Practical Photoshop August 2021

“Welcome to issue 125 of Practical Photoshop! If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe and get a whole year for just $19.99?” Everyone has their own approach to image-editing, but there are a few universal workflow tricks that we can all take advantage of. So if you have the need for speed, read on to find a host of tips and tricks to transform you into a Photoshop whizz. www.digitalcameraworld.com DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES To download this issue's files, type the following link into your web browser on your PC or Mac: http://bit.ly/pho_125 FIND US HERE… http://bit.ly/practweet http://bit.ly/pracface Also available on: http://bit.ly/pp_pocketmags http://bit.ly/pp_app_store http://bit.ly/zinio_pp…

Keywording is vital for an organized image library: it allows you to quickly find any photo you might need, whether it was taken yesterday or a decade ago. As well as adding keywords when you import into Lightroom, you have lots of keywording options in the Library Module. Here you can add keywords to the field (press Cmd/Ctrl+K to quickly make the box active), or use the Keyword Sets Panel to add common tags (hold Alt and you’ll see numbers appear against each; tap a number to add). Under the Metadata menu you can also set up your own custom keyword shortcut, which you can then add to highlighted images by tapping Shift+K (think K for keyword). The spray can found at the bottom of the panel (when in Grid…

Tons of tools in Photoshop are based around a brush interface, so we inevitably spend a lot of time brushing. As such, any time-saving brush tricks we can learn will save a heap of time in the long run. One of the biggest time-savers is a graphics tablet. It takes a little getting used to, but it has huge advantages over using a mouse. You can make use of pressure and tilt capabilities in the pen to control your brushing to a far greater degree than a mouse. It’s also much easier to draw curved lines and paint precisely. Many tablets offer shortcut keys you can use alongside your keyboard to make common keystrokes or actions. On top of all this, it just looks cooler to be using a pen…

Collections are like Lightroom’s answer to traditional folders, but they have extra benefits. You can set up your collections just like a normal folder structure, using Collection Sets to house them. But the structure remains independent of your file locations on your hard drive. So you can use it like a secondary structure to sort your photos, without having to copy and paste them into different locations on your drive. This also means an image can be present in several collections at once, without making storage-hogging duplicates of the file. To make a collection, click the plus next to the Collections Panel. The panel is present throughout Lightroom’s Modules, which makes it easy to take a set of photos through the Develop Module then on to the Print or Slideshow…

This handy command saves lots of time whenever you need to open several versions of an image into one document, such as when you’re focus-stacking or making a triptych. Simply highlight the set of images in Bridge then go to Tools > Photoshop > Load Files Into Photoshop Layers. You can also run a similar command from within Photoshop – go to File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack. If you prefer to open images through Lightroom, on the other hand, highlight several photos, then go to Edit In > Open As Layers In Photoshop.…

After making a Smart Object, we can link it to other Smart Objects so any changes we make to that image are replicated in all of the duplicate Smart Objects within our document. This means you could, for example, alter several similar icons in a document at once, which would be a huge timesaver when making designs or mocking up web pages. Simply highlight the layers that make up the image or design, right-click and select Convert To Smart Object to house them all within the same bubble. Then duplicate and reuse the smart object in other places or artboards. To make changes later, double-click any of the Smart Object layers to open it up in a new window, then make your changes and save. All the other Smart Objects will…