In everyday life, knowing how to use Photoshop goes beyond understanding image manipulation and design techniques. It's important to understand how you can improve and organize your workflow to achieve productivity gains.

Check out 05 basic tips that will make a difference in your workflow with the tool.

1) Work in the Adobe RGB color space

One of the first settings we must make in Photoshop is to change the color profile.

Photoshop is generally configured for the sRGB color space, which is the default.

This is a color space that we use to work for the internet. Now, to work with printing, we must use Adobe RGB (1998) as a color space, since it is much larger than sRGB, encompassing many more colors.

Below is an example of comparing color spaces:

2) Use the CMYK Proof Setup

This view mode allows us to see the colors that will be printed in a CMYK file, even if you are working in RGB.

This will give us a sense of what the file will look like when converting from RGB to CMYK.

Reading Tip: How Do Photoshop's Blend Modes Work?

3) Optimize flow with shortcuts

Using shortcuts in Photoshop allows us to work 3x faster and is certainly one of the factors that determines the speed at which we produce our materials.

Almost all the tools in the toolbar (on the left) have shortcuts and are always accompanied by 2 or more hidden sub-menu features.

So, a golden tip: in addition to memorizing the shortcuts for each tool, use the key SHIFT to switch the resources that are inside them.

For example, the Healing Brush tool (bandaid) has the shortcut J on the keyboard and using SHIFT + J you can switch tool options without having to open the floating menu, as in the image below:

4) Organize your layers into folders, names, and colors

One of the most important things in the workflow is the organization of your file in layers, names, and colors.

As you become more experienced, the tendency is to take on more complex jobs where you will use many layers. So, if you haven't been in the habit, since the beginning of your career, of organizing your layers, there will surely come a time when you will waste a lot of time trying to find that layer that is causing problems.

What's more, I consider it mandatory that you work in this way if you want to be part of a studio or agency, because in these places it is common for you to share the work with another team member and one of the rules is to provide an organized and clean file for easy understanding by the other person.

5) Brush Size

One of the shortcuts I use the most is to change the brush size. This is a tool that you will use all the time in Photoshop and there is nothing fairer than using a shortcut to speed up your process.

With the key [ you decrease the size of the brush and with the] key you increase the size. This prevents you from being there all the time going to the settings bar to change the size of your brush.

Those were 5 basic tips, but they make a lot of difference in my Photoshop workflow. We hope they will help you streamline and organize your projects.