6 Adobe Photoshop Tips and Tricks That Looks Professional

As designers, we are always searching for different and effective ways to do things. Be it in a form of photo editing, illustrations, general designs, and many more. We often lean towards tutorials or exploring the software itself to aid us in our designs.

So today I am here to share some Adobe Photoshop tips and tricks for effortless and quick designs that may be helpful in helping you design your next masterpiece. These tips and tricks can be applied even as a beginner, to make your artwork look like a seasoned professional!

6 Adobe Photoshop Tips and Tricks that Professionals Use

• Name your layers and use groups.
• Create chromatic abberation.
• Use quick sky replacement tool.
• Use object selection tool.
• Using textures to amplify your design.

1. Name your layers and use groups.

Before we start diving into the flashy and cool tips and tricks, let us go through the first one, naming your layers and using groups. This is necessary as it keeps your workspace clean, easily navigable and has an overall faster workflow. Which saves time when there’s edits that need to be done on specific parts of your design.

It is also helpful if there’s any instance where you have to pass your working files to someone else. They will have an easier time understanding your layers and would have a breeze editing what has to be done. Yes it might be a bit of a chore to do at first. But as you keep practicing, these will become a habit by nature.

How to use Photoshop layers for beginners by photoshopCAFE

How to Group Layers in Photoshop by Pixel & Bracket Photoshop Tutorials

2. Create chromatic aberration.

Next tip is creating chromatic aberration. Chromatic aberration is a phenomenon in which light rays passing through a lens focus at different points, depending on their wavelength.  VHS tape aesthetics or effects that have a RGB camera blur-ish effects are examples of chromatic aberration. Often amplified to achieve a whole different look and feel to a design.

Source from @lil.j.arts

Ever wanted to achieve such an effect on your designs or photos but tutorials online are too long-winded and confusing?

Here’s a quick and easy way to create chromatic abberation:

1. Duplicate your layer
2. Double click the layer and uncheck the ‘R’ channel.
3. Move the layer over by 3-5 pixels, or which ever amount suits your design

Source from envatotuts+

3. Quick sky replacement.

Source from Adobe

The next tip we have for you is quick sky replacement. Back then, replacing and changing the look of any sky required multiple tedious and time consuming steps. Which in the end disrupts workflow and productivity. But fear not as adobe has introduced this tool called the Sky Replacement tool.

How to use sky replacement tool on Adobe Photoshop:

1. On Adobe Photoshop, look up ‘Sky Replacement’ in your search bar
2. Click on the Sky Replacement tool
3. Select your preferred new sky from the presets provided or even add any of your own

After doing so, do some fine tuning and adjustments and I bet you, you will be blown away by the results.

Another mini hack for this is to download sky packs online and upload it into your ‘Sky Replacement’ tool. Alternatively, if you are a photographer, you can upload your own pictures that you have taken.

4. Object Selection Tool

Wanting to crop and select certain images has always been a challenge. Some methods are fast yet not so accurate. While others are accurate but very tedious and takes a lot of time. Introducing the object selection tool.

The object selection tool helps you simplify selecting an object or region of a specific place. Be it people, cars, buildings, pets, mountains, etc. All you have to do is to create a shape around the intended object or region, or use the lasso tool and roughly outline what is needed the be cropped. 

Source from adobe

Here’s an example of what the selection looks like. As you can see, the one highlighted in blue is the selected part. Look at how accurate it is, especially in selecting the hair strands.

By using this tool, it really does save up a lot of time and quickens the workflow for you. If you feel like you’ve overdone it, you can go back and refine the edges just as a precaution.

5. Using textures to amplify designs

Ever felt like your designs looked too flat and needed something extra to amplify it? In this last tip, we are introducing the use of textures. Textures can really help amplify your design. Giving depth and dynamic into your works, it really is helpful. Here is how you can do so.

The easiest way you can do so, is by finding or downloading free texture packs that you can find scattered all around the internet. Keep it in a folder and label it as your assets!

Next, open up photoshop and make sure you already have a layer or design opened up.

Next, just drag and drop your preferred texture and play around with the blending mode together with the opacity to achieve your intended look.

It is a very fast and easy trick that anyone can do. There are tons of textures to explore from and tons of ways to use it in your designs. So don’t be afraid and just experiment!

In Conclusion

These are just quick tips and tricks for you to try. I hope you can take these tips and explore even deeper to increase the value of your creative work!