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!
Whether you’re a fan or horror movies or looking for a fun effect for Halloween, learn how to give your photo a more ghostly, supernatural look with this fully re-written and updated tutorial for Photoshop CS6! Also compatible with Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud)!
Learn how the Straighten Tool and the Crop Tool in Adobe Camera Raw 8 work seamlessly together to both crop and straighten your photos at once!
In the previous tutorial in our Adobe Camera Raw 8 series, we learned the basics of cropping images using the Crop Tool. In this related tutorial, learn how the Crop Tool can be used to easily rotate and straighten an image.
Learn how to easily crop your photos non-destructively, and to any aspect ratio you need, using the Crop Tool in Adobe Camera Raw 8!
In this photo retouch tutorial, learn a little-known trick for selecting pixels in a photo based on their lightness values, then how to use them to boost contrast and color saturation to give your image more visual punch! Now fully updated for Photoshop CS6!
Photoshop CC (Creative Cloud) and its new Camera Raw Filter bring with them lots of new and exciting features, including the amazing Radial Filter. Learn how the Radial Filter can be used to add creative, highly customizable and fully non-destructive vignette effects to your images!
Adobe Camera Raw lets us process and edit not only raw files directly from our digital camera but also JPEG and TIFF images. In this tutorial, learn how to open all three files types in Camera Raw, including a look at some potentially confusing options for JPEG and TIFF images in the Camera Raw Preferences.
Did you know that Camera Raw works in both Photoshop and in Adobe Bridge? In fact, running it in Bridge offers certain advantages. Learn what those advantages are, and how to open images in Camera Raw without opening Photoshop!
With raw files and raw image processing being all the rage these days, many people wonder which application they should be using to edit their photos – Photoshop or Camera Raw. Learn what Camera Raw is, where it fits within your editing workflow, and why the answer to which one you should be using is… both!
Adobe Camera Raw is like a streamlined version of Photoshop built specifically for photo editing and retouching. In this Photoshop CS6 tutorial, take a whirlwind tour of the Camera Raw interface and learn about its tools, panels and other photo editing features!
In this first in a series of tutorials on working with Adobe Camera Raw, we take a look at the big advantage raw files have over JPEGs for capturing and editing our digital photos.
In this Photo Effects tutorial, learn how make an image look like it was painted on canvas with this simple painted edges photo border effect. Now fully updated for Photoshop CS6!
In this Photo Effects tutorial, learn how to add a surreal, otherworldly look to a photo with an easy-to-create motionscape effect!
Adobe removed many of the more creative and artistic filters from the Filter menu in Photoshop CS6, but they’re not gone. In this quick tip, learn where to find the missing filters, how this change impacts Smart Filters, and how to restore the Filter menu to the way it looked in CS5 and earlier.
In this Text Effects tutorial, learn how to engulf you text in beams of light and color! Now fully re-written and updated for Photoshop CS6!
In this Photo Effects tutorial, learn how to seamlessly blend two photos together like a Hollywood movie poster! Now fully re-written and updated for Photoshop CS6!
Photoshop’s Print Size view mode is supposed to give us an accurate on-screen preview of how an image will look when printed, but by default, it doesn’t work. In this tutorial, we learn why it’s not working and more importantly, how to easily fix it!
Many Photoshop users believe they need to set the image resolution of their photos to 72 ppi before uploading them to the web or viewing them on screen, but is there really any point to it? We put it to the test and learn why computer screens don’t actually care about image resolution at all!
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!
In this Photo Effects tutorial, learn how to create a smaller, full color version of your photo inside a black and white version of the original full size image! Fully compatible with Photoshop CS6.
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 to create a simple and fun 3D pop up effect in Photoshop where the main subject of your photo appears to be standing up and popping right out of the image!
Learn how to create a quick, non-destructive infrared glow effect using Smart Filters and adjustment layers in Photoshop CS6!
Not all of the great new features in Photoshop CS6 are as easy to find as others, like the hidden Photographic Toning presets that make it easy to apply great looking tinting and split-toning effects to our photos!
Learn how two great new features in Photoshop CS6 – Background Save and Auto Save – will improve your workflow and help minimize annoying interruptions.
Learn how to turn a real life photo into a miniature scene with the new Tilt-Shift blur filter in Photoshop CS6!
Blend modes in Photoshop are a great way to change how a layer interacts, or blends, with the layers below it, but in this tutorial, we get more creative by learning how to apply blend modes to individual color channels using the Apply Image command!
Learn how the new Iris Blur filter in Photoshop CS6, along with its hidden layer mask feature, can help us add a simple blurred vignette effect to a photo!
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!
Learn how to instantly give your photo a whole new look just by choosing one from a list, thanks to the new Color Lookup image adjustment in Photoshop CS6!
Learn how Photoshop’s Content-Aware Scale command can reshape and transform photos from one aspect ratio to another without distorting your main subject or other important areas of the image!
Learn how to create highly customized blur effects with an image using the new Iris Blur filter in Photoshop CS6, which takes everything Field Blur offers and adds even more fine-tune control!
Learn how to easily apply different amounts of blurring to specific areas of an image without the need for layer masks using the new Field Blur filter in Photoshop CS6!
Photoshop CS6 brings with it a completely redesigned and enhanced Crop Tool that makes cropping and straightening images easier than ever! In this tutorial, we learn how it works!
Selecting hair in a photo was once strictly for the pros, but in this tutorial, learn how the improved and powerful Refine Edge command in Photoshop CS5 makes selecting hair easier than ever!
In this Photo Retouch tutorial, learn how to easily replace the original sky in a photo with the sky from a different image using a simple selection, a layer mask, and the power of Photoshop’s Advanced Blending sliders!
It may be called a Black & White image adjustment, but don’t let the name fool you. In this Photo Retouch tutorial, we learn how to combine it with one of Photoshop’s layer blend modes to easily control the brightness and contrast of different areas in a full color photo!
In this Photoshop tutorial, learn a fast and easy way to lighten and brighten someone’s eyes in a photo using nothing more than a simple adjustment layer, a layer blend mode and a brush!
In the previous tutorial, we learned how to quickly brighten an underexposed photo using the Screen blend mode. In this tutorial, learn how to darken and tone down an overexposed image just as easily using the exact opposite blend mode!
In this photo editing tutorial, learn a quick and easy way to brighten underexposed photos using nothing more than simple adjustment layers and a layer blend mode!
Whether you’re restoring old photos or adding them to your digital scrapbooking designs, let Photoshop’s Crop and Straighten Photos command speed up your scanning workflow!
When color correcting photos in Photoshop, it’s pretty easy to find the brightest and darkest areas in the image. But what about those midtones? Is there an easy way to find neutral gray without simply guessing? There sure is, and it’s one of Photoshop’s often overlooked blend modes that makes all the ‘difference’!
It took a long time, but with Photoshop CS5, Adobe has finally made straightening crooked images simple, fast and intuitive! In fact, as we learn in this tutorial, Photoshop CS5’s new Straighten feature now lets us straighten and crop images with a single click!
Learn how the Healing Brush in Photoshop lets us reduce the appearance of distracting wrinkles on someone’s face. For Photoshop CS5 and earlier.
Want to remove an object in a photo with little effort? Check out the amazing new Content-Aware Fill feature in Photoshop CS5 and watch the object magically disappear as if it never existed!
In this first look at one of the brand new features in Photoshop CS5, we check out the upgraded Spot Healing Brush with its new Content Aware Healing option and how an already great photo retouching tool just got a whole lot better!
Whenever we shoot in low light, use high ISO settings or leave the dSLR at home because the compact camera is easier to carry, we often end up with noise in our images. Fortunately, Photoshop’s Reduce Noise filter can reduce its appearance without sacrificing image detail!
Learn how to easily change eye color in an image using a simple adjustment layer in Photoshop! For Photoshop CS5 and earlier.