Working in Photoshop, we tend to go down many avenues in a single project. The ability to try so many different things is really one of the coolest things about this program, however, despite our love for ctrl+alt+z  and ctrl+shift+z, there are sometimes changes we need to make that require a bit of rummaging about in the pixels.

Now, you might be familiar with less elegant workarounds that, admittedly have become part of even my Photoshop experience, namely the duplication of layers when any major pixel work is needed. But the more this can be avoided, the better it is for your project, in terms of file size, and layer-count and complexity, but most importantly for flexibility. This is the non-destructive way to work in a Photoshop project, as dealt with in this cool post, by Adrian Taylor, on Smashing Magazine, where a number of these techniques are discussed. There are some drawbacks, especially in the use of smart objects, but otherwise, it’s a more elegant way to do things.

For a more in-depth look at some of these techniques, check out this video, from the post.

For those unfamiliar with the term, in context, what we’re referring to when talking about Tilt-Shift is changing the apparent depth-of-field in an image, through special lenses at capture, or through digital manipulation. The most prominent use of this, is creating the illusion of a miniature scene. And this is essentially what you’ll see in the video. So if you’re interested in learning how to create your own miniature vibes, using Photoshop, check out this video. It’s very easy, really.

I gave it a try, using this photo of everybody’s favourite white elephant. Here’s what it looked like before…

And here’s what it looked like after tilt-shifting it and playing around with the saturation and contrast, in Photoshop…

Indeed, it’s a small world after all. Give it a bash, yourself and see what you come up with.

Designer-to-designer…I don’t think I need to stress to you the immense value of the shortcut keys in Photoshop. So, here they are, all summarized nicely in this cool graphic.

Click the image to see a much larger version.

You’re welcome.