Photoshop Tutorials - All

Understanding layers is a must for any Photoshop user regardless of experience or requirements. They remain the jewel in Photoshop's non-destructive arsenal and are at the heart of a fast and efficient workflow. In part 2 I'll show you how to build your own layered compositions by creating, naming, moving and deleting layers, as well as a few other tricks along the way.

Layers are the backbone of Photoshop's non-destructive editing capabilities. They allow each part of the image to be saved indepenently of the others, making it possible to perform fast and easy edits whenever you need to. In part 1 we'll answer the question 'what are layers and why do we need them?'.

The History Brush introduces the ability to paint back details that existed in an image when or after it was first opened. It gives the user the amazing ability to 'go back in time' and correct mistakes without reverting the entire image back to a former state. It's kinda like the history panel but in the form of a brush: maybe itself a reason why they call it the History Brush! In this example we'll paint back the sky around a billboard while leaving the changes we made inside the billboard untouched. It's a great feature of Photoshop that deserves to have it's 15 minutes of fame!

The history panel has been around for a while but it's still an integral part of Photoshop. If you're like me, then you're prone to making the odd mistake every once in a while, thanksfully the history panel gives us the opportunity of stepping  back in time and revisiting older versions, or 'states' as Photoshop calls them, of the open image. Whilst this all sounds grand, there's a few things to know: history states don't save with an image, there's not an endless amount of them, and they can be non-descript at times. For more info, watch the video!

Photoshop's Dodge Tool is a variation of the paint brush and allows us to paint lightness into a region of the image and leave the unaffected areas untouched. That's great news if you have an artistic flare, or prefer to use the brush tools to modify the appearance of a photograph. Traditionally the Dodge Tool is used by many retouchers to lighten the skin tones in a portrait shot but there's many more reasons to use it. In this example, I'll take a poorly lit billboard and lighten the letters whilst leaving the rest of the image (and even parts of the sign) unmodified. New in Photoshop CS4, the dodge tool has been revampted and is now capable of protecting the tones of an image better than ever before. I'll explain the new Protect Tones option and show you why you're gonna want to leave it on!

Photoshop's Burn Tool paints in areas of darkness to an image. It can be used to burn in shadows of a portrait, darken the skin tones of a model, or increase the intensity in a stormy sky. Taking the form of a paintbrush, the Burn Tool can strengthen the tones of an image in a more artistic way than other methods, making fine, precision guided adjustments that add contrast and tonality to an otherwise flat image.

Photoshop is only limited by the boundaries of your own creativity. This tutorial is a great example of that. Follow along as we create a colour twirl effect using a few filters and the rectangular marquee tool. Once you know the basics you'll be playing around for hours!

Learn how to create a rainbow in Photoshop and blend it into a photograph to give the impression the rainbow was there when the image was captured. This technique uses the gradient tool to add the actual rainbow, and then demonstrates use of the eraser and masks to conceal the rainbow from the foreground elements, before blending the effect into the photograph with some basic, yet always reliable blend modes.

The colour sampler tool allows a user to exactly measure pixel information and compare it to another instance of the same pixel. Ideal for ensuring the colour adjustment you're applying, for example, isn't secretly flattening out the colours of your best photographs.

The eyedropper tool in Photoshop allows a user to record and reuse colour values. If you want, for example, to recolour part of an image sky-blue, then simple find an image that has an appropriately coloured sky, sample it with the eyedropper, and reuse the recorded colour values whereever and whenever you need them. In this tutorial I'll show you how it works and provide a few tips and tricks that will make the eyedropper invalueable to your colour matching workflow.

Once you have the perfect image, chances are you’re going to want to show other people your work.  Photoshop Elements allows you to do this in a number of ways, whether by printing the image using a local inkjet printer, sending via email or placing on a web site or image hosting service. How you decide to ‘output’ the image will determine how you save it, what format, what quality settings, what size! You’ll need to know how to balance out the quality of the final image and achieve manageable file sizes for your output criteria all at the same time. And if you care about your photos, you’ll also want to know how to back them up and keep them safe. Luckily for you, Photoshop Elements can do all of that and much more!

Take a cold, wintery photograph and add the illusion of falling snow. This effect is sure to help you build the perfect on-line Christmas card. In part 2 of this video tutorial we'll blend the Photoshop-manufactured snow into the scene, and fix the edges of the snow effect by transforming the layer outwards. The result will be realistic, editable snowflakes!

Effects and filters can be used to correct or complement an image or individual layer by changing pixels in a predefined manner, subject to the controls inside the selected effect or filter.  Photoshop Elements has a wealth of these, allowing you maximum control to warp, twist, blur and distort until your heart’s content. This also brings us to the subject of sharpening – itself a filter – that brings the image into tighter focus by making details within the image stand out. It’s something that every image needs, and every image benefits from.

Take a cold, wintery photograph and add the illusion of falling snow. This effect is sure to help you build the perfect on-line Christmas card. In part one of this video, I'll show you how to use smart objects and smart filters to build snow that's realistic and forever editable!

Ever downloaded a photograph to find blemishes and minor imperfections bugging an otherwise perfect shot? Ever wanted a photograph of the real world….to look better than the real world? If you have, then be aware that Photoshop Elements comes equipped with cloning and healing brushes that can banish even the worse defects to the history palette, never to be seen again…..unless you want to of course! The crop tool can also be used to crop away details, or to focus in on what you want the viewer to see, and if that’s not enough of a hint, then you can hide or highlight a subject with text using your favourite fonts and colours.

Making clouds is fun but there's also a lot of practical reasons you may wish to do so. Replacing blown out skies and adding a more dramatic backdrop to a photograph are just a few. Add this trick to your Photoshop skills and one day it may save your life!

Anyone can make selections inside Photoshop, but it takes a good knowledge of the selection tools, and a little practice, to get on the road to mastering it. As we strive to achieve our ultimate goal – selecting and moving a gorilla into another photograph – we’ll visit the lasso tools, the marquee tools, quick selection, the magic wand and the magic extractor.  We’ll also employ the move tool to move selected elements around, the transform controls to resize the gorilla, and layer blending options to make the composition as realistic as possible. This is just the beginning to the art of image manipulation.

At first glance, it may seem that we’re revisiting the same things we looked at way back when we explored the Quick Fix mode, but on second glance, we’re correcting the same problems only this time with way more accuracy, detail and control. Instead of the one-slider solutions offered in Quick Fix mode, we’ll look at more robust options such as the levels command to fix brightness, contrast and colour issues, as well as confining our changes to certain areas using masks, keeping our edits non-destructive with adjustment layers and adding saturation to make the colours of a photograph appear more vivid. This is where the real power of photo correction makes its long overdue debut.

The standard and Polygonal lassos are amongst the most basic tools in all of Photoshop. Despite this, they carry a lot of respect with not only basic tasks but some of the more challenging selections you're no doubt on your way to creating.

The Full Edit mode unleashes the full power of Photoshop Elements in the form of layers, a full set of tools, full ability to select and move pixels, color adjusting and retouching tools beyond the realms of your wildest dreams and much, much more. This is where things start to get interesting. Follow me on a virtual tour of the workspace and rest assured that by time we’re done, you’ll choose power over ease-of-use any day of the week.

Having covered the theory of the Quick Fix mode in the previous video, it’s time to correct colour, brightness and focus of a real-world digital photograph. Almost all photographs taken on a digital camera require some degree of adjustment to make them look good, and quite simply put, the Quick Fix mode is going to be the fastest and easiest way to get the job done.

If you’re new to Photoshop Elements then the Quick Fix and Guided Modes are for you! Designed as a gentle introduction to image editing, these modes offer a workspace that walks you through the process of improving digital photos with no more than a few simple movements of the appropriate sliders. Whether you’re correcting for color, dark shadows, bright highlights or a soft focus, these modes are the fastest way to see better looking images.

Using the Magnetic Lasso Tool straight out of the box can deliver some impressive results. Know how to adjust the frequency, width and contrast controls and you'll have a selection tool that sticks to edges like glue.

Many people think that the Organizer is a place to store and organize digital files, and it is, but it’s capable of so much more. From importing photos from your digital camera, to rotating them, adding keywords for easy reference, and the ability to store them neatly into stacks and albums, Photoshop Elements is the real-deal when it comes to organisation. There’s no reason on earth not to use it!

The Magnetic Lasso is a capable selection tool. Available in both Elements and CS, it's options and controls allow for creating a relatively fast and well-defined outline. All you need to do is understand the essentials and get dragging away!

The first time you open Photoshop Elements you’ll be greeted by the welcome screen. This serves as a portal into various workspaces such as the organizer and the editing modes. This video sets the tone for the following nine videos.

If you want an element or object moved in your composition then it's possible you still don't even select the Move Tool from the Toolbox. Accessible via keyboard shortcuts, it a tool you perhaps see in short but regular bursts. If that's the case, then shame on you, because the Move Tool has so much more to offer. Here's a taste of what you're missing!

Learn how to add a professional level contrast effect to a portrait shot to make it look more defined and sharper. For this amazing effect we'll using the Gaussian Blur filter, blending and Levels.

The journey ends with a few words of wisdom, a firm handshake and a friendly shove in the right direction. After 25 videos and five hours of video training - the world of levels is yours for the taking!

A colour cast is when the colour of an image shifts towards a specific hue, say green, to give the whole image an unsightly green tint. The reasons behind this and the resulting cast can be as numerous as the tools available to fix it. For this reason we'll take a classic example and put things right both manually and automatically.

So we know the difference between colour and luminance information, now's the time to look at dividing the two and working on each individually. Whether we're doing that with blend modes or the highly theoretical Lab colour space we're going to be opening our eyes to a whole new universe.

Made popular by the Camera Raw plug-in that ships along with Photoshop, the color histogram contains all 3 RGB channel histograms inside one window, giving a visually pleasing reference to colour information, how the channels interact and where exactly they don't.

Because the human eye doesn't see red, green and blue light equally we need a reliable way of representing the brightness of a pixel independent of colour. And so steps up the luminance histogram - the most accurate way of spotting clipped shadows and blown highlights threatening the very existence of your image!

Photoshop produces red, green and blue histograms inside an RGB image, when it's done it puts the results into a composite version and displays it as the standard view. How that composite view is calculated decides how we see clipping inside our images - and as you'll bear witness, things aren't always what they seem!

It's time to summarize the RGB, luminance and Colour histograms available inside Photoshop, and talk more specifically and indeed more technically about the statistics available in the expanded view. It's not necessarily about how to ask questions, it more about deciphering the often misunderstood answers that the histogram palette is shouting out!

With one foot inside the CMYK colour space but the other firmly rooted to RGB land we begin to harness the power of number-based skin tone adjustments using the colour sampler tool and the levels command. Altogether a more involved but highly rewarding way to work that's employed by studios and portrait professionals around the world.

Modifying skin tones can be a tricky task, thankfully within levels we have a number of fully-adjustable yet simple techniques that wield some great results. Some of these results depend on the user’s perception of what's right, or what's wrong, with the colour of the skin, other results are aided by a library of skin tone swatches that are prepared to work overtime to get you the results you demand.

So we know what shadows and highlights are, and we also know a way of locating and using them in conjunction with the relevant eyedroppers - but surely there must be a more accurate way of finding the brightest and darkest pixels inside an image? Well I'm glad you asked, as with assistance from the threshold command, the colour sampler tool, the info palette and the eyedroppers we can achieve pinpoint accuracy in a modest amount of time.

The eyedropper tools inside levels have the ability of setting specific values for specific pixels which is ideal when adjusting shadows, midtones and highlights. In the honour of levels we'll look at the eyedroppers and the theory of posterization followed by a full blown creative party as we play with those aforementioned eyedroppers, avoid the party-pooper that lives by the name of colour banding, and perform a very special party trick by transforming the grey eyedropper into a colour replacement tool. Doesn't time fly when you're having fun!!

The term 'neutral colours' will feature a lot in the latter stages of this video series, so it's important to form an understanding of what it means - and how it can help us keep our colours accurate and true. On the other hand, adding saturation is the act of taking the colours, or more accurately the hues of an image, and making them more vivid by raising the intensity level - which is yet another level to understand!

The levels dialogue box allows us to take control of the three automatic operations in auto levels, auto colour and auto contrast. Instead of just pushing a button and hoping for the best results, we can adjust black, grey and white points as well as control the percentage of pixels we want to ignore before finding the true base luminance for the given value. If that sounds confusing then this video's for you.

The 16 bit mode allows us to introduce 32,000 luminance levels of data per channel, which in theory gives us access to billions of colour variations inside one RGB image, enough to make any number of extreme edits and not produce a single sign of colour banding or posterization. Sometimes seeing is understanding, and understanding is believing.

In the world of non-destructive image editing with the levels command - the adjustment layer is king. Sitting at the top of the layers palette it gracefully and parametrically controls every pixel below it, and when used in combination with its equally powerful ally the luminance mask it becomes a true Photoshop force to be reckoned with.

The more we know about a subject, the further we want to push ourselves to create the unimaginable. Before long we're building complex compositions from a single flat image, and the more complex we get, the more scope we need for readjusting settings that looked perfect five edits ago but no longer stand the test of time. The world of non-destructive editing inside levels brings about a whole new concept to an already able set of editing techniques.

Most of this series is focused on increasing contrast in our images - but what happens for the occasions we want to reduce it? Enter the output sliders! By using the output controls we gain more accuracy in deciding the exact brightness level of shadows and highlights in our images, which can complement our ever increasing knowledge and allow us to take our creativity even further.

It's well documented that Photoshop provides custom keyboard shortcuts for many of its popular and important tasks, not least the levels command, so it's only natural we take a look at navigating inside the dialogue box using its well designed, and often more accurate keyboard variations.

Some people claim you should avoid clipping like nothing else in existence, and whilst that ideal has some merit - the reality is you'll no doubt be faced with the problem one day. Therefore it's time to look at some creative solutions and realise that sometimes the best way out of trouble is to take a different route home.

As powerful as editing the composite histogram may be, it pales in comparison to the results that come from making individual edits on a channel-by-channel basis. Sounds complicated? Follow the instructions from this video, add a little creativity and you'll be wandering in and out of the channels like a walk in the park.

It's time to open up the levels dialogue box, roll up our sleeves and get down to some good old fashioned image editing, but not before we take a look at why we're not using the more straight-forward brightness/contrast command to amend the brightness and contrast of our images.

It's time to realise that those cleverly spoken words were actually a full-blown conversation between the pixels in our image and our ears, spoken by the soothing voice of the histogram. Now comes the time to understand terms such as contrast, clipping and other references used in the world of photography such as high and low key images.

Understanding how channels represent colour and how colour works in the first place is a basic topic, it's also an important one that will serve you a good foundation of knowledge as you motor you're way through this series. We'll also take our first look at the histogram and turn a series of lines into some cleverly spoken words.

Many commands in Photoshop come complete with an auto button, and not to be outclassed - the levels command comes with 3 of them! The interesting thing here is that, as far as one-click solutions go, they're actually very good at what they set out to do. Join me as we look at how they work and how effective they can be.

The best place to start is at the beginning! So let's get the series rolling with a brief explanation of what levels is, and how it's going to help us improve images inside Photoshop. It's also true that a picture paints a thousand words so we'll spend a few moments on a few examples of what the levels command can do.

Here's a technique for blurring live editable text inside Photoshop CS2 or earlier by applying precise layer effects to the type. Users of CS3 and beyond can just apply a blur as a smart filter, users of elements unfortunately can not benefit from this trick.

If you're looking at measuring, inserting and aligning elements of your image to the page, or to another object in the same document, then look no further than Photoshop's rulers and guides. When used correctly, these features can be all the support you need to produce images that align professionally and look perfect!

A sure fire way to create a custom camouflage look inside Photoshop using the sponge, median and photo filters. I'll also demonstrate the advantages of smart objects and smart filters - new to CS3!

If you've ever spent a whole evening applying the same operations to a batch of images then this tutorial's for you! The actions palette is Photoshop's oldest and wisest automation tool, giving any user complete access to fast, efficient and flexible multi-step operations that can be recorded from scratch and played back over and over again. Once you learn the basics of actions you'll wonder how you ever lived without them!

When creating text using Photoshop it's important to start off on the right foot - getting it wrong will cost you time and frustration in the long run! Here we'll look at the key differences between point and area text, as well as best practices for using them.

Learn how to use multiple filters to transform text into a snow-swept, f-f-freezing-cold block of sculptured ice letters! Get your jacket, slide on the gloves, and come along for the ride!

Imagine being able to create a sharp detailed sketch without any artistic talent whatsoever. Using this technique you'll be able to take a digital photograph, add a few filters, throw in a couple of obscure commands - and let Photoshop do the rest!

Renaming one or two files isn't a problem, but if you have hundreds or even thousands of holiday photographs to rename then you'd need to invest some serious time into the process. Thankfully Photoshop can be fine-tuned to automate many repetitive and time-consuming tasks, batch renaming multiple files being one of them. Here we'll switch our attention to the Bridge, a free application that ships along with Photoshop, and rename photographs the quick and easy way.

There are many ways to add or subtract saturation from images using Adobe Photoshop, here we'll look at how the Sponge Tool works, and how to get the best results when using it.

Creating a sepia tone for your photographs is easy in Photoshop. Here we'll look at 3 quick ways to create the effect using the Photo Filter command, Variations and Colour Balance.

Ever taken multiple photographs and wanted to 'stitch' them together to create one seamless Panorama? If you have then Photoshop can prove to be a real helping hand. Here we'll skip the automated Photomerge command and combine 2 photographs the manual way.

A quick look at Photoshop's native file format - the awesome PSD file! Capable of saving all the elements of a Photoshop document, including layers, colour settings, alpha channels, live text and much, much more, the PSD format is the ultimate safety net in Photoshop's high flying world!

In this tutorial we'll fade out the edges of a photograph to match the background colour of the page. In this example, we'll match the soft transition with page white - perfect for printing or using on a plain white web background.

Here we'll look at the difference between resampling an image and resizing it. If you're a regular to the Image Size Dialogue Box then watching this tutorial is a must. If you're scaling a photograph to send by email, or wanting to add more pixels to your image, working out the best method to keep the job practical, and the results effective, is essential.

The PNG-8 and PNG-24 formats are ofter compared to the GIF and JPEG formats respectively, in this tutorial we'll look at where this is a fair comparison - and when it's not!

The Tagged Image File Format is a great way to apply loseless compression to an image. Thanks to it's popularity within the world of graphic design and image editing, the TIFF file has become a common format for achiving and even short term storage. In this tutorial we'll look at how a TIFF file can be used along side Adobe Photoshop.

Outputting your graphics to look their best is an important part of any workflow. When saving for the web you're aim is usually to find a compromise between file size and quality. Here we'll look at how we can get the best out of the Graphic Interchange Format using Photoshop and Imageready.

When you're working inside Photoshop you can save yourself buckets of time by knowing how to quickly find your way around, both with the mouse and by using popular keyboard shortcuts. In this tutorial we'll explore the navigator palette, and then continue looking at how to get where you want to inside Photoshop - fast!

Saving a file as a JPEG should be nothing new to the average Photoshop user, but have you ever found yourself sticking with the default settings because you weren't sure how they effect the saved image. In this tutorial we'll explore what they mean, and more importantly, what they do!

This pixel based tutorial looks specifically at the confusing subject of image size and resolution. Here we'll delve into the image size dialogue box and hit the subject head on.

In this tutorial we'll look at how to add an image to a block of text for effect. There are many practical ways to use this technique, so once you know how to pin an image into a block of text, there's many more creative ways to employ the secrets of clipping masks for your workflow.

Although most cameras now have a red-eye reduction feature, it's still fairly common to see the dreaded red-eye phenomenon ruining a perfectly good photograph. In this tutorial we'll look at why red-eye happens and how your camera tries to defeat it. Then we'll get down to business and explore two ways to remove red-eye inside Photoshop.

In this tutorial we'll look at how to create a basic animated GIF image, and how we can save time with tweening inside Photoshop and Imageready. I'll also take you through the saving process and make sure the finished product works the way it was intended to.

Whether you want to blur an ex-loved one's face out of a photograph, or pixelate a competitor's advertising from your image for corporate reasons - this technique is the easiest and fastest to use. Here I'll show you 3 quick ways of censoring a registration plate from a car.

In this video tutorial we'll look at a great non-destructive way to sharpen an image using the High Pass Filter. We'll also examine the best view size to get an accurate preview of the image you're working with.

(UPDATE - Since Photoshop CS4, Adobe uses a more accurate interpolation method to preview images, meaning that you can now work at any view ratio and know that you're seeing a smooth and true version of your image).

Sometimes sharpening a whole image can solve one problem but create another, in this video tutorial we'll look at building an edge mask and using it to sharpen a selected area.

In this tutorial we'll be looking at how to fix small amounts of motion blur in an image using the Emboss Filter and a couple of really helpful blend modes. Removing motion blur is also possible using the Smart Sharpen filter, but here's a tried and tested technique that was around even before Smart Sharpening had a name!

In this free video tutorial we'll look at how to reduce colour banding, distortion and noise during the sharpening process. To achieve this we've got two options, either use a flat sharpening filter in the RGB colour mode followed by the mysterious fade command or sharpening the lightness channel in Lab. Both techniques are heading in the same direction, so feel free to let me know how they work out for you?

You may have seen this effect used throughout the web, a standard text block with a foreground shadow. In this tutorial I'll show you how to create it using the text tool, the transform mode, and the gradient tool.

For years we've been using the same old filters inside of Photoshop, then with the release of Photoshop CS2, we finally get a new sharpening filter - and the word on the street is that it was worth the wait! In this tutorial we'll be looking at the new controls available to help make our sharpening experience as trouble-free as possible!

It's a little known fact that most digital photographs need some sort of sharpening to have them looking perfectly focused. In this tutorial I'll be looking at how Photoshop produces the sharpening effect, as well as how the Sharpen, Sharpen Edges, Sharpen More and the Unsharp Mask filters work.

In this tutorial I'll demonstrate two popular methods of creating a matrix style backdrop and adding larger text to the foreground. The first method involves the use of a text editor and layer masks, while the second only uses filters and colour adjustments - and is therefore probably better suited to Photoshop Elements users. The matrix fonts can be found below in the support files. Unfortunately, the image showing the backdrop of code hasn't come out too good in the video tutorial, but I can assure you - it is there! Good luck.

In this tutorial I'll be looking at the Swatches Palette and how we can use it to save and retrieve colour information inside of photoshop. Swatches isn't a basic necessity in Photoshop, but there's no question of the accuracy to be gained and the time to be saved from employing the usefulness of this palette.

In this tutorial I'll be changing the colour of a car using the Colour Replacement Tool, and then fine tuning the paint job with the History Brush.

In this tutorial we'll be looking at how to create a star-filled sky along with a dramatic galactic outer-space look. This is one of those tutorials that fall inside the special effects zone - a simple but extremely effective technique.

Ever created a complex selection outline and then needed it long after you'd deselected it? In this tutorial you'll see how to save a selection as a channel, leaving it available to reselect at any time.

In this tutorial we'll be looking at how to use the magic wand selection tool. Although most people have heard of this tool, very few understand how to properly adjust the various settings and controls in order to have this tool working with you - rather than against you!

In this tutorial we'll look at how to use the Measure Tool to straighten an image, and the crop tool to leave you with the perfect picture. This is definitely one of Photoshop's hidden features, it's a mysterious little trick but it gets the job done - accurately and fast!