Even if you’ve been editing photos for clients for some time, you could still be making mistakes in Photoshop. Oftentimes, it’s simply because you’re in a hurry and choose the faster but less effective editing technique.
These Photoshop mistakes not only damage image quality, they can make you look like an amateur. If you want to keep your clients and continue to sell photos, check out Colin Smith’s tutorial below for photoshopCAFE where he explains the three worst Photoshop editing mistakes to avoid.
In addition to demonstrating the mistakes below, Smith explains the right way to edit images in Photoshop using professional techniques.
“There are some common mistakes a lot of people make with their photo editing that makes them look like noobs in Photoshop,” Smith says. “Let me show you some of those and how you can avoid them.”
#1 Sizzle Sharpen
“Let me show you what I mean by sizzle sharpen,” he notes. “When we chose Filter Sharpen, I’m going to use Unsharp Mask. But sometimes you see this. I call this the sizzle because these edges, the halos, are so big, it’s causing it to pop to white and lose the color and sizzle. That’s not a good sharpen.”
#2 Clown Saturation
“Let’s go to Camera RAW filter. And under Camera RAW filter, we have the ability to add Saturation. We want to get some color in the sky. What a lot of people do is they take the Saturation slider, and they bring it up until they get the color in the sky right here. But look in the middle here. It’s too saturated and it’s actually clipping the colors and we’re losing detail. If you want to get these colors out, rather than using Saturation, use Vibrance.”
#3 Not Enough Resolution
“Let’s drag this image into the other image. Notice it’s smaller. But this is what some people do when they composite. Control T or command T for free transform. Let’s drag this out and make it look much bigger. Go across here, apply a layer mask and a gradient and I create a composite. But notice how we have a resolution mismatch. See how it’s softer in this image here and see how it’s nice and crip in the other image?”
