Masking

Stop Dragging the Contrast Slider Like Everyone Else — Do This Instead
Video Tutorials

Stop Dragging the Contrast Slider Like Everyone Else — Do This Instead

There’s a specific kind of frustration that comes from knowing a photo almost works. The composition is there, the light is interesting, but the whole thing looks flat — like someone draped a thin grey sheet over it. For years, my fix was to grab the Contrast slider in Camera Raw, drag it right, and call it a day. The result was always a little crunchy, a little over-cooked, and honestly kind of lazy.

Stop Clicking Around: The Photoshop Selection Tools That Actually Matter (And When to Use Them)
Tools & Techniques

Stop Clicking Around: The Photoshop Selection Tools That Actually Matter (And When to Use Them)

A while back, a friend watched me spend about 25 minutes carefully lassoing around a person’s hair in a product photo. He didn’t say anything at first. Just watched. Then, very quietly, he pointed at the toolbar and said, “Have you tried Select Subject?” I had not. The thing took three seconds. Three. I’d been doing it the hard way for years, and I didn’t even know there was a better way because I’d never needed to look it up.

Fake It Till You Make It: Simulating Shallow Depth of Field in Photoshop
Video Tutorials

Fake It Till You Make It: Simulating Shallow Depth of Field in Photoshop

Client sends you a photo. Great moment, decent light, totally flat background. No separation between the subject and everything behind them because whoever shot it was working with a kit lens at f/8. Now they want that creamy, subject-pops-off-the-frame look that costs about $1,500 in glass to achieve in-camera. This is a situation I’ve been in more times than I care to count, and it’s exactly why I keep coming back to this kind of Photoshop trickery.

Photoshop's New Hair Selection Is Embarrassingly Good (June 2020 Update)
Video Tutorials

Photoshop's New Hair Selection Is Embarrassingly Good (June 2020 Update)

Hair selection has been the thing that separates “I know Photoshop” from “I know Photoshop” for as long as I’ve been doing this. Client sends you a photo of someone with long, wispy, flyaway hair against a complicated background? That used to mean clearing your afternoon. I’ve spent entire evenings coaxing individual strands out of a background with Refine Edge, channel masking tricks, and a level of stubbornness that probably isn’t healthy.

The Negative Space T-Shirt Effect: Using Photoshop's Custom Shape Tool as a Mask
Video Tutorials

The Negative Space T-Shirt Effect: Using Photoshop's Custom Shape Tool as a Mask

There’s a specific kind of design you’ve seen a hundred times on t-shirts and gig posters. A bold graphic, but instead of sitting on a clean background, it looks like someone painted wildly around it. The shape itself is defined by what’s missing — the negative space. The paint exists everywhere except where the graphic is. It’s a technique that reads as handmade and energetic, and the first time I saw it I assumed it required some elaborate workflow involving stock textures and a lot of swearing.

Stop Reaching for the Lasso Tool First — A Smarter Way to Think About Photoshop Selections
Tools & Techniques

Stop Reaching for the Lasso Tool First — A Smarter Way to Think About Photoshop Selections

I was sitting at my usual corner table at once coffee shop, headphones in, trying to cut out a product shot for a client on a deadline. The object was a glass bottle, semi-transparent, with a label that had soft edges on one side and hard edges on the other. I spent 45 minutes with the Pen Tool before I stopped, stared at my screen, and genuinely asked myself whether I had any idea what I was doing.

Photoshop's New Landscape Masking Is the Camera Raw Feature I Didn't Know I Needed
Video Tutorials

Photoshop's New Landscape Masking Is the Camera Raw Feature I Didn't Know I Needed

I’ll be honest with you. My relationship with Camera Raw masking has always been “good enough.” Select sky, paint in the foreground with a gradient, argue with a brush tool for fifteen minutes over some tree branches, call it done. It works. It’s not elegant, but it gets the job done between my third and fourth coffee of the morning. Then I watched this Matt Kloskowski tutorial on the April 2025 Photoshop update and realized I’d been doing the equivalent of cutting a steak with a butter knife.

Lightroom's Curves-in-Masks Combo Is the Local Adjustment I Didn't Know I Was Missing
Video Tutorials

Lightroom's Curves-in-Masks Combo Is the Local Adjustment I Didn't Know I Was Missing

I’ll be honest. For the longest time I treated Lightroom like a place where I did the boring stuff before bringing an image into Photoshop to do anything actually interesting. Rough global adjustments, maybe a quick crop, then over to the real tool. That workflow made sense until I started watching what photographers like Nigel Danson were pulling off without ever touching Photoshop. Watch the full tutorial on YouTube In this Nigel Danson tutorial, the focus is on a relatively recent Lightroom update that most people glossed over in the release notes: you can now use the Curves tool inside masks.

How to Cut Out and Composite Paint Splashes in Photoshop (Without Losing Your Mind)
Video Tutorials

How to Cut Out and Composite Paint Splashes in Photoshop (Without Losing Your Mind)

There’s a specific kind of composite work that looks wildly expensive and technically demanding but is actually just a few smart techniques stacked on top of each other. Paint splash effects are exactly that. I’ve scrolled past dozens of surrealist portraits where paint seems to explode off skin or cascade through a scene, and every time I assumed the photographer had some elaborate studio setup or a dedicated effects team. Turns out, a lot of those images come from someone with a wall, some borrowed lights, and a $4 can of paint.

Adobe's Quiet Game-Changer: Taming Those Pesky White Halos in Lightroom
News

Adobe's Quiet Game-Changer: Taming Those Pesky White Halos in Lightroom

Adobe’s Quiet Game-Changer: Taming Those Pesky White Halos in Lightroom I’ve been editing photos long enough to know that sometimes the best features arrive without fanfare. Adobe’s latest Lightroom Classic update included something that doesn’t sound revolutionary on paper—some new sliders buried inside the AI masking tools—but trust me, if you’ve ever fought with white halos around mountain peaks or tree lines, you’re about to have a very good day.

Stop Clicking Around: How to Actually Choose the Right Selection Tool in Photoshop
Tools & Techniques

Stop Clicking Around: How to Actually Choose the Right Selection Tool in Photoshop

I had a client ask me to cut out a model from a white studio background last year. Simple job. Twenty seconds, maybe. I watched the file come through, opened it, and instinctively reached for the Quick Selection tool out of habit. Four minutes later I was still cleaning up jagged edges around flyaway hair and quietly hating myself. The Object Selection tool with a quick mask refinement would have had it done in under a minute.

Flow vs. Opacity: The Brush Setting You're Probably Ignoring (And Why It's Costing You)
Video Tutorials

Flow vs. Opacity: The Brush Setting You're Probably Ignoring (And Why It's Costing You)

I spent an embarrassing amount of time early in my freelance career fighting with Photoshop’s brush tool. I’d lower the opacity to build up a soft mask, then wonder why my strokes looked choppy and inconsistent. I’d click, release, click again, and end up with these weird hard rings of buildup that looked nothing like the smooth, natural blending I was going for. Turns out I was using the wrong setting entirely, and nobody had ever taken five minutes to explain the difference.