white balance (WB) set to Auto.  When processing the files in Adobe Camera Raw, or Lightroom’s Develop module, select one image and drag the WB slider from the “as shot” position to a distinct number.  Now sync all the other frames to that WB.

3.  Make a preset to rename your files in Bridge or Lightroom based upon the capture date.  When you travel, reset the clock in your camera to the local time zone.  This way, all your image captures will match up with your itinerary and there will be no confusion as to location.  Just remember to reset the clock when you get home.

4.  Photoshop’s Ctrl/Command+Z undoes the last step you’ve taken.  But using it immediately a second time simply undoes the undo you just made.  To step backward more than once, use Alt/Option+Ctrl/Command+Z.

5.  When preparing an image for printing, as the final step add a 3 pixel black hairline around the perimeter to define the edge.  Three easy ways to do this:

• Select the entire image, Ctrl/Command+A.  Then do Edit > Stroke, and set pixels to 3, the color to black, and the location to Inside.
• With the image layer unlocked, add a Layer Style, Layer > Layer Style > Stroke (or click on the fx icon at the bottom of the Layers Palette).  Set pixels to 3, Position to Inside, and color to black.
• Increase the canvas size, Image > Canvas Size.  Select pixels for the unit of measurement, 3 for the number of pixels, black for the color, check the Relative box, and make sure the middle square is the anchor position. 

6.  Opening several similar images as layers in Photoshop (from either Bridge or Lightroom) aligns the outer dimensions of the images.  To align the contents, select all the layers, and then do Edit > Auto-Align Layers.

7.  Make a brush to add your name and copyright to images.  Make a new white document no larger than 2500 pixels long dimension.  Add the copyright symbol and your name.  Then do Edit > Define Brush Preset.  For a signature brush, write your name on white paper using a black marker, photograph it (jpeg, small, fine), and size the image to no larger than 2500 pixels.  Using Image > Adjustments > Levels clip the image to pure white and pure black.  Save as a brush, Edit > Define Brush Preset.  If you use either of these brushes on a new layer, you can add Layer Styles (drop shadow, etc.) to that layer.

8.  Caps Lock toggles the cursor display — for example, from standard to precise.

9.  Use the often overlooked Image Processor (from Bridge: Tools > Photoshop > Image Processor) to quickly create new file types.  Select the images, choose an output location, select the file type you want, specify the quality and size, and click Run.

10.  When making selections, remember that the “marching ants” only show pixels that are at least 50% selected.  Outside of the “ants” are pixels that are also selected, just at a lesser amount.

These tips originally appeared as part of an article I wrote for Photoshop World magazine.