In my travels it's been my experience that people are creatures of habit, even if it's a bad habit. There is one pesky habit that most people are guilty of and that I am going to squash like that spider that's been living in your bathtub for the last 6 months and that you refuse to get rid of. The perpetrator in question is the rampant disregard for using keyboard shortcuts. Why learn something new that will really only shave a few seconds off your workflow? Because those seconds add up, that's why! There is also a level of professionalism missing when you're sitting down with a client. It is a lot more impressive if you are showing a potential client/customer what his or her image might look like with a slight curves adjustment and you - in the blink of an eye - hit ctrl M to bring up the curves dialogue box. Knowing your keyboard shortcuts illustrates a more commanding knowledge of the program (even if you are just a beginner and "Channel Mixer" is still a bad word in your vocabulary). A lengthy trip through the Image-Adjustments-Curves menus might just come off as amateurish.
Getting back to the shaving of seconds off your workflow; you would be amazed at how much faster you can actually work without all that clutter on your screen. For example; there is really no need for the actions palette to be open all of the time. A quick press of ALT(Option) F9 to reveal and/or hide it will do nicely. The text dialogue box is another eyesore when working on any project. If you need to change text formatting in any way on the fly, simply press CTRL + T (Command + T on a Mac) while you're using the type tool and have already laid down some text. Note: CRTL + T when not using the text tool will bring up the free transform function.
My advice: you should learn the keyboard shortcut for any function you perform on a regular basis. When hovering over an icon in the toolbar, a description and keyboard shortcut will be displayed. In the application menus any function with a keyboard shortcut will have that shortcut displayed to the right of it. For example; notice the Image-Adjustments menu. See how many adjustments have keyboard shortcuts?
Lastly, it is a little known fact that you can make your own keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop CS or later. I HIGHLY recommend utilizing this feature. True, most of the "good" shortcuts are already taken and I don't recommend changing any of them. But some tasks such as rotating the canvas, clearing your guides and flattening an image don't actually have a shortcut assigned to them. I usually use: ( CTRL + / ) to rotate canvas CW and ( SHIFT + CTRL + / ) to rotate canvas CCW, ( SHIFT + CTRL + , ) to clear guides and ( CTRL + , ) to flatten image. To make your own shortcuts goto: Edit - Keyboard Shortcuts all the way towards the bottom. Or you can press ( SHIFT + CTRL + ALT + K )!
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