Photoshop is an incredibly powerful imaging editing tool but it’s also exceedingly complicated. Even Photoshop experts we know have shortcuts they use to quickly get the looks they want in Adobe’s iconic image editor. Now there’s a Photoshop plug-in that puts many of those photo editing shortcuts in one place so you can turn an image from drab to fab with just one click.
Called Pro Panel, it will have you performing like a Photoshop pro without having to spend years learning post-processing techniques. As its name implies, this plug-in (technically it’s an extension) appears as a virtual panel in Photoshop with dozens of tools, filters, effects and finishing options for your images.
Pro Panel was created by US-based travel and landscape photographer John Weatherby so most of the panel’s shortcuts are tailor-made for those genres of photography, though they will benefit any type of image. Here’s a rundown of some of the main editing shortcuts you get from Pro Panel, which sells for $49 for lifetime use with free updates.
- Masks Creation: Easily create 16-bit Luminosity masks along with RGB and color masks, and range masks
- Quick Actions: Quick actions for focus stacking, auto align, focus blending and many other commonly used editing workflow shortcuts
- Image Filters: Dozens of powerful filters to give your photos beautiful, professional level looks with one click
- Correction: Quickly correct common image mistakes with just the tap of a button
- Astrophotography Tools: Simple actions designed to make astrophotography editing a breeze. Transform mediocre star shots into something you might want to hang on your wall in seconds
- Color Tools: Get color to look just right in a photo as if it was graded by professional
- User Actions: Load up to 10 customized user actions into Pro Panel. This is great for Photoshop actions you’ve already created
- Saving Tools: Shortcuts for saving include resizing, color profile change, watermarks, and save for web
If some of this still sounds complicated, it’s not. The fun part of using Pro Panels is just trying the various buttons in the application to see how they affect your images. Oftentimes you create head-turning edits you weren’t expecting.
One of the best demonstrations on the power and ease of Pro Panels is in the below video by software guru Unmesh Dinda of PiXimperfect where he calls Pro Panels “the ultimate landscape plug-in for Photoshop.”
“Everything I show in this video can be done with Photoshop,” Dinda notes. “You don’t need a plug-in for it. Then what’s the point of a plug-in, you might ask. Well, the answer is time.”
He then proceeds to show you how to convert a verdant spring shot of a waterfall into a classic fall image with colorful foliage. All it takes is to click on the Fall Foliage button in Pro Panel and you’re done. Of course, there are ways to fine tune the effect via sliders within the app but it’s not necessary. Check out Dinda’s tutorial below and then go visit the Pro Panel website to get more information on this Photoshop extension.
