PCPhoto

Photoshop Faster

Follow these tips to finish your image enhancements in less time

By Rob Sheppard

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I think most photographers have a somewhat love-hate relationship with Photoshop. It’s a great program, to be sure, and it offers the most comprehensive and expandable set of tools for photographers. But on the other hand, it takes time to learn and use, and working on a computer isn’t what most photographers wanted to do when they began photographing. There are ways to make your workflow in Photoshop go faster so that you can spend more time with photography and less time trying to work through software. Here’s how you can accomplish that.

Start With The Basics
I sometimes hear photographers say they don’t worry too much about composition when taking a photograph because they can fix it in Photoshop! But when you have to fix the image in Photoshop, it always means more work and more time.

You’ll make your Photoshop workflow more efficient and less frustrating if you get the best picture possible when you’re shooting. For example, too much exposure means difficult highlights to deal with. Too little exposure means problems with noise and color in the dark areas. White-balance problems also can be a time-waster.

Another good example is sharpness. Use a tripod when you need one, choose a fast enough shutter speed to minimize camera shake during exposure and be careful that your autofocus is focusing on the right spot on your subject.

And know when to just say no! Some lighting conditions never make a good photograph and always cause you problems in Photoshop.

Right-Click Mouse
Photoshop offers a variety of great tools, but it takes a lot of time to go back and forth, back and forth between what you’re working on and the Options toolbar in order to modify a tool. This is especially true with a large monitor.

A better way to access those options is to use a right-click mouse. If you’re a Windows user, you’ve always had a right-click mouse. If you’re a Mac user and you don’t have a right-click mouse, get one.

The right-click mouse is a useful tool—wherever you’re working on a picture, simply press the right button and instantly a context-sensitive menu appears. This menu is specific to the tool you’re using. It gives you the options that you need to quickly make any modifications to that tool to work more efficiently. For example, when working with the Brush tool, you can quickly change the size of a brush by right-clicking and accessing the brush size menu.

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