Photoshop : Tutorial - Using "Lock Transparent Pixels"

Changing the colour of an object that is semi-transparent or has faded edges in Photoshop is easy when you know how! In this short tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use the “Lock Transparent Pixels” button on the layers palette to do just that.

Let’s start off with a yellow blob. As you can see from the image below, it is definitely yellow in the middle but then it starts to fade out at the edges.

If you try to use the Paint Bucket tool on this faded edge, you will just end up with a circle with very rough edges, as seen below.

To get over this problem, click on the “Lock Transparent Pixels” button near the top of the layers palette in Photoshop.

Note that you cannot use this on the background layer only on layers with transparency.

By locking the transparent pixels, we can now only manipulate the opaque areas of the layer.

Now when I use the Paint Bucket on the yellow blob, the fade is preserved.

Obviously this is a very simple example, but as you can imagine this would be extremely useful when you are designing things like t-shirts or print work where you may need to change an objects fade colour.

Photoshop Quick Tip : Find your layers fast

When you’re working on a large document in Photoshop with many layers, a quick way to jump to the layer you want to work on is to:

1. Select the Move tool by pressing V on the keyboard.
   
   


2. Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) on a portion of the image.
   
   A menu will appear when you click and will list all of the layers underneath your cursor.
   
   
   
   
   
   


3. To make a particular layer active, just click on it in the list of layers. Now, you’ve got your active layer.
   
   If you click Right-click or Control-click on a part of the image where there are no layers or if the layer is transparent in that area, then only the Background layer will be listed in the menu.