13 Quick Tips for Designers
Here’s a collection of useful tips to help save you some time. These are not big, detailed tutorials, just quick and easy tips that take a few seconds and are worth knowing – no matter how long you’ve been designing.
Tip for Sharper Circles
When working with tiny pixel shapes it’s very important to get the right sharpness on an image. This is incredibly difficult when you’re working with circles and round corners. This tip from Isaac Grant shows us one way to avoid the messy pixels. It’s simple, but I’d never considered it!
Copy Color’s Hex Code
Copy Color’s Hex Code. I only recently learnt of this feature. A very small tip that could save you a lot of time in the long-run.
Harmonious Color Schemes
Erica Schoonmaker shows us how to build Harmonious Color Schemes. She has a quick tip on Dribbble, but there’s also a 3 Minute Video that goes into a little more detail. A very useful tip for working with colour.
Enrich Colors with Gradient Maps
Enrich Color palette with Gradient Maps is a tip from Jimena Catalina that works brilliantly for photos and illustrations.
Proper Border Radius
Proper Border Radius. When placing a round corner box inside of another, it’s important that you adjust the border radius to offset the distance between them. Here’s one quick way of understanding, and doing that.
Shaping Textfields in Photoshop
Shaping Textfields in Photoshop is a tip that I wish I’d have known sooner. It’s a lot easier to do than it seems and it comes in handy a lot!
The Power of Gradient Maps
Bjango gives us a lovely run down of what Gradient Maps are, and how they can be used with a lot more accuracy and control. I’ve always loved Gradient Maps as a Photo Effect, but I find myself using them more and more lately in UI design, this post on Bjango opened my eyes for sure.
Expand and collapse all layers
A very quick tip to help you quickly tidy your layers & groups. I do this just before saving my PSD to make it easier to explore when I re-open it.
Double Exposure Photographs
How to Create Double Exposure Photographs in Photoshop. Not exactly a tip, but a very quick and easy technique to learn.
Correct Pixel Snapping
Pixel Snapping alone is helpful, but when using complex shapes, and re-sizing them, the pixel snapping doesn’t snap those transformations very well, and you get messy pixels. This simple keyboard shortcut fixes that with ease! Watch now.
Isolation Mode in Photoshop CC
A little gem that can help make your life easier when working on complex .psd files with tons of layers. Isolation Mode unclutters your Layers panel by only displaying the layers you’re currently working on.
Photoshop Tricks and Shortcuts
Photoshop Layers tricks and shortcuts is a very nice round up of time saving tips and keyboard shortcuts inside Photoshop.
Bonus: Photoshop Etiquette
Photoshop Etiquette is a complete guide of the most effective way to do things in Photoshop. Nobody likes inheriting muddy PSDs, and Photoshop Etiquette’s purpose is to help you improve the clarity of yours.