Photoshop Layers Panel Essentials
Take a whirlwind tour of Photoshop’s Layers panel and learn the essential skills you need for working with layers!
Learn the basics of Adobe Photoshop! These tutorials are perfect for Photoshop beginners or anyone who just needs to refresh their skills, covering the essentials topics you need to know to get up to speed with Photoshop quickly! Use the links below to jump to lesson chapters and other popular topics, or scroll down for our latest Photoshop Basics tutorials!
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Take a whirlwind tour of Photoshop’s Layers panel and learn the essential skills you need for working with layers!
New to Photoshop layers? In this easy-to-follow, step-by-step lesson, learn the basics of what layers are, how they work, and why knowing how to use layers is such an essential Photoshop skill.
Learn how to easily make your text flow along the shape and direction of a path! Fully updated for Photoshop CS6 and CC!
Learn how to apply editable filter effects to live, editable type in Photoshop using Smart Objects and Smart Filters!
Previously, we learned how to pass raw files from Lightroom to Photoshop for further editing. In this tutorial, learn how to move JPEG photos between Lightroom and Photoshop just as easily!
Learn how to easily pass a raw image file from Adobe Lightroom over to Photoshop for further editing, and then how to send the edited version back to Lightroom!
Learn how to customize the Toolbar in Photoshop CC using the Customize Toolbar dialog box, and how to save your custom Toolbar layout as a preset. You’ll learn how to remove and restore tools, group and ungroup tools, how to reorder the tools in the Toolbar, and more!
Learn all about the new darker dialog boxes in Photoshop CC, one of several changes to Photoshop’s interface that Adobe made as part of the November 2015 Creative Cloud updates.
Learn all about the new Start screen and Recent Files panel recently introduced to Photoshop CC in the November 2015 Creative Cloud updates.
Our complete guide to learning the many ways of transforming objects and selections with Free Transform in Photoshop, from Scale and Rotate to Skew, Distort, Perspective, Warp, and more!
Learn how to easily blend two or more photos into a single composite image using layer masks and gradients in Photoshop!
Learn how to create and edit your own custom gradients and save them as presets using the Gradient Editor in Photoshop!
Learn everything you need to know to start drawing gradients in Photoshop with the simple yet powerful Gradient Tool!
Go beyond simple geometric shapes and learn how to add more interesting custom shapes to your designs and layouts with the Custom Shape Tool in Photoshop CS6!
In this first tutorial in our series on drawing and working with shapes in Photoshop CC, learn the important difference between vector shapes and pixel shapes!
Learn the essentials of creating vector art in Photoshop CS6 with its easy to use shape tools, including the Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, and Line Tools!
Learn the important difference between vector shapes and pixels shapes in Photoshop. Now fully updated for Photoshop CS6!
Tired of dragging guides out from the rulers? Learn how the New Guide Layout feature in Photoshop CC lets you quickly add rows and columns, gutters, and margins to your documents, and save your guide layouts as presets!
Learn how to make Adobe Photoshop the default program for viewing and editing popular image file formats like JPEG, PNG and TIFF in Windows 8 and 8.1!
Tired of always needing to open the Color Picker to change colors in Photoshop? With the Creative Cloud 2014 updates, you don’t have to! Learn all about the newly-enhanced Color panel and its great new features that make choosing colors easier than ever!
In this second part of our tutorial on the new Focus Area selection tool in Photoshop CC 2014, learn how to improve and fine-tune your initial focus-based selections with Photoshop’s powerful Refine Edge command!
Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud) has been updated with exciting new features for 2014! In this first tutorial, learn how Focus Area lets us make selections based on the in-focus areas of an image!
Learn some simple tips for customizing your Layers panel in Photoshop to keep it free of unwanted clutter and create a cleaner, more efficient workspace.
In the previous tutorial, we learned the basics of zooming, panning and navigating around images in Photoshop. This follow-up tutorial offers a complete collection of all the essential tips, tricks and shortcuts you need to navigate your images like the pros!
In this Photoshop Basics tutorial, learn the essential tools and options you need to zoom, scroll and navigate your way around your images quickly and easily!
Workspaces in Photoshop let us easily switch between different panel layouts for different tasks. In this tutorial, learn all about the built-in workspaces that ship with Photoshop, and how to save your own panel layouts as custom workspaces!
Much of what we do in Photoshop involves the use of panels, and with so many panels to work with in Photoshop CS6, things can seem a bit overwhelming. In this tutorial, we learn how to manage and arrange the panels to optimize your work space and keep it all organized!
Tired of your photos always opening in Windows Photo Viewer when you want to edit them? In this tutorial, learn how to easily set Photoshop as your default image editor on a Windows PC.
In this second tutorial in our series on Photoshop clipping masks, we learn how to use type as a clipping mask to easily place a photo inside your text!
Learn how two great new features in Photoshop CS6 – Background Save and Auto Save – will improve your workflow and help minimize annoying interruptions.
In this first tutorial on the new features of Photoshop CS6, learn all about the new darker interface and how to control its appearance with color themes!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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’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 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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
Tired of dragging images from one Photoshop document to another? Learn how the Load Files into Photoshop Layers command, first introduced in Adobe Bridge CS4, can open multiple images at once as layers inside the same document!
Layers are easily Photoshop’s most important feature, but one special type of layer – the Background layer – comes with a few rules and limitations we need to be aware of to avoid confusion and frustration.
For Photoshop CS5 and earlier. Learn all about the Background layer in Photoshop, what makes it special, and how to get around its rules and limitations.
Take a whirlwind tour of the Layers panel in Photoshop and learn the essential skills you need for working with layers! For Photoshop CS5 and earlier.