How to display images in Photoshop

Instant Grabber Hand
Ever been frustrated by having to switch tools to move your image around the canvas? Here's the solution — Press the Spacebar to temporarily activate the Hand Tool. Click to move an image freely inside a canvas area that is smaller than the image. Release the Spacebar and the hand tool will revert back to the current tool you have selected

Quick Revert - The Undo Command
To undo your last image modification Press Control+Z), and repeat the shortcut to undo the undo. Toggling back and forth like this is a good technique to review the before and after effects of a one-step change to an image, like dodge or burn
NOTE: Photoshop has ONE undo level. Ctrl Z will revert / repeat.
To go back further (more undo's) Press
Ctrl+Alt+Z to select history movements. In this manner, you can undo back to any stage, although difficult to hold hand around those keys, but faster than individual selecting history components.

The Move Tool & The Arrow Keys
Get in the habit of calling up the Move Tool with the keyboard shortcut, which is the letter V. Also, once the Move Tool is active you can use your Keyboard Arrow Keys to nudge a layer or selection in 1 pixel increments. To speed things up, Press Shift along with an arrow key to nudge in 10 pixel increments.
Important Tip:  Always stay in Move Tool Mode, safer between steps of thoughts of creativity. Today, all our graphic artists have developed the habit of immediately switching tools to sit idle in the Move Tool, less errors..

Drop Shadows

 To create lots of effects in PS, try this technique.
1. In Illustrator, or Corel or similar, select you vector image and put a color into it. (eg Red)

2. If your vector file wont fill with color, it may be that a node is not joined to make an entire path.

3. In the drawing program, Illustrator or Corel, Select the image and Export as .eps.

4. Then go to PS and open a new file to the canvas size you want.

5. Go File | Place - Find your .eps file and place into the file. Handles will allow you move or resize or rotate the .eps file

6. Once you are happy with size or position, click on any tool on the Tool menu, this will prompt the file to be placed into your doc.

From here, you can create a shadow, outline, filter effect etc in Photoshop.
a) Double click the right side of the layer name in the Layers Bar. This will open a new window with lots of options. Choose Drop Shadow, adjust the angles, click on the color to change it and so on.
b) Another technique and better for commercial output is to Duplicate the layer, then lock the layer (transparency) then press Alt-Delete to fill the pixels with color. (Doing this method allows you to add blends, noise, photos eg to the layer and then turn it into a shadow with color.) This will fill the layer except the protected (locked) transparent pixels.
Then, unlock the layer. Go to Top Menu, Filter, Gaussian Blur. Adjust size, opacity etc.

7. Last step (optional) Right Click the layer, choose 'Rasterize' Layer. This will turn the layer into a true pixel format.

Another tip for using PS is to work in RGB or CMYK and at last stages change your mode to Indexed (gif). If your having trouble with color, most probably it is you may be in the wrong color mode. Top menu | Image | Mode >rgb,cmyk,indexed....