Photoshop Secrets: 10 Rules I Wish I Knew When I Started

having used Photoshop since I was 8 years old I don't want you to make the same mistakes I did when I was starting out I care about you I really do so in this video we're going to cover 10 Photoshop Secrets or rules that I wish I knew when I was starting off that's going to help you big time trust me one or more of them are going to blow your mind so without any further Ado let's get [Music] started back in the magical world the Photoshop and check this out if I were to select

the gradient tool right here and create a gradient like this as soon as we zoom in there is banding all over the place now here's what's worse if you were to create an adjustment layer on top of that by clicking on the adjustment layer icon choosing something like curves and doing something like this maybe see more and more banding it becomes more pronounced like so now what does this tell us as you begin to stack adjustments over adjustments in Photoshop your images start to break a little so that is why it is always recommended that

you work in 16bit yes you can export an 8bit but work in 16 bit have a look at this yes in this case you can go to the gradient fill check di that helps a lot but you can still see it if I go back to Curves and then if I increase the contrast even more like so you're still able to see all of this banding in here even though green has been added it's just too much so if you go to image mode and 16 bits per Channel there you go it's just gone magically

no matter how many adjustments you add it's going to be fine and then when you're ready to export you can always go to file export export as or whatever export method you want to use and here you can save it as a JPEG which is 8 bit anyway or if you do want to convert it to 8bit in Photoshop you can always create a stamp visible layer at the top by pressing Control Alt shift and E this creates a merged layer of everything that is on the canvas right now and right now if you go

to image mode and change it to 8 bits per channel it's going to be fine one of the other big problem that I faced staring out was colors change Ching during export or even during the edit process for example here's a raw file by the way this is from world famous dog photographer kayy Grier she's incredible definitely check out her work right here now let's click on open right here so I've opened this in Photoshop now let's say you saved it as a regular jpeg by going to file export export as or save a copy

whatever you choose but here as you can see you have a preview and the colors are changing this was absolutely not the color that we worked with now sometimes if you go to file something like save a copy and if we choose jpeg let's name the scaly and click on Save full quality hit okay even at this point when the jpeg looks okay if we click on it the colors are okay but you may upload it to social media or Instagram and the colors change and there's a reason for that and the reason is Pro

Photo RGB have a look at the color space it's not srgb web supports srgb so whenever you export it for a web you want to make sure you convert it to srgb one easy way of doing that is by going to file export and using this module export ads you get a realtime preview just scroll down and you want to make sure both are checked convert to srgb and embed color profile just to be super sure and then export it it will be fine and so your colors will remain intact when you export or upload

it on the web speaking of Colors Let's Open a photo with excellent colors this is a raw photo so it directly opens in camera raw it should and I've made a few adjustments right here to make it look better I actually took this in Paris now if I were to click on open I cannot change any of those adjustments they're just gone let's say you wanted to decrease the exposure or the highlights or play with the Shadows you cannot do that anymore instead do it another way let's close it we don't want to save it

and I'm going to open that dng again it opens up in camera ra and when it does don't click on open instead you can hold the shift key and click on open object alternatively you can click on the Arrow right there and click on open as object that's it click on that now this opens as a smart object this gives us a lot of flexibility you can keep on adding adjustment layers for example I'm going to add a color lookup table maybe something like crisp warm and decrease the opacity to about 20% and then you

feel like maybe I needed to increase the contrast or increase or decrease the highlights you can always doubleclick on the thumbnail of this smart object it gets you back to camera raw with all of the raw adjustments that you have had made and you can make adjustments to it according to your wish let's say you wanted more contrast and more details in the highlights and maybe more Shadows hit okay there you go all of those changes made so just a reminder whenever you import a raw photo into camera raw always remember to hold the shift

key and click on open object instead of just open before we move to our next step this video is brought to you by pixin Perfect Pro the ultimate way to master Photoshop from start to finish and Beyond we have a curriculum of more than 100 videos that's going to help you learn Photoshop step by step one baby step at a time so you never have to stay confused and jump from one random video to another it's in a structured path in these courses you learn Photoshop by concept so you never have to memorize the steps

my goal is to make you the master so that you can make decisions on what to do depending upon what Vision you have and the students are loving it and these are the comments from inside the course and I didn't even ask anyone to leave those and right now there's a special offer going on with pixm perfect Pro so check the link in description to check it out back to the video and to the next step and this is about masking here I have changed the color of his shirt first we added the base color

shadows and highlights all of them use the same mask now there's a problem with that let's say you wanted to edit the mask somewhere you wanted to erase it from here by painting with black inside of the Mask now if I wanted to do that the problem is I have to do the same with all of the other layers I have to select the shadow mask and just play with that I have to select the Highlight mask and remove that from there and it is is such a hassle so that's problem number one problem number

two is even bigger when you have the same masks stacked on top of the other the edges go crazy have a look around the edges as you can see there's a bright red halo Can you spot that right here now to fix all of these problems the solution is simple select the topmost layer hold the shift key select the bottommost layer making an adjustment then press control or command G now take one of the masks and place it on the group and then delete the rest of the Mask select the mask press the delete key

select this mask press the delete key so now that problem is gone just to share with you the before and after here in history I'm going to create a snapshot right here of my current state this is how we opened it with three separate masks look at the edge and this is how it is right now so much more natural and right now if I wanted to adjust the mask I just have to adjust one mask so with that mask selected you can take the brush you can erase you can add that's not going to

be an issue so whenever you're making an adjustment in the same area or tending to add the same mask over and over again it just makes sense to group all of those layers and just use one mask now this rule definitely goes without saying but there's another tip hidden inside of that so with the background layer selected let's say you made a copy of the background layer and then you went to filter camera raw filter and you made some adjustments for this example I'm just going to go to presets and I made a preset recently

which is nice warm green let's add that hit okay now it's applied but can you tell the mistake I did here I didn't convert this layer into a smart object so if I wanted to change anything like the contrast like the highlights back in camera raw I'm stuck there is nothing I can do right here so instead always whenever you can convert the layer into a smart object before applying anything so with the background layer selected press control or command J to make a copy then go to filter convert for smart filters hit okay now

this is a smart object alternatively let's go back you can also right click on it and choose convert to Smart object right same thing right here now if you go to filter camera raw filter I'm going to apply the same preset right here hit okay preset is applied everything is nice but the great part right here is that I can always go back by double clicking on camera if you cannot see it just open it up from here double click on whatever filter you have added and you can change the values directly let's say you

wanted some more contrast maybe less exposure hit okay changed at any point in time now all the time it may be inconvenient to right click and choose convert to Smart object or going to filter let's assign a shortcut to it let's go back to how it was with the background layer selected I'm going to make a copy by pressing control or command J now let's go to edit keyboard shortcuts here there you go and then let's go to shortcuts for application menus scroll down you will find layer open that up scroll down further you'll find

Smart objects somewhere here there you go and for convert to Smart objects let's assign a shortcut click here and give it any shortcut you want I'm going to press command shift d maybe now this is already a shortcut for reselect but I don't use that so that's fine click on accept now this is your shortcut hit okay for converting a layer into a smart object so with that layer selected if you press the shortcut that you just assigned in my case it is command shift d this is right now a smart object so always convert

a layer into a smart object whenever you can I know there are some limitations also assign a shortcut so it's faster for your workflow now as you're working through your document I beg you please please do not trust autosave yes always develop the muscle memory of pressing control or command s from time to time whenever you're doing something essential let's say you created this layer press control or command s and then you created something that took a little bit of time control or command s now how do you know whether your document is saved or

not let's say you were to create a brand new layer and then with the brush you paint it a little bit around the corner like so now you will see that there's an asteris right here which means that there are unsaved changes as soon as you press control or command s those changes that you made are now saved and the asteris goes away so develop the habit of looking at that and pressing control or command s and the second thing is definitely set up autosave to the most frequent setting let's go to photoshop settings by

going to photoshop settings on Windows it is under edit preferences then go to file handling inside of that in the automatically save recovery information you want to make sure this is checked no matter what whether Hell Breaks Loose you shouldn't care this has to be checked and then I set it to 5 minutes the lowest setting right here so every 5 minutes it's going to save recovery information hit okay restart Photoshop for the changes to absolutely take effect and if you want even more protection you're working on something very essential you have spent a lot

of time into this and you don't trust your computer or even if you trust it you're scared that it might crash there might be a power outage your files can get corrupt in those cases and especially if you're a professional use cloud documents now this document is already saved in my local Drive do that first by going to file save as and definitely save a copy of that PSD by clicking on Save it's Photoshop document that's fine have a local version but also go to file save as and in here choose save to cloud documents

I've already saved it by the way I'm going to do it one more time and click on Save now this won't work if you're using a Captain Jack Sparrow version of Photoshop but if you're a professional you shouldn't be using Captain Jack Sparrow versions and the great part about Photoshop Cloud document is that whenever you make any change let's say I move the fire a little bit like this and make it larger all right hit enter or return and I'm going to turn everything back on like so now even if I don't save it and

I close it it's going to automatically save it it's going to take care of that secondly it's always available and updated in the cloud so if you open it in another device this file will be available for you let's say you're traveling you forgot to take it yep you can start editing from right then and there and just so you know you can access your cloud documents directly in Photoshop by going to your home screen and clicking on your files and here are your cloud documents I've made most of my thumbnails and saved it as

a cloud document because those are important and another great advantage of cloud documents is that it saves version history so if you go to window and then version history it's not available in regular Photoshop document that you store locally for example in January 7th this was my version I may be made a change so at any date if I had made a change to it it will save that I know it fills up the cloud and takes space but it's absolutely worth it for those very important Photoshop documents now I don't know why Adobe has

turned this on by default but it's just crazy have a look at this so if we were to select the crop tool and let's say we cropped this photo like so beautiful photo reminds me of my childhood those were the days hit enter or return this is fine but let's say I want to get back all of those areas maybe I want to create a different version of this maybe a banner if I click again with the crop tool and try to get back those areas it's just gone it's absolutely gone it's deleted those pixels

are lost so how do we get that back and how do we prevent this from happening I don't know why Adobe has turned this on by default you always always want to make sure that delete cropped pixels is turned off the first thing you do when you start Photoshop for the first time just you want to make sure that delete cropped pixels is turned off now if you click with the crop to and if you crop it like this hit enter or return you click again you have access to everything back so just a little

tip you always want to make sure delete cropped pixel SCE is turned off I would ask Adobe to actually remove this the next tiep is more of a rule that came in recently and it's common sense but it's important to understand and that is never work on beta software on a production machine if you are a professional you create photos for your client you edit photos for your client you create some absolutely incredible digital artworks and you do that professionally and it's your main computer please do not installed beta software onto it a few videos

ago I covered a worldwide Photoshop crash that only happened if you installed a beta version of Photoshop so if you did no other version was working even the general versions were not working and you needed to uninstall the beta version for everything to work so the conclusion is for any creative software please do not install beta software on a production machine let's say you wanted to use the subject cutout for another document for another design so if I go here and pick this cutout right here select this layer press control or command C and create

a document with the same dimensions this is 384 2160 right let's go to file new and let's create 384 2160 version 2 click on Create and if you were to paste it by pressing control or command V this is not at the exact same position in this case it was right here attached to the bottom but with this one it's just somewhere else if you want to paste in place which means placed in the exact same position since this is the exact same Dimension you can press instead of control or command V press control or

command shift and V it will paste it in the exact same position so those are all the Photoshop rules I wish I knew when I was getting started but there are many more and many more to come in future videos thank you so much for watching and if you want a master Photoshop from start to finish and Beyond definitely check out pix in perfect Pro there's a special offer going on at the moment oh and how can I forget a very Happy Valentine's Day to you I hope you take the time to appreciate the people

in your life appreciate the people who love you and I appreciate you for being there with me for this video thank you so much that means the world to me I'll see you in my next one until then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating love on I can't it anymore oh put your love on me now cross me and you will SA [Music]