Welcome to Photoshop Essentials, where everyone can learn Photoshop! We offer fun, exclusive, step-by-step tutorials for all skill levels, and all written with beginners in mind. From Photoshop Basics to Photo Editing and Retouching, Photo Effects, Text Effects and more!
Check out our latest Photoshop tutorials below. Or download our tutorials as PDFs and get exclusive bonus content!
The Rectangular Marquee Tool may be one of the easiest Photoshop selection tools to use, but it isn’t much help to us when we need to draw oval or circular selections. That’s where the Elliptical Marquee Tool comes in. In fact, the Elliptical Marquee Tool is really just the Rectangular Marquee Tool with extremely rounded corners!
Being able to select objects or areas in a photo is one of the most important Photoshop skills you need, but not all selections need to be complex or time consuming. The Rectangular Marquee Tool, one of Photoshop’s basic selection tools, is perfect for making selections based on simple geometric shapes.
There’s lots of ways to make selections in Photoshop, some simple, some advanced. But having lots of ways to do something doesn’t explain why we need to do it in the first place. In this tutorial, we’ll look at why we need to make selections in Photoshop at all, and why Photoshop doesn’t see things like we do.
Photoshop CS4 makes viewing and comparing multiple images easier than ever thanks to the new Arrange Documents feature and a bunch of new multi document layouts! Learn how to use them and even how to zoom and pan all of the images in a layout at once!
If you’ve been wishing for a better way to work with multiple images open at once in Photoshop, one that doesn’t involve endlessly dragging document windows around on the screen, check out the new Tabbed Document Windows feature in Photoshop CS4! Switching between multiple images has never been easier!
New to Photoshop or upgraded from an earlier version? Check out our quick tour of all the features in Photoshop CS4’s user interface, the most streamlined, efficient and user friendly interface so far! Learn what’s what, what’s new and where it all is, including a look at the brand new Application Bar and Application Frame!
Photoshop’s layer styles are a great way to create fun and interesting photo effects and text effects without a lot of effort, but remembering how you created an effect isn’t always easy, and recreating it can take time. Thankfully, Photoshop lets us save our layer style masterpieces and re-apply them instantly with just the click of a button!
In this seventh and final tutorial in our Photoshop Actions series, learn how to save actions as action sets and load them anytime you need them!
In this sixth tutorial in our Photoshop Actions series, learn how to record and play your very own custom actions in Photoshop!
Learn all about how to edit an action in this fifth tutorial in our Photoshop Actions series.
In this fourth tutorial in our series on Photoshop Actions, we learn how to advance through an action one step at a time to see exactly how it works!
In this third tutorial in our series on Photoshop Actions, learn all about the additional built-in action sets that ship with Photoshop!
In this tutorial on Photoshop Actions, we learn all about the default actions that are automatically loaded into the Actions panel.
Tired of doing the same things over and over again? Why not let Photoshop do them for you! Learn everything you need to know about Photoshop Actions, including what they are, how they work, how to edit and customize actions, and of course, how to record your very own actions from scratch!
If you love customizing things to suit your own style, or just want to work faster and more efficiently in Photoshop, learning how to create your own custom keyboard shortcuts is a great place to start!
Photoshop Elements has very limited support for layer masks, and officially, we can only use them with Adjustment Layers. But not only are Adjustment Layers incredibly useful, they’re also pretty easy going, and they have no problem at all sharing their layer masks with any other layer that needs them!
Learn the essential shortcuts for working quickly and efficiently with layers in Photoshop. For Photoshop CS5 and earlier.
In this second of a two-part tutorial on creating custom shapes in Photoshop, we learn how to collect and organize all the shapes we’ve created into easy-to-manage Custom Shape Sets! We also look at some best practices for how to avoid losing our shape sets if something goes wrong!
Creating our own custom shapes in Photoshop can be lots of fun. In this first of a two-part tutorial, we learn how to create a basic shape, how to add details to the shape, how to save it and use it as a custom shape, plus a whole lot more!
Still using the Lasso Tool to select everything that isn’t a rectangle, square or circle? It’s time to take your selections to a whole new level! Learn how to outline objects with paths using the Pen Tool, and then how to easily convert those paths into professional quality selections!
Learn how to sample colors from your photos in Photoshop and then save them as custom color swatches and swatch sets which you can call up and use whenever you need them!
Still permanently damaging your images with the Eraser Tool because you think layer masks are beyond your skill level? If you know the difference between black and white and can paint with a brush in Photoshop, you have all the skills you need!
If you’re upgrading to Photoshop CS3, making sure the newly renamed and reorganized Preferences are set up correctly is one of the first things you should do to make sure both you and Photoshop are working efficiently.
Need to add multiple strokes around your text? Normally Photoshop only lets us add a single Stroke effect to a layer, but in this tutorial, learn how to easily get around that problem using Smart Objects so you can add as many stroke outlines to your text as you need!
Most Photoshop users turn to the Gaussian Blur filter when they need to blur text in an image or design, but in this tutorial, learn how to keep your blurred type fully editable by creating the same effect with layer styles!
Learn how to create interesting designs out of text in Photoshop by converting the text into a path, then using brushes to add stroke outlines around the letters!
Learn how to give text a ghostly, supernatural look to it in Photoshop using a couple of simple blur filters!
Learn how to easily create metal text, a popular effect widely used in video games and movie posters!
Is your Photoshop text lacking perspective? Try adding an easy to create, classic 3D-style perspective shadow!
Learn how to create an interesting effect by adding a texture to text in Photoshop, using nothing more than a photo for the texture, a layer mask, a simple image adjustment, and of course, some text! Includes a trick for pasting an image directly into a layer mask in Photoshop!
In a previous tutorial we looked at how to place a single image inside text. This time, we take things further and learn how to fill text with multiple images!
Reality isn’t the only thing we can fake in Photoshop! Thanks to paths and Photoshop’s ability to use a path as a container for text, we can easily fake the “Text Wrap” feature you’d normally find in a page layout program!
Take your Photoshop skills into the third dimension! Wrapping text around an object in 3D couldn’t be easier and takes only a few simple steps!
Easily make text appear as if it’s made out of plastic using Photoshop’s Layer Styles and some additional contours we’ll be loading in.
Learn how to easily give text a worn, cracked look to it using nothing more than a basic selection tool, a brush filter and a layer style.
Learn how to create a “fragmented tiles” effect with text using Photoshop’s Tiles filter.
Learn how to use layer styles to easily create a fun gel text effect in Photoshop, then save it as a preset style that you can select instantly whenever you need it.
Learn how to easily create a sparkling gold-plated text effect in Photoshop using Layer Styles, some sampled colors and a neat little brush.
In this Photoshop text effects tutorial, learn how to engulf your text in an explosion of light and color.
Photoshop allows you to use any shape as a container for your text, and in this tutorial, we’ll see that you can even use text as a container for text.
Why settle for one stroke around your text when you can have as many as you want?
Add some visual interest to text with this easy shadow effect.
Learn how easy it is to place an image inside text in Photoshop.
Convert text to a shape, then learn how to use one of Photoshop’s more interesting shape options to knock out sections of letters that overlap each other!
Learn how to make a simple 3D text effect in Photoshop.
Learn how to make a simple text reflection effect in Photoshop.
Let’s look at one of the most popular uses for Photoshop, how to resize your images! We’ll learn how to make photos smaller using the Image Size command, and why making them larger is almost never a good idea.
Learn how to resize, optimize and save a copy of your photo for uploading to the web or emailing to family and friends using the Image Size and Save For Web & Devices commands in Photoshop CS5!
Uploading your photos to the web can be a great way to get yourself and your work noticed, but before you send an image out into the world, make sure your contact and copyright information is included with the file. This tutorial shows you how!
Feeling overwhelmed by the number of file formats to choose from when trying to save your images in Photoshop? This quick guide looks at the essential formats we need to know, including the pros and cons of each one and the situations where it makes the most sense to use it!