Aaron’s Six Photoshop Tips & Tricks to Increase Productivity

Most of the ways to work faster in Photoshop have nothing to do with buttons and filters, they’re settings running quietly in the background that affect how responsive and flexible the whole program feels. In this tutorial we’ll go through six preferences and habits that make a real difference: extending your undo history, exporting images faster, giving Photoshop more RAM, setting up a scratch disk, choosing the right color space, and putting your keyboard shortcuts to work.

Tip 1: Increase Your History States

By default, Photoshop only remembers a limited number of undo steps, typically between 20 and 30, before the oldest ones start dropping off. To extend this, go to Photoshop > Preferences > Performance and look for History States on the right side of the dialog. You can raise this number as high as 1,000, though a range of 50 to 100 is usually plenty for most work. Keep in mind that a higher history state count means Photoshop is storing more temporary data on your computer, so on an older or slower machine, pushing this number too high can actually slow things down rather than help.

Tip 2: Set Up Quick Export for the Web

Quick Export lets you get a finished image onto the web in a single click once it’s configured. Go to Photoshop > Preferences > Export and set your Quick Export Format: choose PNG if you need transparency, or JPEG if you don’t, since JPEG files are typically smaller. Set Quality somewhere around 80, which usually looks nearly identical to 100 while producing a noticeably smaller file. Check Convert to sRGB, the color space most web browsers expect, since skipping this is a common reason exported colors look off once uploaded. With these preferences set, go to File > Export > Quick Export as JPEG (or PNG) any time you need to save a finished image for the internet, and Photoshop applies your saved settings automatically.

Tip 3: Allocate More RAM to Photoshop

RAM is one of the biggest factors in how fast Photoshop actually runs. If Photoshop feels sluggish, close other applications first, then go to Photoshop > Preferences > Performance and look at the Memory Usage slider in the top left. Consider allocating somewhere between 80% and 90% of your computer’s available RAM to Photoshop while you’re actively working in it, closing other memory-hungry programs at the same time so Photoshop has the most room to work with. How much you can safely allocate depends on your computer’s total RAM, which you can check under your operating system’s “About” information.

Tip 4: Set Up a Scratch Disk

When Photoshop runs out of allocated RAM, it falls back to writing temporary data to a scratch disk on your hard drive. Go to Photoshop > Preferences > Scratch Disks to set this up, and choose the fastest drive available to you, ideally an external USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt solid-state drive rather than your internal system drive. If you have multiple drives, prefer one that doesn’t have your operating system installed on it, since that keeps Photoshop’s temporary files from competing with your system for the same drive’s resources. Make sure at least one drive is checked, and reorder multiple scratch disks by priority if you have more than one available.

Tip 5: Work in the Correct Color Space

Color spaces vary in how many colors they can represent, and using the right one at the right stage of your workflow matters. Go to Edit > Color Settings to review your working RGB space.

Editing in ProPhoto RGB, Exporting in sRGB

ProPhoto RGB offers the largest color gamut of the standard options, making it the best choice for editing since it preserves the widest range of color information to work with. sRGB, by contrast, is a much smaller gamut designed to match how the average display renders color, which makes it ideal for web export but limiting for serious editing work. Adobe RGB (1998) sits in between the two. The practical takeaway: edit in ProPhoto RGB, then rely on your Quick Export settings (see Tip 2) to convert to sRGB automatically when you export for the web.

Handling a Color Profile Mismatch Warning

With “Ask When Opening” and “Ask When Pasting” checked in Color Settings, Photoshop will warn you whenever a file’s embedded color profile doesn’t match your working space, for example, opening an sRGB stock photo while your working space is set to ProPhoto RGB. When this dialog appears, choose “Convert Document’s Colors to the Working Space” so the file adopts your larger, edit-friendly color space rather than staying locked to its narrower original profile.

Tip 6: Learn and Print Your Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts remain one of the single fastest ways to work in Photoshop, and the program makes it easy to see and even customize them. Go to Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts, then open any menu, like File, to see each command listed alongside its corresponding shortcut.

Creating Your Own Custom Shortcuts

To assign a new shortcut, double-click next to any command in the Keyboard Shortcuts dialog and type your preferred key combination. If that combination is already assigned elsewhere, Photoshop warns you and asks whether to remove it from its original command or keep the existing assignment. Once you’re happy with your shortcuts, click the Summarize button to export a complete, up-to-date HTML list of every shortcut currently assigned. Print this list out, highlight the commands you use most often, and commit those specific ones to memory first rather than trying to learn everything at once.

Why This Approach Works

These six tips work because they address Photoshop’s actual performance bottlenecks rather than surface-level habits. History states, RAM allocation, and scratch disks all deal directly with how Photoshop manages memory and temporary data, which is what determines whether the program feels snappy or sluggish during a long editing session. Working in the correct color space avoids a completely different category of problem, color accuracy, ensuring what you edit and what eventually displays on the web actually match. And investing time in keyboard shortcuts pays off continuously, since every command you move to muscle memory is time saved on every single project going forward, not just once.

Final Thoughts

None of these six tips require advanced Photoshop knowledge, they’re preference and workflow adjustments anyone can make in a few minutes. Increasing your history states and allocating more RAM cost nothing but a quick trip through Preferences, setting up a scratch disk is a one-time investment if you have a fast external drive available, and learning your keyboard shortcuts pays for itself the very first time you use one instead of digging through a menu. Take fifteen minutes to work through all six, and Photoshop should feel noticeably faster and more predictable from that point on.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• More undosPhotoshop > Preferences > Performance: History States 50 to 100
• Quick ExportPreferences > Export: JPEG, Quality 80, Convert to sRGB; File > Export > Quick Export as JPEG
• More RAMPreferences > Performance: Memory Usage 80 to 90%
• Scratch diskPreferences > Scratch Disks: the fastest drive that is not your system drive
• Color spaceEdit > Color Settings: RGB ProPhoto RGB; Ask When Opening and Ask When Pasting checked
• Shortcut listEdit > Keyboard Shortcuts > Summarize
• New documentCmd/Ctrl + N

On Windows, Preferences is under the Edit menu.