Technical Notes: Week 5

I haven't really learnt anything new this week, but I have been made aware of the convenience of tool shortcuts, and found a new appreciation for the "Continuous" toggle on the Magic Wand and Fill tools.

I don't tend to use tool shortcuts because I have a screen tablet at home that I use for digital art, and so pressing on tool icons with my tablet pen is quick enough. Additionally, I have my tablet pen buttons set to the "Grab Canvas" and "Eyedropper" tools. Also, I can also never track which "pen", "pencil", or "brush" I'm on in CSP so I found those shortcuts annoying to learn. There's also this whole thing with drawing left-handed but using the computer mouse right-handed, where I'm used to using keyboard shortcuts with my left hand and not my right - it took an unusually long time for my right hand to get used to ctrl z.

However, this week, I did some work on Photoshop on a UC computer, and some work on CSP on a friend's tablet. In both cases I could not rely on my usual tool switching methods and I found myself having to fall back on standard default tool shortcuts that thankfully still sit somewhere in my mind. I have had similar experiences in the past where I've dabbled in new programs and found myself using standard shortcuts as they were easier to access than searching in an unfamiliar UI, so further familiarising myself with standard shortcuts would be good overall.

I will add some tool shortcuts to my master post.

I've found a few uses for the "Continuous" toggle on the Magic Wand and Fill tools.

(On CSP, "Continuous" = "Connected Pixels Only").

The Magic Wand tool makes a selection of similar pixels, and the Fill tool fills similar pixels. The toggle determines whether you are making a selection/fill within a boundary (continuous), or whether you are selecting/filling similar pixels throughout the entire canvas, whether connected or not. For most uses, I will have the toggle checked.

I will uncheck the toggle to:

 - remove a white background where there are gaps within the shape that need to be removed as well

 - recolour pixel art