5 Hidden Gems in Photoshop That You Can Use All the Time

Here’s a helpful 9.5-minute video by CreativeLive in which photographer Blake Rudis shares 5 “hidden” gems in Adobe Photoshop you can add to your mental toolkit to improve your workflow.

Here’s a quick rundown of the 5 gems covered:

#1. Snapshots and Adobe Camera Raw (0:18): You can save snapshots of your RAW photo edits in Camera Raw to revisit at any time, even after closing the photo and reopening it.

#2. Gradient Map Adjustment Layers (1:35): Using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with a Gradient Map adjustment layer is a powerful way to convert color photos to black and white.

#3. Layers Styles (4:00): While layer styles are normally used for shapes and texts, they’re very powerful when used with adjustment layers.

#4. Highlights and Shadows Adjustments (6:08): The Shadows/Highlights adjustment panel can help you control the dark and light areas of overlays (in his example Rudis uses a dreamlike “radiating effect” layer).

#5. Actions (7:34): Learning to use Actions can help you save time by letting you replay a series of edits that you find yourself doing all the time.