As Adobe Sensei, the artificial intelligence (AI) within
Photoshop, continues to get better, the practice of first using
the automated versions of tools and functions becomes
even more important. Just remember: An automated tool
may not always create perfect results, but often the result
is a much better start than you’d have arrived at through
manual effort. The expression “compared to the alternative”
comes to mind here, as in, “The result of Content-Aware
Fill wasn’t perfect, but way better than if I’d used the
Clone Stamp tool, and in a fraction of the time.”
One example of the ever-improving AI technology is
Select>Subject. In each new version of Photoshop, this
automated selection technique gets better, making it a
great example to first use an automated tool.
Another way to think of starting with automation is
using actions in a slightly different way. Most people think
of actions as a packaged automation: Play this action to
make these functions happen; for example, to turn your
photo into an oil painting. And while these beginning-
to-end actions can be interesting, on a day-to-day basis
there’s another, perhaps more practical way to use actions
that could be thought of as starter actions.
Let’s say that for many photographs you add a Curves
adjustment layer, make things lighter by adjusting the
curve in the Properties panel (Window>Properties), fill
the Curves’ layer mask with black to completely hide
the adjustment, and then paint with white on the mask
with the Brush tool (B) wherever you want to lighten the
photograph. And then you do the same thing with another
Curves adjustment layer to darken areas of photographs.
START WITH AUTOMATED TOOLS
Rather than do that every time, why not create a starter
action that adds a lighten Curves adjustment layer with the
mask filled with black, and a darken Curves adjustment
layer with the mask filled with black? So, all the action
contains are just those steps to get you started. You’d still
manually paint with white wherever you want to reveal
those adjustment layers, but at least the initial work isdone for you, which is much faster than manually adding
the adjustment layers to each photo. For an in-depth
look at actions, check out Terry White’s course How to
Automate Photoshop.USE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
As best practices go, this one might fly a little under the
radar. At first glance, the idea of using shortcuts might seem
more like another form of automation (which it certainly is),
but think of it this way: You can get more work done by
keeping your focus on the task at hand rather than moving
your cursor away to click on a tool or menu.
Some people have a hard time remembering keyboard
shortcuts and therefore don’t use them. A great place to
start might be the shortcuts for activating tools: Rather
than moving over and clicking on a tool in the Toolbar,
you can activate that tool by simply tapping one letter
on your keyboard. You don’t have to remember any crazy
combination of keys; it’s just literally a single letter. Many
of them are very logical such as M for marquee, C for Crop,
T for Type, and B for the Brush, while others are a bit more
of a stretch such as W for the Magic Wand or V for the
Move tool. But generally speaking, you can implement
these fairly quickly, because again you’re not memorizing
a combination of keys, it’s just one letter.
All you’re doing is activating a tool. Think about how
you’ll keep your focus on what you’re doing and how much
time you’ll save by typing one letter instead of moving
your mouse back-and-forth from the Toolbar. Also, once
you learn a tool’s shortcut key, you can throw in the Shift
key to cycle through all the tools that are nested with
that tool in the Toolbar. PHOTOSHOP BEST PRACTICESKELBYONE.COM