Smart Objects are layers in Photoshop which contain and preserve data from images you have imported. They allow you to make non-destructive changes to an image.

With Smart Objects, you are never at risk of ruining the quality of an image or making a permanent change that cannot be deleted.  

Here is a guide to Smart Objects in Photoshop.

Masking is a fundamental skill for all designers to learn. Essentially it allows you to show or hide details in an image.

This is very useful if you want to pick out specific areas, details, people or objects, as you can quite literally hide everything else around that area. A full tutorial and guide on Masking can be found here! 

One of the most underestimated tools in Photoshop has to be the Puppet Warp. We hardly see it mentioned in tutorials and yet we use it pretty much all the time in all kinds of workflows. 

You can find the Puppet Warp from the Edit menu.
This super tool allows you to add ‘pins’ to areas you want to transform. It can easily bend, rotate and shape parts of your image as if it were a ‘puppet’.

Puppet Warp Overview 

• Convert the layer to Smart Object before
  applying Puppet Warp.
• Add pin points close to the edge but
  not on the edge of an object.  
• Easier to move bigger areas down.
• You can Rotate details around pin points.
• You can work on the Photoshop canvas.
• You cannot use the Warp Tool once
  Puppet Warp is applied.

The Warp option finally got a complete revamp and it became much more powerful. In its new state, it became a worthy competitor of the Puppet Warp and Liquify Tool. In a way, it’s similar to Illustrator's Gradient Mesh but used for distortion.

The Warp option used to work only with a 3x3 grid, however the new version has presets for 4x4 and 5x5, and custom grids up to 50x50. You can manually place Split points on the mesh and make amends.