
Photoshop Basics Tutorials
Learn Photoshop With Photoshop Basics Tutorials At Photoshop Essentials.com
New to Photoshop? You've come to the right place. These Photoshop Basics tutorials cover everything you need to know to get up and running quickly, even if you've never used Photoshop before!
Here, you'll learn the important and essential skills every Photoshop user needs to know, including how to work with layers and layer masks, how to select people, objects and backgrounds with Photoshop's many selection tools, how to add shapes and text to your designs and layouts, and a whole lot more!
New Photoshop Basics tutorials are added regularly, so be sure to check back often for our latest additions.
Enjoy learning Photoshop!
Use these handy links below to jump to a specific topic, or continue scrolling down the page to view the complete list of our Photoshop Basics tutorials.
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Photoshop Selections - The Color Range Command
When it comes to making color-based selections in an image, most Photoshop users turn to the Magic Wand Tool because it's easy and it's right there in the Tools panel. But if you dig a bit deeper, you'll find the Color Range command, and in this tutorial, you'll learn why it's time to wave that Magic Wand goodbye!
Photoshop Type - Creating Warped Text
Learn how Photoshop's built-in Warp Text options make it easy to twist, stretch and distort type into all kinds of different shapes and designs, all while keeping the text and the effect itself fully editable!
Photoshop Type - An Easy Way To Set Your Type Size
Tired of guessing at font sizes when adding text to your Photoshop documents? Learn how to scale your type to any size you need, with a live preview of the results that makes it easy to choose the right font size every time!
Photoshop Selections - Feather Selections With Quick Mask
There are lots of times when we need to feather, or soften, our selection edges, but Photoshop's Feather command gives us no way to preview what we're doing. In this tutorial, learn a better way to feather selections using Quick Mask mode!
Unlock The Full Power Of Basic Selections
If all you've been doing with Photoshop's basic selection tools is making a new selection every time, you've been missing out. In this tutorial, learn how to unlock their full potential by adding to, subtracting from, and intersecting selections!
Photoshop Type - The Paragraph Panel
Photoshop's Character and Paragraph panels work as a team to give us full access to every type option available in Photoshop. In this tutorial, we learn about the paragraph-based options in the Paragraph panel like alignment, justification, paragraph spacing, and more!
Photoshop Type - The Character Panel
Photoshop gives us quick access to a few type options in the Options Bar, but its more interesting and advanced options for working with type are found in the Character and Paragraph panels. In this tutorial, we learn all about the Character panel options like leading, tracking, kerning, baseline shift, and more!
Photoshop Type - Point vs Area Type
Learn the difference between point and area type in Photoshop, and how area type lets us easily wrap larger amounts of text onto multiple lines inside resizable text boxes!
Photoshop Type Essentials
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes we still need to add our own words to an image or design layout. In this tutorial, we cover the basics and essentials of adding, editing and working with type in Photoshop!
Photoshop Shapes - Add, Subtract, Intersect and Exclude
By default, Photoshop places each new vector shape we draw on its own independent Shape layer, but in this tutorial, we learn how the Add, Subtract, Intersect and Exclude options let us combine shapes in more interesting ways!
Photoshop Shapes - Vectors, Paths and Pixels
Learn the differences between the Shape Layers, Paths and Fill Pixels drawing modes for the Shape tools in Photoshop, and why one of them in particular is almost always a better choice than the others!
Photoshop Shapes - The Custom Shape Tool
Learn how Photoshop's Custom Shape Tool lets us add hearts, flowers, animals, snowflakes, music notes, copyright symbols and other useful shapes to our designs with no drawing skill required!
Photoshop Shapes And Shape Layers Essentials
Learn the essentials of working with vector shapes and Shape layers in Photoshop, from drawing simple rectangles and ellipses to stars, starbursts, direction arrows, and more!
Photoshop Layers - Align And Distribute Layers
Learn how to easily and automatically align and distribute layers within a Photoshop document using the Align and Distribute options, and how layer groups make it easy to center multiple layers with the document itself!
Photoshop Layers - Layer Groups
As you add more and more layers to a document in Photoshop, your Layers panel can quickly become a cluttered mess of confusion. In this tutorial, learn how layer groups make it easy to keep things neat, tidy and organized!
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