Making Photoshop Work Harder and Smarter

We all discover Photoshop differently, often learning about tools and features that are relevant to our needs. However, this can lead to knowledge gaps that may hold your skills back. Part 1 of this book, Raising Your Photoshop Game, will focus on essential skills and building upon them, starting with Chapter 1, which establishes a streamlined interface and tools setup.

First, we’ll look at significant updates and new features to arrive in recent versions of Photoshop. Easy to miss, updates can pass you by, often installed automatically without being discovered. You could be missing out on valuable time-saving enhancements to your workflow. From sharing files on the cloud to edit along with others and receiving feedback on live projects to the web browser version of Photoshop (beta) and restoration filters, you can get a feel for the latest changes.

Then, we’ll customize the interface, modifying panels and tools so that they’re easier to locate, putting the most effective features front and center in your interface while keeping less frequently used features just a mouse click away. We’ll reorder the Tools panel, stripping away redundant tools in place for your favored go-to, high-impact tools, and set up keyboard shortcuts that make little-known features easy to activate or modify a tool with ease.

Then, we’ll finish with a little digital imaging 101 to ensure you’ve got a clear understanding of key industry terminology. Having an appreciation of how images are composed will make the process of deconstructing them and enhancing them easier to comprehend while avoiding common mistakes.

As with many concepts in this book, the first chapter focuses on attaining the best possible quality from the outset while leveraging time-saving techniques whenever possible, essential for today’s busy digital image editors. In this chapter, we’ll cover the following topics:

• Updates and new features
• Creating a bespoke workspace
• Modifying preferences
• Quality-first approach