2D Archives

Ramblings, Tips and Tricks around 2D drawing apps such as Photoshop, Manga Studio, SketchBook and the likes.

How to enable that slightly annoying Context Task Bar in Photoshop

A few versions ago Adobe have introduced this floaty little palette in Photoshop. It felt very out of place when I first used it, but might be potentially helpful – if only it wouldn’t constantly get in the way. It’s easy to disable with the three-little-dots menu on the right, whereupon it’ll just disappear and …

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Creating a direct shortcut for CLIP Studio Paint

By default, Celsys let you launch the CLIP Studio app, which is sort of a launcher app to manage your services with them. In there is an option to launch CLIP Studio Paint, but some of us prefer a one-click solution to the actual painting app. Thankfully that’s doable, you just need to know where …

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How to change the Photoshop Colour Picker

This morning Photoshop had spontaneously updated itself to a new version, thankfully with an updated Splash Screen that no longer featured an Amazon ad. I was happy about the retro car and the eighties background! I had some work to do so didn’t check out the new features just yet, hoping everything was going to …

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How to create a Stroke Effect in Clip Studio Paint (like in Photoshop)

Photoshop’s Blending Options are so powerful and useful, it’s easy to forget that there are other ways to accomplish the same thing. Case in point: the Stroke Effect, which lets us create an outline around an object. It’s essentially an outline we can apply, which can be used to separate a transparent object from the …

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How to draw on a Layer Mask in Clip Studio Paint

Layer masks work differently across our favourite 2D apps, which can be a little – shall we say – infuriating at times. In Photoshop for example, I’m used to drawing on Layer Masks to hide/reveal something underneath the current layer. Black hides (masks) the current layer, white reveal what’s underneath it, and as such it …

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De-activating Licenses for Corel Painter manually

I’ve had a bit of a computer mishap recently that required me to install Corel Painter seemingly on more computers than I actually own. In use are my Mac and my main PC, but due to hard drive switching and frequent re-installations, Corel’s automated license authentication system thought I was using it on more machines. …

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How to skip the Welcome and Sales Nag Screen in PaintShop Pro

PaintShop Pro is trying to help new users by giving them lots of choices when the app launches. This gets old fast, especially when you’re being peppered with sales nag screens every time you open the programme. Thankfully there are ways to configure this behaviour, albeit somewhat hidden. Let me show you where. Removing the …

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How to install ParticleShop in PaintShop Pro

I’ve recently tried my hand at using ParticleShop with Photoshop, and it worked out of the box after installation. This was not the case with PaintShop Pro though, where an additional step is required (but they don’t exactly tell you this in the installation). Here’s what we need to do to make it work: Head …

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How to add a Vignette in Canva

The Vignette option has been slightly hidden in Canva recently. Here’s how you can find it: select the background layer of your image click Edit Image under Adjust, select see all a long list of options opens up, one of which is the Vignette Here’s an example of what a Vignette can do for your …

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How to import Paper Libraries in Corel Painter

I’ve recently picked up a fantastic deal on Corel Painter 2021 through Humble Bundle. If you’re fast you might still be able to pick it up yourself from here. Among the many goodies were various brushes and paper packs that can be installed. While the papers had an automatic installer for Windows, it was different …

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Things I always forget on a fresh installation of Photoshop

Every few years I end up with having to re-create my favourite workspace configuration in Photoshop. Without fail, I forget where some settings are hidden that I’ve grown rather fond of. Here’s a quick refresher about how to change those. Hide those scroll bars By default, the document is surrounded by scroll bars. It’s clutter …

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Adding an Effect to a Source Clip in Premiere Pro

Premiere Pro has an interesting feature I’ve just discovered: applying effects to source clips. This is helpful if every sequence you’ve created needs an overall colour correction and you’ve forgotten to apply it during editing. Rather than fix 20 clips that reference the same footage, we can fix the footage and the effect will be …

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How to use Emojis and Special Characters in Photoshop

I keep forgetting how to use Emojis in Photoshop. It’s not all that intuitive, so while it’s fresh in my head, let me make a note of it here. This works for both Emojis as well as special characters. The key thing to remember is that an Emoji is just a regular character typed with …

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Rectifying your Keyboard Layout in CLIP Studio Paint (fixes shortcut issues)

I’ve been puzzled by something for the longest time: when I inspect my keyboard shortcuts in CLIP Studio Paint, what is defined does not match what I need to press for it to happen. Conversely, defining a custom shortcut will sometimes show a combination I haven’t pressed. That’s just “normal” the Bizarro World of CSP! …

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How to insert special characters with the Text Tool in Clip Studio Paint

I’ve been having a hard time pasting in special characters from a script in Clip Studio Paint. I mean those that you don’t commonly find on a US keyboard, like German Umlaut characters or French accents. Although the characters arrive where they should via copy/paste from another app, the font does not match. I couldn’t …

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How to create a Clipping Layer in Clip Studio Paint

Photoshop has a neat feature that lets us make adjustments only to the layer directly underneath, rather than all layers on the stack. It’s called a Clipping Layer. Clip Studio Paint has the same feature, but it doesn’t work by ALT-clicking in between layers. Instead, right-click on the adjustment layer (left thumbnail, NOT the mask), …

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How to mirror an image layer in Clip Studio Paint

Image Layers can be rotated, flipped and mirrored in Clip Studio Paint. Choose the Object Selection tool (cube icon), then select the layer and take a look at the Tool Properties. There are two icons with arrows here, one to mirror the layer from left to right, the other to flip it upside down. Hope …

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How to turn Blending Options into independent Layers in Photoshop

Sometimes it can be hand to turn anything that’s created via Blending Options into discreet and separate layers. Things like drop shadows, outer glows, pattern overlays, that sort of thing. That way we can process them separately or make adjustments or erase parts of those constructions that we otherwise couldn’t do. I keep forgetting how …

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Using Clip Studio Paint in Full Screen Mode

I’ve just worked out how to put Clip Studio Paint in full screen mode. This is in version 1.10.x on Windows (the Mac version behaves a little different). There are in fact two ways to make this happen. Head over to the Window menu, then at the very bottom there’s an option called Hide Title …

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Full Screen Video Preview in Premiere Pro

I found out a couple of neat full-screen tips in Premiere Pro. One will remove the status bar at the top, the other one will make the editor window temporarily full screen. It works great, and I can’t believe I’ve never heard of these gems before. Remove the Status Bar in Premiere Pro Press CTRL …

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How to retain a pixelated retro look when scaling images in Photoshop

I’ve been making some thumbnails for my Stardew Valley streams on YouTube, using low-res pixel artwork to reference the characters. My thumbnails are much larger than the original artwork, so I had to resize them in Photoshop. However, when I did this, I’ve noticed that Photoshop was trying to “smooth” the pixels as good as …

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How to edit audio samples on the Premiere Timeline

Sometimes one frame is just too large a step when you’re editing audio in Premiere Pro. Thankfully we can infinitely expand the steps in the timeline by showing Audio Time Units. To do that, find the super tiny nondescript hamburger icon in the timeline, just above the timecode display. Click it and choose Show Audio …

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