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!
It’s a fact of life with digital photos that sometimes we need to compress them to make our file sizes smaller. Our computer screens don’t always make it easy to see the damage being done to the image, but thanks to one of Photoshop’s rarely-used blending modes, the horrors of jpeg compression become strikingly clear.
The whole point of editing images in Photoshop is to make them look better, so why risk making them look worse in the process if you don’t have to? If you’ve been editing 8-bit images when you could have been working in 16-bit mode, you’ve been missing out on a world of flexibility.
If RGB is just a three letter word to you and color channels are something you watch on tv, your Photoshop work is suffering. Learn how Photoshop displays colors in your images and take your skills to the next level.
A lot of people use the term “image resizing” whether they’re resizing or resampling an image in Photoshop as if they’re the same thing, which they’re most definitely not, and if you’re concerned about image quality, it’s important to know the difference.
Image pixels are the tiny building blocks of every digital image. All Photoshop sees is pixels. It’s these pixels that you’re changing in some way with every edit you make to your image, and it’s these pixels you’re printing when you send your digital photos to the printer.
In this section, we’ll look at some of the most confusing terms you’ll come across when working in Photoshop: image resolution, pixel dimensions and document size – what it all means, why it’s so important to understand, and why you may not need to understand it at all!
Learn how image resolution and the number of pixels in your image will affect the quality of your digital photos when you print them, why images you download off the internet usually print with poor quality, and how many megapixels (MP) your camera needs to have in order to print professional quality photos at different sizes.
Can’t decide if your photo would look better in color or black and white? Why not try both at once! Learn a fast and easy way to do selective coloring in Photoshop, turning most of your image black and white while keeping your main subject in full color!
In this Photoshop Effects tutorial, learn how to easily add folds and creases to a photo as if it had been folded and unfolded like a map!
In this Photoshop Effects tutorial, learn how to give someone’s eyes a fun, easy to create ‘zoom’ effect with blur streaks that zoom out from the center of the eyes. We’ll also enhance the brightness and color of the eyes while we’re at it!
In this Photoshop Effects tutorial, learn how to create a “faded pixels” photo border, with the image appearing through randomly-sized and scattered square pixel shapes that gradually fade into a solid colored background.
Learn the essentials of blending textures with photos in Photoshop, including how to quickly cycle through the layer blend modes, how to blend only the brightness values of the texture to keep the photo’s original colors, how to invert textures for different results, and more!
In this Photoshop effects tutorial, learn how to easily turn a photo into a pattern of colored dots, using one of Photoshop’s filters, a layer mask and a simple repeating pattern we’ll create from scratch!
In this Photoshop effects tutorial, learn how layer groups and clipping masks make it easy to create the illusion that a photo is being displayed as a series of vertical panels!
In this Photo Effects tutorial, learn a quick and easy way to simulate film grain in an image with Photoshop, including how to keep the effect fully editable using Smart Filters!
Learn how to display a single photo as a cluster of shapes, similar to larger wall cluster displays where several photos, usually in different frame shapes and sizes, are arranged together on a wall to form a larger design. In this tutorial, we’ll create something similar but on a smaller scale using just a single image!
In this Photoshop effects tutorial, learn how to quickly add a timeless, classic vignette border to a photo! Perfect for wedding and engagement photos, anniversaries and other family portraits!
In this photo effects tutorial, learn how to add a sense of action and movement to an image by giving your main subject an easy to create motion trail!
In this photo effects tutorial, learn a fast and easy way to add rays of sunlight to an image with Photoshop!
In this photo effects tutorial, learn how to easily create and add lightning to an image with Photoshop!
In a previous tutorial, we learned a way to convert a photo to a sketch in Photoshop that works great for portraits. In this tutorial, we learn a slightly different way that’s better at bringing out fine details when converting other types of images to a sketch! Plus, learn how to create the entire effect in 60 seconds or less!
In this Photoshop tutorial, learn how to easily convert a portrait photo into a pencil sketch, including how to colorize the effect with the photo’s original colors!
In this Photoshop effects tutorial, learn how to create a popular “punch through image” effect, often seen in sports and movie ads, as if a person or object has punched a hole right through the page or image!
In this Photoshop tutorial, learn how to create an old looking paper texture, perfect for use as a background for a scrapbook-style photo layout!
In this Photoshop effects tutorial, learn how to turn a photo in a grid of randomly colorized squares! We’ll use Photoshop’s guides and rulers, a couple of rarely used selection tools, the Magic Wand, adjustment layers, blend modes, and more! Any recent version of Photoshop will work!
Photoshop’s Drop Shadow layer style may be great for adding simple shadows to images or text, but for creating realistic looking shadows of people or objects, it just doesn’t cut it. In this tutorial, learn an easy way to create a realistic cast shadow effect!
Learn how to create a simple snowflakes photo border, a fun finishing touch for photos of family and friends during the holidays or of any snowy winter scene!
Just in time for the holidays! Learn how to create a simple and fun ‘Happy Holidays’ greeting card-style photo border in Photoshop!
In this photo effects tutorial, learn how to colorize a photo using a Color Balance adjustment, then how to select and stretch a single column of pixels across the image to create a cool motion blur effect!
Learn how to easily add realistic looking water ripples to an image with Photoshop!
In this photo effects tutorial, learn how to brighten your stormy skies by adding a rainbow, or even a double rainbow, to a photo using one of Photoshop’s ready-made gradients. We’ll also learn how to flip the order of the colors in a gradient to create a more realistic double rainbow effect!
Let Photoshop make their special night even more magical and send the wedding couple dancing in the stars with this step by step photo effects tutorial.
In this photo effects tutorial, learn how to add realistic bubbles to a photo using an easy to create, custom Photoshop bubble brush!
In Part 2 of this Photoshop tutorial on creating and adding photo mount corners to an image, we take the photo mount we created and saved in part one and add multiple copies of it to a photo!
In this two-part Photoshop tutorial, learn how to create and add photo mount corners to an image, a nice finishing touch for wedding or engagement photos, family portraits, travel photos, and more!
In this Photoshop tutorial, learn how to display your photos as if they were hanging in an art gallery with this easy to create gallery-style photo frame layout!
Sometimes, the action in a movie, sports event or video game can be so intense, it seems to jump right off the screen, especially if you’re using Photoshop! In this tutorial, learn how to create this popular and classic photo effect.
Every month, magazine covers show people or objects overlapping text (usually the name of the magazine along the top). In this tutorial, learn how layers in Photoshop make it easy to recreate the same effect with your own images and text!
Learn how to add complex colorizing effects to images in Photoshop using a Gradient Map, including a look at how to create your own custom gradients!
Learn how to add a popular lens flare effect to an image in Photoshop without harming the original photo using layer blend modes!
Learn how Photoshop’s Displace Filter makes it easy to map an interesting texture to someone’s face in a photo!
Learn how to create a simple three-image photo frame in Photoshop, then how to easily convert the final result into a reusable template with Smart Objects!
Learn how to easily combine the Eraser Tool with one of Photoshop’s built-in brushes, along with a few layers and some layer styles, to give a photo a worn, torn edges effect!
Learn how to create a zoom blurring effect in Photoshop, a popular and easy way to give a photo a sense of action and motion!
In the first of this two-part Photoshop tutorial, we created a film strip shape to use as a photo frame. In this second part of the tutorial, we’ll use multiple copies of that film strip to create our photo collage!
In this two-part Photoshop tutorial, learn how to create a fun photo collage using a film strip as a photo frame for multiple images. In this first part of the tutorial, we’ll see how Photoshop’s various shape tools make it easy to draw the actual film strip itself, which we’ll then use in Part Two to create the photo collage!
Learn how easy it is to create interesting photo border effects using Photoshop’s brushes, including how to load additional brush sets and combine multiple brush strokes with different tools, like the Eraser Tool, for virtually endless creative possibilities!
In this Photoshop photo effects tutorial, learn how to give your images a romantic, magical look by adding a glow effect to just the highlights in the photo, an easy effect to create thanks to Photoshop’s Color Range command.
Learn how to create the illusion that a portrait photo is actually being created by multiple lines of type in this photo effects tutorial.
Learn how to create a fun and simple halftone pattern photo border in Photoshop! We’ll use Smart Filters in Photoshop CS3 and CS4 to keep the effect fully editable even after it’s completed, but this photo border can be easily created with any version of Photoshop, including Photoshop Elements!