126o. Once again I'm riffing on Empty Easel's Photoshop-tutes-for-the-people, which I think is a pretty cool thing.

I too find the Pen tool mad useful for defining selections. There's a maxim that covers use of Photoshop ? select it, then affect it ? which I've found to be a good guiding light when I'm not sure where to go with what I'm doing. Selecting things in PS is half the battle to using it, and EE's information shows you how to use the Path Tool (a/k/a the Pen Tool) to create selections.

That's the basic thing. I suggest you over there if you haven't read it yet. I have a more advanced thing here that's dead wicked useful ? a basic move that allows you to save those paths for later use.

I mention this because when I use PS I frequently find myself using some paths time and again to create selections or fill areas with color, what have you. It just takes two clicks:

First, go to the Paths palette (or Panel in CS3):

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1237. Just today, Empty Easel posted a nifty, quick-n-dirty tute on how to use the Photoshop Curves tool, and it got me to thinking about it ? not so much because the Curves tool is so wicked useful, but because some of the designers I've talked to about it pretty much swear by it. It's the one tool that every PS user gets to know and love. EE's tutorial gives you a good look at why. My Designorati colleague Jeremy Schultz also had an opinionated point on it a year or so ago.

Curves in Photoshop is allows you control of output of every single pixel in the image file, but that in and of itself still isn't the amazing part ... it's the hands-on, graphical approach that makes it possible for every Photoshop user, from the n00b to the l33t, to become a master photo retoucher. With Curves any PS user can render, in a flash, how bright the brights are and how dark the darks are and define darks and brights on a completely catholic basis for the whole image file.

What I find myself using PS a lot for is to take digital photos and giving them a little darkening and brightening for the purpose of bringing out detail (it's ironic that reality frequently doesn't live up to its own promises).

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