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!
Still using Photoshop’s standard image adjustments to edit your photos? Still causing permanent damage to your images with every edit you make? There’s a better way! Learn how to work non-destructively and with greater flexibility with Photoshop’s Adjustment Layers!
Cropping photos is one of the most common uses for Photoshop, but what if you want your cropped image to maintain the same aspect ratio as the original? No problem, thanks to a rarely used but very useful command called Transform Selection!
Photoshop’s Dodge and Burn tools are great for lightening and darkening specific areas of a photo, but they both permanently damage your image. Learn a better way to get the same results without harming a single pixel!
Having trouble getting your digital photos to fit nicely in standard-size picture frames? Learn how to easily crop your images to any specific size you need!
Unless you take all your photos with your camera mounted on a tripod, some of them are going to turn out a bit crooked. Fortunately, Photoshop makes it incredibly easy to straighten them in just a few simple steps and without any guess work!
Learn how to change the brightness of an image without affecting its color using the Luminosity blend mode in Photoshop. Part of our complete series on the five essential blend modes for photo editing.
Learn how the Color blend mode in Photoshop lets us change the hue and saturation of an image without affecting its brightness. Part of our complete series on the five essential blend modes for photo editing in Photoshop.
Learn how the Overlay blend mode in Photoshop both lightens and darkens an image at the same time to increase contrast. Part of our complete series on Photoshop’s five essential blend modes for photo editing.
Learn all about the Screen blend mode in Photoshop and how it instantly lightens an image. Part of our complete series on the five essential blend modes for photo editing in Photoshop.
In this tutorial in our series on Photoshop’s five essential blend modes for photo editing, learn all about the Multiply blend mode and why it’s great for darkening an image.
Feeling overwhelmed by Photoshop’s 27 layer blend modes? There’s really only 5 you need to know! Learn the essential Photoshop blend modes – Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Color, and Luminosity – and how to use them to quickly edit and improve your images!
Learn an easy way to smooth and soften someone’s skin in a photo without losing important image details, using a technique normally used for advanced image sharpening!
Tired of the sky in your photos being dull, faded and washed out? Learn a simple technique for boosting image contrast, enhancing details in the clouds, and turning those gray skies to blue, all with just a few easy steps!
Learn how easy it is to match colors of objects in separate photos using Photoshop’s Match Color command, as well as how to quickly fix up the results when Match Color doesn’t get it quite right.
Learn how easy it is to color or tint someone’s hair in a photo with Photoshop! Use this technique on photos of other people, or use it on yourself to see what you’d look like with a different hair color, then go back any time you want and change the color again without having to redo all the work!
Let’s face it, sometimes photos don’t do people justice, and a wrong setting on the camera or an unflattering angle can make their nose look bigger than it really is. Fortunately, Photoshop makes digital plastic surgery a breeze without the need for any fancy surgical tools or even a steady hand!
Bring colors to life in your images by tinting and enhancing them with Photoshop’s Photo Filter. Thanks to the layer mask that comes with adjustment layers, we can easily combine multiple Photo Filters to enhance different areas of the image separately! We’ll even finish things off with a Curves adjustment just for fun!
When it comes to editing images, the very first step should always be to fix any overall tonal and color problems, and the Levels command allows us to quickly and easily fix both problems at once!
Get great results when sharpening images without fumbling around with confusing options by using Photoshop’s High Pass filter and your choice of layer blend modes.
Learn how to quickly neutralize a color cast in an image using the Photo Filter and the exact opposite color.
Unless you’re looking at a photo of a guy in the rugged outdoors, chances are the stubble on his face isn’t adding anything to the image. In this Photoshop tutorial, we’ll see how to give a guy a virtual shave and improve his appearance.
Nothing seems to have the power to captivate us quite like a person’s eyes, and in this tutorial, we bump up that power even more with a shadowy, sultry look.
Learn step-by-step how to easily whiten and brighten teeth with Photoshop! For Photoshop CS5 and earlier.
Whether you’re an amateur or pro photographer, you can make ordinary photos more extraordinary using Photoshop and a simple yet powerful design trick.
In this third tutorial in our series on Smart Filters in Photoshop CS3, learn how to use a Smart Filter’s built-in blend mode and opacity settings!
In this second tutorial in our series on Smart Filters in Photoshop CS3, learn how to edit the settings of a Smart Filter!
Smart Filters are easily one of the best new features in Photoshop CS3, and using them couldn’t be easier. In this tutorial, we take a look at the basics of applying Smart Filters to an image.
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.
If there’s one thing every Photoshop user needs to know, it’s how to work with layers, Photoshop’s most powerful and important feature. In this intro to layers, we look at the difference between working with them and working without them!
Photoshop’s Opacity and Fill options in the Layers panel both control the transparency of a layer, but in this tutorial, we learn the important difference between them when working with layer styles!
In this Photoshop Basics tutorial, learn how to create more interesting text layouts in your designs using custom shapes as text frames, and watch as your text fills the area inside the shape!
In this Photoshop Basics tutorial, learn how to create fun designs and interesting logos by combining text with custom shapes! You’ll learn how to convert text to a shape, how to add other shapes to text and how to use shapes to cut holes out of letters!