6. Change Eye Color

Changing eye color is not really too difficult using Photoshop's built-in tools.

Follow the instructions on the image below:

7. Non-Destructive Lighting Effects

This is a way to add lighting effects from Photoshop's Filter menu without affecting your original image.

Create a new layer above your image.

Edit>Fill – set to 50% Gray

Set layer mode to Overlay

Now you can render any lighting effects on this layer without destroying your original image.

Extra Tip: You can also use a 50% Gray layer set to Overlay to use the Dodge and Burn Tools non-destructively.

8. New View

Sometimes when you are working on an image you have it zoomed in very large, but you need to keep returning to 100% view to see the effects of what you are doing. This is especially true when using such tools as the Clone Stamp Tool.

Window>Arrange>New Window for [document name]

You can now keep one window at 100% and zoom in and work on the other window and you can view the 100% window periodically as you work, which will change with the changes you are making on the zoomed image.

9. Make a Color Swatch from an Image

Open your image in Photoshop and duplicate it (Image>Duplicate).

We don't really want thousands of colors in a swatch, so to reduce the number of colors, change the image mode: Image>Mode>Indexed, apply the following settings:

Image>Mode>Color Table – now you have the table of colors from your image. Click on Save and navigate to Photoshop>Presets>Color Swatches (or wherever you wish to save the swatch).

Now you can delete the image and work on the original RGB Mode image, and you can load the saved swatch into the swatches palette.

10. Create Layers from Layer Styles

When you add a layer style it is added to all of the layer, but sometimes you only want it to affect parts of the image.

You can turn your layer styles into layers as follows:

On my image I added a Color Overlay to make the sky more dramatic. I used #6B3FA7 and set the Blend Mode to Soft Light.

Now right click on the Color Overlay effect in the layers palette and click Create Layer.

Now you can either use the Erase tool or add a layer mask and use the Brush Tool to clear the style from everywhere but the sky.

Now I want the ground to be darker to fit better with the sky, so add another Color Overlay style to the image, using Black and Soft Light Blending Mode.

Right click on the Color Overlay effect in the layers palette and click Create Layer.

Again, either with a mask or with the Eraser Tool, clear the sky of the black overlay.

Now you can adjust the opacity of the layer to suit your image.

Conclusion

Hopefully you learned something helpful to you from these quick tips for Photoshop.

There are obviously many, many more tips and tricks that help improve, enhance and speed up Photoshop workflow – unfortunately, finding them takes time! On the bright side, however, in many cases other people have spent that time and have been good enough to share their discoveries with us.

Do you have any Photoshop quick tips you would like to share with us?

Please leave your comments and tips in the section below.