5 Photoshop Tips for Graphic Designers – Graphic Design Degree Hub

Graphic designers have the opportunity to work in creative environments. The field is diverse since most industries hire graphic designers for advertising purposes. If you’re considering a career as a graphic designer, then you’ll need to embrace Photoshop as the program will help you create professional projects. Five helpful Photoshop tips include:

• Using keyboard shortcuts to maneuver layers

• Enacting tool presets to maintain your favorite brushes

• Learning how to create patterns

• Developing the proper scaling method to maintain proportions

• Incorporating new image removal techniques

Maneuvering Layers

While working in Photoshop, you’ll need to add various layers to a design. You may even need to add dozens of layers to one project to complete an idea. To save yourself clicks, add extra layers with a dialog box featuring the key code Cmd + Shift + N. If you need to add a new section without using a dialog box, then use the key code Cmd + Shift + Alt + N. In design, you may need to merge layers. To do so, use the code Cmd + E. To group layers, select Cmd + click.

Maintaining Your Preferred Brushes

Once you’ve prepared your tools in a particular way, consider keeping them to save yourself time. For instance, if you’ve developed a Scatter Brush from your preferred WeGraphics Watercolor Brush Kit, access the Tool Preset Palette. Then, select the new Tool Preset Icon, which is positioned at the bottom of the palette. This will allow you to save your settings instead of reestablishing them every time you need the Splatter Paint option. After you’ve gathered a group of presets, save them for later use. You can organize your presets by project type or tool. Photoshop also has several preset tool collections for your convenience.

Forming Art with Patterns

Graphic designers often overlook the importance of developing patterns in Photoshop. You can create stunning designs with patterns and layers. With the right technique, you can make a background pattern that stretches to fit windows that are different sizes. The technique for creating seamless patterns is easy to use. To form a seamless pattern in Photoshop, use the Filter feature followed by Other. Then, select Offset. With the Offset feature, you’ll be able to eliminate seam lines by accessing the program’s Clone Stamp or the Healing Brush. Once you’ve formed a pattern, define it for later use with the Edit and Define Pattern feature.

Scaling and Proportioning Techniques

As a graphic designer, you’ll need to learn how to scale and proportion projects. To complete the task properly, press and hold the shift key to keep an image at the right scale. When you use this method, it will add a professional style to your projects. You can also use the top tool bar to scale a design. Once you’ve accessed it, scale by selecting a percentage value. For a shortcut, select the chain between the fields to keep the percentage values secured. This step will hold your design in the proper proportions.

Removing Images

A new option for deleting an element from an image is Photoshop’s Content Aware Fill. This technique is easier to use than other methods. To use the feature, outline the undesired element. Keep in mind that your selection can be imperfect as long as you outline the entire item. The next step is to click Edit followed by Fill. Also, make sure that you’ve chosen the Content Aware feature. The program’s effectiveness will depend on the design that you’re editing, but it is faster than other methods.

By developing your Photoshop skills, you’ll be on your way to becoming a successful graphic designer. In the graphic design industry, Photoshop is one of the most advanced tools. You can use it to enhance your creativity and improve your productivity.

5 Easy Photoshop Tips Every Photographer Should Know (VIDEO)

If you prefer to spend your time out shooting, rather than sitting behind a computer, this quick tutorial is for you. That’s because you’ll pick up five “essential” Photoshop tips in just 10 minutes that will dramatically speed up the editing process while delivering great results.

Colin Smith is one of our favorite instructors when it comes to Photoshop and Lightroom techniques. Top on his list of “vitally important” tips is getting rid of Photoshop’s irritating home screen that he calls “a gatekeeper that keeps you from quickly getting to work on an image.” A simple change in the Preferences panel is all it takes.

One common chore in Photoshop is filling shapes, selections and objects. Smith notes (with a sigh) that many photographers take a painfully cumbersome approach to what should be an easy task. As you’ll see, there are several precise and efficient methods for getting the job done. And Smith provides keyboard shortcuts for both PC and Mac users that really speed up the process.

Perhaps our favorite trick in the video is Smith’s technique of working with an inverted layer mask, without adding a black fill, to selectively edit portions of an image. This is particularly helpful when you want to lighten or darken a small portion of an image.

So take a look at the video for complete details on these and Smith’s other tips that will improve your work and get you back out shooting in no time. There’s a lot more to see on Smith’s YouTube channel.

And be sure to check out another editing tutorial we posted recently, with a simple Photoshop/Lightroom technique for eye-popping wildlife photos.

5 Photoshop Tips to Make Your Travel Photos Pop

In honor of my class, Travel Photography: The Complete Guide, I’m sharing my top 5 Photoshop tips that every travel photographer – no matter your skill level – should have a solid handle on.

I also have an upcoming Photoshop Bootcamp that airs for free on June 6th, 2016. We will be covering everything you could ever need to know in Photoshop, from start to finish. Sign up now for free!

1. Use a Vignette

When people look at images, their eyes are naturally drawn to the bright areas. Therefore, darkening the edges of your image will cause the viewer’s eye to be drawn into the middle of the image, toward your subject. The easiest way to add a vignette is in Adobe Camera RAW (which is part of Photoshop). With your photo open in Camera RAW, click on the Effects tab (fx) on the right side of the interface. In the set of sliders called “Post Crop Vignetting,” drag the Amount slider to the left. The farther you drag the slider to the left, the more extreme the edge darkening effect will be

2. Use Levels for Contrast

Many images, especially those shot when the light was dull, can benefit from a boost in contrast. You can easily accomplish this by using a Levels Adjustment Layer. With your photo open in Photoshop, create a Levels Adjustment Layer by using the Adjustment Layer menu at the bottom of the Layers Panel. With the Levels dialog box open, drag the black slider (located under the histogram) to the right to make the blacks in your image darker and more rich. Drag the whites slider to the left to make the brights brighter. Images with true blacks and true whites often times have more visual interest, so this technique is great to keep in your bag of tricks.

3. High Pass Sharpening

You’ve heard of extreme sports. Well, this is what I’d call extreme sharpening. It’s not appropriate for all subjects, but it can be very useful for drawing attention to specific areas of a photo (a person’s eyes, for example). With your image open in Photoshop, duplicate your background layer by either dragging it to the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel or by hitting Command+J. With the duplicate layer active, use the Blending Mode dropdown menu at the top of the Layers Panel and set the blending mode to Overlay. The image will look strange for now, but that’s temporary. Next, go to the menu at the top of Photoshop’s interface and choose Filter>Other>High Pass. There is just one slider to work with in the High Pass dialog box and you’ll want to keep it at a relatively low setting — somewhere between 5 and 15. Look at how the fine detail in your image is affected as you move that slider. When you’ve found a setting you like, click OK. Now, there is a good chance that you’ll only want to apply this sharpening to PART of your image, so you may have to use a Layer Mask to hide the parts you don’t want affected and reveal the parts that you do want affected. You can learn more about how to do this with one of our great Photoshop tutorials.

*Note: If your image turns into a funky gray embossed-looking mess when you apply the High Pass Filter, that is because the layer duplicate has NOT been set to Overlay mode. All that means is that after you hit OK, you will have to go to the Blending Options dropdown menu and choose Overlay.

4. Selective Saturation

Another thing that people’s eyes are drawn to is color. If you want your subject to really stand out in an image, you can make it more colorful than the background and everything else. One way of accomplishing this is to use a Black and White Adjustment Layer. Open your image in Photoshop and create a Black and White Adjustment Layer by selecting it from the Adjustment Layer menu at the bottom of the Layers Panel. It will make your image look black and white. Next, use the Paintbrush Tool and paint with black on the mask that was automatically added to the adjustment layer. (You’ll need to make sure that the mask is active. You’ll know that it is active when there are little brackets around the mask’s thumbnail in the Layers Panel.) Since painting with black will hide the desaturation effect, you will be painting over everything in your image that you want really colorful (your subject, most likely). When you’re done, your subject will be in color and everything else will be in grayscale. If you didn’t want that dramatic of an effect, lower the opacity of the Black and White Adjustment Layer at the top of the Layers panel to bring back some of the color in the background of your image.

5. Vibrance Instead of Saturation

Making your image more colorful can help to make it “pop”. I often stay away from sliders that are labeled Saturation because they have the tendency to cause colorful objects to look artificial. When an image contains colorful subjects, consider using a Vibrance adjustment to boost the color. Vibrance will concentrate on boosting the color of the not-so-colorful areas and will make less of a change to areas that area already vividly colorful. Therefore, Vibrance is a great way to make your colors pop without going too far. Vibrance also attempts to protect skin tones to ensure that they don’t get overdone.

Put these Photoshop Tips to use while following along with Ben Willmore’s upcoming Photoshop Bootcamp! Sign up now for free! It airs June 6th!