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Latest Photoshop tutorials

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!

Film Strip Photo Collage in Photoshop – Part 2

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!

Film Strip Photo Collage in Photoshop – Part 1

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!

Creating Photo Borders With Photoshop Brushes

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!

High Key Glow Effect With Photoshop

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.

Halftone Pattern Photo Border With Photoshop

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!

Create Cinematic Panoramas With Photomerge In Photoshop CS4

Photoshop has been somewhat capable of creating panoramas for quite a while now, but it wasn’t until Photoshop CS3 came along with its dramatically improved Photomerge command that its ability to stitch photos together really began to shine. Now Photoshop CS4 makes it easier than ever to create seamless cinematic panoramas!

Mirror Image Effect With Photoshop

In this Photoshop tutorial, learn how to easily create a mirror image effect with a photo, turning the right half of the image into a mirror reflection of the left half!

Outlining The Action With Photoshop

Bring the action in your images to the forefront by highlighting the main subject of your photo with an easy to create outline effect in Photoshop!

Photoshop Snow Effect – Add Falling Snow To A Winter Photo

We may not be able to control the weather outdoors, but thanks to Photoshop, we do have some control over it in our photos! In this tutorial, learn how to add falling snow to a winter scene, and see how the same basic technique can be used to create entirely different effects!

Gritty, Overprocessed Photo Effect With Photoshop

Learn how to give a photo a gritty, overprocessed look to it with extreme levels of contrast and sharpening, noise and washed out colors. The final effect looks rather harsh, but Photoshop makes creating it quick and painless.

Darkening Photo Edges In Photoshop

Learn how to easily darken or burn the edges of a photo in Photoshop, creating a vignette effect, using a filter that was actually designed to remove unwanted vignette effects!

Split Toning Black and White Photos With Photoshop

Looking for a way in Photoshop to spice up a black and white photo? Try a classic split toning effect! Learn how to quickly create your own custom black and white version, then add more visual interest by tinting the highlights and shadows with different colors, all without harming a single pixel in the image!

Photoshop Puzzle Effect

Photoshop can certainly seem puzzling at times, but using it to turn any photo into a puzzle is easy! In fact, Photoshop even comes with a free puzzle texture to get us started, but in this tutorial, we’re going to take things a bit further and give our puzzle effect a “work in progress” look to it!

Soft Focus Lens Effect With Photoshop

In this tutorial, we look at how to easily create the look of a photo taken with a soft focus lens or diffusion filter, and since we’re doing it all in Photoshop, we have complete control over the final result!

Fun With Silhouettes In Photoshop

Learn how to create a basic silhouette from a photo in Photoshop, then learn how to fill the silhouette with an image to create interesting designs!

Classic Starburst Background Effect In Photoshop

Learn how to recreate the classic starburst-style background you’ve seen hundreds of times in grocery stores, department stores and weekly flyers, using a little-known but very powerful feature in Photoshop – Transform Again.

Easy Soft Focus And Glow Effect In Photoshop

Whether you’re a wedding photographer, nature photographer or you simply enjoy taking photos of family and friends, learn how to quickly and easily add a soft focus or glow effect to a photo and see if it doesn’t make your images look a bit more magical.

Add Light Streaks To A Photo With Photoshop

Learn how to add colorful streaks of light to a photo by combining paths with Photoshop’s brushes and layer styles! Also learn how to simulate pen pressure with a brush even if you’re not using a pen tablet!

Casting Light Through Window Blinds In Photoshop

Learn how to create the illusion that light is being cast on to the subject of your photo through window blinds, using a displacement map to bend and wrap the shadows around your subject while a simple adjustment layer helps create a more natural light source.

Warm Golden Sunsets With Gradient Maps In Photoshop

Sunsets are one of the most commonly photographed aspects of nature, yet photos rarely manage to capture their intense beauty. Learn how to easily bring vivid, golden colors back to your sunsets with Photoshop’s Gradient Maps!

Turn A New Photo Into An Old Photo With Photoshop

Learn how to do a little reverse photo restoration by taking a new or recent photo and making it look like it’s been around for a while, combining several separate effects to create the final result!

Turn Any Photo Into A Background With Photoshop

Learn how to easily turn any photo into an interesting background in Photoshop using a couple of basic selection tools that seem to have no other purpose. Then learn how to combine the newly created background with the same photo it was created from!

Blend Photos With Apply Image In Photoshop

Learn how to combine photos in all sorts of interesting and creative ways using the Apply Image command, one of the most powerful, flexible and fun image blending tools in all of Photoshop!

Giving A Photo Rounded Corners In Photoshop

If you’re creating a fun design or collage out of your photos, those sharp, right-angled corners may not be sending the message you want. Fortunately, Photoshop makes it incredibly easy to give your photos warm, friendly, rounded corners using a simple Shape tool and a vector mask!

Cast Light From A Window With Photoshop

Give an ordinary photo a more focused and dramatic look to it by creating a light source that appears to be shining through a window onto your main subject.

Telling Stories With Shadows In Photoshop

Learn how to truly make a picture worth a thousand words by adding a different shadow behind someone in a photo, as if the person will one day become the image in the shadow! A fun, easy and popular Photoshop effect that’s limited only by your imagination!

Collage Of Warped Photos With Photoshop

Learn how to create a fun photo collage in Photoshop by bending, twisting, curling, and reshaping photos using the Warp Tool! We’ll even see how to create more interesting drop shadows with the Warp Tool, as well as how to add subtle shadows and highlights to enhance the 3D look of our warping effect!

Adding Sunlight Through Trees With Photoshop

Learn how easy it is to create realistic beams of sunlight shining through the trees in a photo, then finish off the effect with patches of sunlight hitting the ground below.

Adding Reflections To Sunglasses With Photoshop

Creating reflections in sunglasses is a very popular Photoshop effect and opens up endless creative and artistic possibilities depending on who is wearing them and who or what you have them looking at. In this tutorial, we see how easy it is to do!

Creative Focus with Lens Blur In Photoshop

When it comes to adding blur effects to an image in Photoshop, most people yawn and think “Gaussian Blur filter”. But spend a little time with Photoshop’s much more powerful Lens Blur filter, along with its easy-to-create depth maps, and there’s no limit to how many creative and imaginative uses you’ll come up with for it!

Add Transparent Type To An Image With Photoshop

Learn a few different ways to add transparent type to an image in Photoshop, from the quickest and easiest way to more interesting ways using layer styles and blend modes. We’ll also look at the important and often confusing difference between a layer’s Opacity and Fill options.

Wedding Couple in Wine Glass – Photoshop Tutorial

Learn how easy it is to create this classic wedding photography effect in Photoshop, placing a wedding couple inside a wine glass. Not into wedding photography? You can use this same technique to place an image inside any glass object, like a bottle or an hour glass, or even place an image inside a bubble!

Interweaving Photo Strips With Photoshop

Learn how to use layers, layer masks and clipping masks in Photoshop to create the illusion that your photo is made up of vertical and horizontal strips that weave under and over each other.

Adding Rain To A Photo With Photoshop

How do you take photos of rainy days without getting your camera all wet? Easy! Add the rain later in Photoshop! This tutorial shows you how it’s done.