5 Common Mistakes Photographers Make in Photoshop

Photography Tips  •  Photoshop Tutorials

Taking photographs and editing them can often be two different stories. When starting out with photography, the important aspect is taking photos that you admire from the get-go. That way, you can ease into learning how to edit with Photoshop and not use many features or layers at first. After improving your skills and taking better images with more accurate settings, editing is your best friend for polishing your work and conveying a look or aesthetic that you want to achieve throughout your photography. However, too much editing can start to decrease the value of your images. Photoshop Tutorials made this video to talk about five significant mistakes that photographers make while editing on Photoshop:

In the video, the narrator suggests five things to avoid while editing in Photoshop:

1. Creating too many layers

When you have too many layers, your work area becomes unorganized. Minimize layers by using adjustment layers like the tone curves, which can replace many other adjustment layers.

2. Not using smart objects

You can apply filters to smart objects and they’ll appear as fully editable smart filters in your layers panel, allowing you to change the settings or blending modes and rearrange the order of your filter stack. Smart objects also preserve image quality so you can resize the image as many times as you like.

3. Using the wrong document settings

Some people get confused about DPI and resolution. Changing DPI won’t make your image sharper. And before changing your photo to CMYK in Photoshop, simply allow your printer to convert it for you and you’ll get more accurate results.

4. Unnecessary luminosity masking

Luminosity masking is a technique to make a layer affect a specific tone of ranges. Sometimes, it’s already built into the tool or filter so you don’t need to make any extra changes. Unless you need to target a specific tonal range, the built in luminosity masking is perfect for your use.

5. Overprocessing

Sometimes photographers add an effect that they think is cool so they overdo it, such as the vibrancy, HDR look, faded tones, or frequency separation. Learn what looks best in your photos and what looks fake, over-edited, or not right.

There you have it! Five common mistakes that can be easily fixed now that you recognize they exist. Hopefully, you’ve already taken the steps to avoid these errors but they are always something to keep in mind every time that Photoshop gets opened. Through trial and error, learning and improvement, editing becomes second nature. Enjoy!

“What matters is the pixel dimensions, not the DPI.”