Friday Tips: #1

It's tip day! Periodically, I will post a handful of quick tips on Fridays to help make your Photoshop life a little easier.

Here are this week's tips:

• To open a document, instead of clicking on File>Open or Ctrl-O, simply double-click on Photoshop's desktop and the Open dialog will appear.
• If you want to have a flattened version of your image on its own layer, select your topmost layer (or any visible layer), hold down the entire left side of the keyboard (Ctrl-Shift-Alt) and the letter E. This will this is called "stamp visible."
• When you are using the brush tool, hold down the Alt key and your cursor temporarily turns into the eye-dropper tool to select the color you would like to paint with.
• Also, as a bonus tip, if you click and hold with the eye-dropper, you can move outside the bounds of your current document in order to sample colors from other areas of your screen. If Photoshop isn't taking up the whole screen, you can even sample colors from other programs or from the web, as long as the color you would like to sample isn't underneath the Photoshop window.