Secrets of the Designer's Bedroom

Hello! My name is Ionin and I am dedicated to graphic design! Yes, we are those beings who spend hours and hours designing in front of a Mac, with creative airs and a grumpy mood on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Fridays are another story, although if you are freelance, I suppose weekends definitely cease to exist.

Anyway, putting these topics aside, I will explain in this short post some practical advice for those blessed colleagues who ask me for advice on creating images in PhotoShop, whether for their posts or to include images in a blog or a website.

1. For the love of God, I know that image searching is difficult and tedious, but the higher the quality of the image, the better. In Google, we find a useful option that allows us to search for a photo by size. More than once it has saved our lives :)
2. PhotoShop gives you the ability to use countless improvements in photo lighting through Image-Adjustments-Levels. Here you can easily balance your image. It allows you to see if your image has more highlights or shadows and balance it.
3. If you are thinking about adding texts… In a short text, I couldn't explain all the headaches we designers face when choosing and applying the texts we need to include, but the key word is: hierarchy. Think about the sizes used for a title and a subtitle. And always shorten. I believe that deep down, we don’t like to read too much, at least not in photos ;)
4. Have you ever had to save countless photos doing the same thing? The day I discovered this option, I felt like I had discovered America. It’s the PhotoShop Actions tool. You create a new action, hit record, and when you’ve finished all the steps, click stop. In the next option, you can click play and repeat those actions on the next photograph. It’s a slightly more complex tool, but here’s a video that will be super useful when you’re on photo 30 wishing to cut off your arms. I know from personal experience.

I hope these tips are useful to you; it took me 5 years to understand how many things worked, so I encourage you to be patient as throughout my professional life it has brought me much joy.

In the end, you should know that instinct is not a bad thing, trust your aesthetic taste, and yes, trust Pinterest; designers love to get inspired by Pinterest photos.

Long live PhotoShop!