This article will discuss four relatively unknown new features of the Photoshop CC 2020 release, but I love all four of them.
Rotate the angle of the Brush Tip
When using the Brush tool, you can now use the left and right arrow keys to rotate the brush tip – hold down the [Shift] key to rotate in larger increments.
Use the Tilde key to switch between Brush and Eraser
When using the Brush tool hold down the Tilde (~) key to temporarily change to the Eraser tool (using the same brush tip).
Zoom to Layer Contents
To zoom the screen to the contents of a particular layer, hold down the [Opt/Alt] key and click the layer.
Choose Your Own “Constrain Free Transform” Behaviour
In a previous release of Photoshop, Adobe changed the behaviour of the [Shift] key when using the Free Transform to change the “constrain proportions” functionality when change the size/shape of objects.
Previously he default option was “free” and holding down [Shift] would switch to “Constrain Proportions” mode, this was changed to the reverse where “Constrain Proportions” was the default and the [Shift] key was used to go to “free” mode.
Many people loved this change, but others hated it.
Now in PS 2020 you can choose the behaviour you like using the “chain link” icon in the Options bar of the Move tool (see Fig 1).
Fig 1 - Move Tool Options bar
With the icon selected (as in Fig 1) the “Constrain” behaviour is selected. The behaviour you have selected is “sticky” in that it stays that way until you change it by clicking the icon again. As before you can toggle the opposite behaviour by holding down the [Shift] key.
This article was first published in the February 2020 issue of Artists Down Under magazine.