Photoshop CS3 Power Tips

The best part about shooting with digital cameras is Adobe Photoshop. For years now every good photographer worth his mettle runs his pictures by Photoshop, for minor adjustments or major modifications before releasing it to the public. There are still a few enthusiasts out there who consider digital post-processing equivalent to cheating, but these are photographers who are missing out on a tool that can truly show a world of improvement in their craft. In this day and age, photography is equivalent to shooting the picture plus post-processing.

Now with the new Photoshop CS3 available, there are a lot of new and improved features that make tasks that were considerably tedious before into just a few simple mouse clicks. Though these tips seem a bit advanced, they are perfectly doable by anyone who has basic knowledge of the application. Even if you don't, the instructions below should be clear enough.

We begin with the simplest trick in this feature...

Auto Crop & Straighten
This trick is especially useful when you're scanning images. When scanning a photo, most of the times we don't place the image perfectly straight on the scanner bed, which is why the scans usually occur with an ugly and uneven white border around.

For example, I got the image below from a scan I just did, complete with the uneven borders. Normally, I would go through a process of selecting, straightening and cropping in Photoshop to get rid of the borders. Well not anymore!

With the help of Photoshop's Automate tools, this boring (but essential) task can be done in just two clicks. All you need to do is open your image in Photoshop and —

Click #1: Go to File > Automate

Click #2: Select Crop and Straighten Photos

In case you're using an unevenly cut photo like I am, chances are, you'll still have a little white left on your edges.

After just a bit of cropping, we get the desired result. So the next time you want to scan an old photo album, you know that at least one of the mundane steps has been simplified for you. Oh, and this tip also works with Photoshop CS2.