Things I have learnt while on the job

Most of these notes were made while I was working as a designer/developer.

how to fix mac menu bar clock which is stuck

go to utilities > activity monitor > look for systemuiserver and quit process from the red button above it. this will restart the clock icons and all so it will reflect the correct time.

MS Word

how to replace all images at the same time (or delete them)

the tag is ^g

duplicate layer in photoshop in place

like flash "paste in place"

While dragging and dropping layers press SHIFT before dropping the layer in the new document
or duplicate layers directly in target psd

CSS Body Tags

body tag sometimes doesnt work in external css sheet. put body formatting css tags in <body> tag itself.

Export Layers to Files

HANDY FOR EXPORTING FLASH ASSETS

Brushed Metal effect

make a gentle, gradiented shade add noise > gaussian > monochromatic filter > blur > motion blur > angle 0

Layer Mask hides effect

Under Advanced Options, there are two options - Layer mask hides effect and Vector mask hides effect - this means that if you have a complicated masked layer that is getting some unintended effects, you can just make the layer mask sort of override the effect. Previously I just stuck everything in a group and applied the mask to the group itself. Actually I still stick things into groups and mask them all the time. But an option actually exists! I dunno how I completely glossed over this checkbox in the past...

Adjustment layers

Constantly being reminded that different people work in quite different ways. Opened up this file and saw this strangeness - i have never used channel mixers and colour balances in this way but I suppose this way its non-destructive so maybe if I'm editing photos I might do that in future.