Adjustment Layers

Stop Repainting Objects by Hand — Use Photoshop's Hue/Saturation to Color Match in Minutes
Video Tutorials

Stop Repainting Objects by Hand — Use Photoshop's Hue/Saturation to Color Match in Minutes

Client sends you a product photo. The widget is blue. They want it pink. You open Photoshop, grab the Brush tool, and spend forty minutes hand-painting over it like some kind of digital house painter. The result looks okay at 50% zoom and terrible at 100%. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit, and for a while I thought that was just the job. Turns out there’s a smarter way, and it takes about five minutes once you know the workflow.

Photoshop Already Knows How to Edit Video — You Just Haven't Asked It Yet
Video Tutorials

Photoshop Already Knows How to Edit Video — You Just Haven't Asked It Yet

Most of my work lives in still images. Logos, social graphics, the occasional print piece. But clients have a habit of throwing curveballs, and at some point someone’s going to slide a video file your way and ask you to “just clean it up a bit.” The first time that happened to me, I stared at my screen for a solid ten minutes before opening Premiere like a coward. Turns out I didn’t need to.

The Two-Minute Cinematic Color Grade That's Been in My Toolkit Ever Since
Video Tutorials

The Two-Minute Cinematic Color Grade That's Been in My Toolkit Ever Since

I used to spend an embarrassing amount of time trying to make my photos look like they came from a film set. We’re talking curves adjustments stacked on top of hue/saturation layers, color lookup tables I didn’t fully understand, the whole mess. The results were inconsistent, and my clients could always tell when I’d been “experimenting.” Then I watched this tutorial from Aaron Nace over at PHLEARN and felt that specific mix of relief and annoyance that comes with realizing you’ve been doing something the hard way for years.

Stop Repainting Layers Like It's 2008 — Here's How to Change Any Color in Photoshop Properly
Video Tutorials

Stop Repainting Layers Like It's 2008 — Here's How to Change Any Color in Photoshop Properly

I used to handle color changes in Photoshop the embarrassing way. New layer, paintbrush, roughly scribble the new color over the thing, set it to Multiply, squint at it, and convince myself it looked fine. It did not look fine. The first time a client asked me to change the color of a product in a photo, I spent forty minutes doing something that, as I later found out, could have taken four.

Three Photoshop Moves That Make Hair Color Look Like It Was Lit by God
Video Tutorials

Three Photoshop Moves That Make Hair Color Look Like It Was Lit by God

Portrait retouching has a way of exposing every gap in your workflow. I’ve handed off photos where everything looked great, the skin, the background, the lighting, and then a client comes back asking why the hair looks flat and kind of muddy. Turns out I’d been ignoring it entirely. Hair color is one of those things that reads as “fine” until you see it done right, and then you can’t unsee the difference.

Master Color Gradients in Photoshop Without Destroying Your Subject's Skin Tone
Video Tutorials

Master Color Gradients in Photoshop Without Destroying Your Subject's Skin Tone

The Problem Nobody Talks About Here’s something that happens to Photoshop users constantly: you try to change the color of someone’s clothing and suddenly their face looks like they’ve been in a tanning booth accident. It’s because Photoshop’s color tools are too good at finding every instance of a color—including the ones you didn’t want to touch. In this excellent tutorial, Aaron Nace (PHLEARN) shows us how to surgically recolor specific objects while keeping skin tones looking natural.

Blend Modes: Stop Using Normal Mode Like a Caveman
Techniques

Blend Modes: Stop Using Normal Mode Like a Caveman

Blend Modes: Stop Using Normal Mode Like a Caveman Look, I get it. Blend modes seem intimidating. There are like 27 of them, they have weird names like “Overlay” and “Soft Light,” and nobody’s really explained what they actually do in plain English. So you’ve been sticking with Normal mode, layering stuff on top, and adjusting opacity until things look vaguely correct. We need to fix that. Right now. Here’s the truth: blend modes are just math formulas that tell Photoshop how to combine two layers together.