Photo Friday: Cheat Sheets!

Guess what day it is??? Nope not hump day, but photo frrrrriiiiiiiddddaaaaaayyyyy!!! It’s becoming one of my very favorite days of the week. As if Friday wasn’t already the obvious winner.

As I was poking around the lovely world wide web thinking about ideas for this week’s post, I noticed there are tons, and I mean TONS, of photography related “cheat sheets” floating around the web. So many so that you can easily get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information. Instead of linking a hundred million different photo cheat sheets here on the blog, I decided to create two of my own (using inspiration from others I found on the web and tweaking them to my liking). I think for starters, these two are simple to understand and (hopefully) very useful for beginners!

Links to the full size versions of each of ^^these^^ are below.

Beginners Guide to ISO

Camera ISO is one of the three pillars of photography (the other two being aperture and shutter speed) and every photographer should try and understand ISO to get the most out of their camera. ISO is the level of sensitivity of your camera to available light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive it is to the light, while a higher ISO number increases the sensitivity of your camera. >>The Beginners Guide to ISO Cheat Sheet<< is a quick reference sheet that gives you a guideline of which ISO level to use depending on the light you are working with. A common rule of thumb to remember is the more light you have, the lower your ISO value. Lower ISO means less noise (noise = gross grainy images) so select the lowest possible ISO level where you can retain the most detail in order to have the highest quality image. Only increase the ISO when there is not sufficient light for your camera to be able to quickly capture an image.

Wow, ^^that^^ felt like a mouthful, but hopefully you get the picture. Pun intended. ;))

Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

If you’re using Photoshop, then you probably know all too well how time consuming post-processing images can really be. They can literally suck the life right out of you. But guess what?! There are a few tricks you can implement to help speed up that workflow and make your post processing much more efficient. One of the easiest ways to do so is by using keyboard shortcuts! >>The Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet<< outlines all of the main keystrokes and menu shortcuts, from selecting the clone tool to making a brush smaller or larger. These really can be a huge timesaver if you familiarize yourself with them. My personal favs are zoom in+out, transform, and brush sizing shortcuts!

Hope these cheat sheets come in handy!

*I’ve started a regular “PHOTO FRIDAY” series on the blog. You can find all of my photography series posts >> here.

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