Workflow

Stop Flattening Everything: Layer Techniques That'll Change How You Work in Photoshop
Tips & Tricks

Stop Flattening Everything: Layer Techniques That'll Change How You Work in Photoshop

There’s a specific kind of dread that comes with a client saying “can you just move that element a little to the left?” and realizing you flattened that layer three saves ago. I’ve been there. I’ve stared at that pancaked, pixel-murdered file and had to decide whether to confess immediately or quietly fix it and act like nothing happened. Nine times out of ten, I rebuilt the whole thing. The tenth time I learned about Smart Objects.

Six Photoshop Settings Aaron Nace Swears By (And Honestly, He's Right)
Video Tutorials

Six Photoshop Settings Aaron Nace Swears By (And Honestly, He's Right)

I’ll be honest with you. I spent a solid chunk of my early freelance career working against Photoshop instead of with it. Burning time on exports, hitting the undo wall at the worst possible moment, wondering why my colors looked slightly off every time I posted something online. Not huge problems individually, but they compound fast when you’re juggling client deadlines from a corner table at your local coffee shop.

Stop Reinstalling Your Photoshop Plug-ins Every Time Adobe Drops a New Version
Video Tutorials

Stop Reinstalling Your Photoshop Plug-ins Every Time Adobe Drops a New Version

Every time Adobe pushes a major Photoshop update, I go through the same five stages of grief. Denial that I have to update at all. Anger when I realize my plug-ins are gone. Bargaining with myself about whether I actually need Nik Collection that badly. Depression when a client job requires it. And finally, reluctant acceptance as I spend an hour reinstalling everything from scratch. If you’ve been living this cycle, I have good news: there’s a better way, and I only wish someone had shown it to me two years ago.

Stop Losing Track of Your Shots: Lightroom's Collection Sets Are the Filing System You Never Knew You Needed
Video Tutorials

Stop Losing Track of Your Shots: Lightroom's Collection Sets Are the Filing System You Never Knew You Needed

If you’ve ever finished a shoot, dumped a card full of RAW files onto your hard drive, and then stared at 800 nearly identical images wondering where to even start — this one’s for you. I’ve been there more times than I want to admit. My old system was basically “make a folder with the date, panic later,” and it worked right up until the point it absolutely didn’t. What changed things for me was watching RC Concepcion walk through his Lightroom organization method in Watch the full tutorial on YouTube, part of the KelbyOne Photoshop User TV episode 279.

Stop Clicking Through Menus: How to Build Custom Keyboard Shortcuts in Photoshop
Video Tutorials

Stop Clicking Through Menus: How to Build Custom Keyboard Shortcuts in Photoshop

I have a deeply embarrassing confession: for longer than I care to admit, I was manually clicking through Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur every single time I needed it. Which, when you’re doing any kind of compositing or light painting work, is approximately nine hundred times per session. I just assumed it didn’t have a shortcut. I accepted my fate like someone who refuses to ask for directions and ends up in a different state.

The Photoshop Shortcuts I Actually Use Every Day (And the Ones You Can Ignore)
Tips & Tricks

The Photoshop Shortcuts I Actually Use Every Day (And the Ones You Can Ignore)

I once watched a designer spend four minutes hunting through nested menus to find Content-Aware Fill. Four minutes. I’ve made coffee in less time. She was talented, her work was great, but her relationship with Photoshop’s interface was basically an ongoing hostage negotiation. I’ve been there. Most of us have. The thing is, shortcuts aren’t really about speed for its own sake. They’re about keeping you inside the creative zone instead of constantly context-switching between “making something” and “finding the tool that lets me make something.

You're Editing Photos One at a Time Like a Chump — Here's How Batch Processing Fixed That
Workflow & Productivity

You're Editing Photos One at a Time Like a Chump — Here's How Batch Processing Fixed That

Last month I had a client send me 340 product photos that all needed the same treatment: resize to 1200x1200px, sharpen, adjust levels, export as JPEG at 85% quality. Simple enough, right? Except I sat down at my usual corner table at Epoch Coffee, opened the first image, and immediately had the thought that I really didn’t want to do this 339 more times. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that if something feels tedious before you’ve even started, there’s almost certainly a better way.

Camera Raw Just Got a Secret Photo Browser (And It Might Change How You Work)
Video Tutorials

Camera Raw Just Got a Secret Photo Browser (And It Might Change How You Work)

I have a complicated relationship with Lightroom. Not a hostile one, just. complicated. I’ve tried to commit to it more times than I’ve tried to commit to going to the gym, and the results have been roughly the same. The catalog system, the import dance, the general feeling that I need to ask permission to edit my own photos. It’s not for me. So when I saw that Adobe’s October 2026 update quietly gave Camera Raw a feature set that starts to look a lot like a standalone photo management app, I paid attention fast.

You're Editing Photos One at a Time Like It's 2009 — Here's How to Fix That
Workflow & Productivity

You're Editing Photos One at a Time Like It's 2009 — Here's How to Fix That

Last month I had a client send over 340 product photos that all needed the same treatment: resize to 1200x1200px, sharpen slightly, export as sRGB JPEGs at 85% quality. Simple enough on one image. On 340 images, sitting in a coffee shop on a Tuesday afternoon with a lukewarm oat milk latte, it started to feel like a slow-motion punishment. I know designers who would have opened every single file manually.

You're Editing Photos One at a Time Like It's 2009 — Batch Processing Will Fix That
Workflow & Productivity

You're Editing Photos One at a Time Like It's 2009 — Batch Processing Will Fix That

Last spring I took on a product photography gig that seemed straightforward enough. Sixty product shots, consistent white background, all needing the same resize, sharpen, and export treatment. I quoted two hours, opened Photoshop, and started editing image number one. I finished image number sixty-three at 1:47 in the morning. That is not a workflow. That is a punishment. And the worst part? I had done this before. Multiple times. I just kept forgetting that batch processing existed because I never sat down long enough to actually learn it properly.

Lightroom vs. Photoshop: An Honest Look at When You Actually Need Both
Video Tutorials

Lightroom vs. Photoshop: An Honest Look at When You Actually Need Both

There’s a question that floats around photography forums like a bad smell: do you even need Photoshop, or is Lightroom enough? I used to roll my eyes at it. Now I think it’s actually worth sitting with for a minute, because the honest answer is more nuanced than either camp wants to admit. I came across this debate again while watching a tutorial from Matt Kloskowski, where he responds to a viewer comment suggesting that photos edited only in Lightroom are somehow lesser, more basic, not serious work.

Stop Losing Assets Between Projects: How Photoshop Libraries Actually Work
Video Tutorials

Stop Losing Assets Between Projects: How Photoshop Libraries Actually Work

I used to email myself PSDs. Not proud of it. We’re talking dragging files into Gmail like some kind of digital cave person, because I had no reliable system for moving assets between machines or sharing them with collaborators. Fonts would go missing, logo files would live in seventeen different folders named “final,” “final_v2,” and “ACTUAL_FINAL,” and every new project started with a twenty-minute archaeological dig through my desktop. Turns out, Photoshop had been quietly solving this problem for years and I just wasn’t paying attention.