The Big Fat List of Photoshop Tutorials

We've searched long and hard for all the best Photoshop tutorials we could find so that you don't have to. Enjoy!

Actions

Creative Bloq have a collection of 60 Photoshop actions and they're all completely free! Find them here. 

You can find 100+ free Photoshop actions over at The Photo Argus. Check out their list here. 

Beginners

Life Hacker has a video tutorial that promises to teach the basics of Photoshop in under 25 minutes! Click here for the tutorial.

Digital Information World have created a useful cheatsheet for beginners - access it here.

Who better to learn the basics from then Adobe themselves! Find their basic tutorial here.

Tools

Photoshop Essentials can help you learn how to use the Background Eraser Tool here.

First Effect 555 has a YouTube tutorial on how to use various Photoshop tools. Find the video here.

Vandelay Design have a collection of tool tutorials. You can find them here.

Portrait Effects

The Photoshop Training Channel show you various methods of adjusting facial features here.

Head over to Vector Tuts to learn how to create a floral portrait here.

Adobe have a great tutorial on adjusting and exaggerating facial features using Face Aware Liquify. Find the tutorial here
.

Photo Manipulation

Design Tuts Plus have a collection of 20 photo manipulation tutorials. Find them here.

PSHoudini from Deviant Art shows you how to create your own personalised Pokeball.

Inspiration Hut have a great list of 19 useful and creative photo manipulation tutorials. Check it out here. (A couple of the links no longer seem to work but the majority are still active).

The ever amazing Spoongraphics show you how to create a stunning watercolour effect in this tutorial.

Specky Boy has an amazing list of 100 manipulation tutorials for you to try. You can find the list here.

Design Your Way have curated a list of 91 of the best photo manipulation tutorials. You can find them here.

Cutting Things Out

Visit Spoon Graphics' YouTube channel - they have a ton of excellent tutorials on how to do just about anything in Photoshop. You can access their great 'how to cut out anything' lesson here.

Digital Arts Online also have a great step-by-step guide to cutting out an image in Photoshop. You can find their tutorial here.

Special Effects

Trip Wire have a list of 135 Effects Tutorials for Photoshop. You can find them here.

Freelancer have a collection of 26 special effects tutorials which you can find here.

Visit Vandelay Design for a list of 40 lighting and abstract effects tutorials. You can find the list here.

Useful Tricks

Head over to The Creative Business to learn how to quickly add watermarks to your pictures. 

Creative Bloq have made a list of 120 tips, tricks and fixes which you can access here.

Fonts and Typography

Design Tuts Plus have collected 100 of the best Photoshop texts effects. You can find them here.

Click here for a lesson on typing in a circle from It's Organised.

Learn how to create a text portrait in this great tutorial by Photoshop Roadmap. Click here then check out the rest of their amazing Photoshop lessons.

Debbielundphoto shows you how to put an image inside text using this clipping mask tutorial.

Head over to Blogpixie to find out how to create your own rose gold font in this tutorial.

Brushes

Inspiration Hut come up trumps again with their list of 100's of free brushes to download. Check it out here.

Creative Bloq have a collection of 55 free brushes you can access here. This is a great website with tons of free lessons and tips on graphic design, illustration, 3D art and more.

Vandelay Design have added to their enormous collection of Photoshop tutorials with 35 lessons on mastering Photoshop brushes. Find the list here.

Backgrounds and Texture

Learn how to create a bokeh blurred background with this tutorial from Photoshop Café. Then check out their myriad of other free tutorials.

You can find a huge number of free backgrounds at Brusheezy. Click here to go straight to them.

Superdevresources have a collection of 17 different Photoshop background and texture tutorials for you to have a play around with. Click here.

Shortcuts

You can find a list of 60 really useful Photoshop shortcuts here.

Noble Desktop have a printable list of lots of different keyboard shortcuts to use in Photoshop. Click here for the list.

Best of Collections

GTechdesign have a collection of 23 Photoshop tutorials to enhance your skills here.

Webneel have a huge list of 56 video tutorials showing you everything from light effects, blending and skin retouching, to creating poster effects and digital painting techniques. Take a look at them here.

Head over to Graphic Design Junction for their 50 best of 2016 tutorials including a step-by-step guide to how Levente Szabo created the artwork for this BAFTA Awards poster (click here to go straight to it).

Digital Arts have a collection of 86 Photoshop tutorials for you to have a go at. You can find them here. 

Have we missed any of your favourite tutorials? Let us know in the comments and we'll add them to the list!

Useful Websites For Designers

I've gathered together a list of the websites I find most useful when designing.

Design Cuts

You can access some of the best creative resources here at heavily discounted prices (often up to 99% off). They offer really useful bundles of vectors, fonts, backgrounds, textures etc which include a commercial licence (see their terms for details).

I’ve purchased half a dozen of their bundles over the years and use them all frequently in my work.

They also regularly give out lovely freebies (check out their delightful watercolour freebie here) and they have pages of easy to follow tutorials. I really can’t praise this site highly enough.

Spoon Graphics

Chris Spooner’s blog is a great resource for designers. He regularly posts some of the best tutorials I’ve seen for Photoshop and Illustrator as well as numerous freebies. You also get a big bundle of free resources if you sign up to the newsletter.  I love this video tutorial for creating a blueprint effect in Photoshop 

The site also offers a premium membership for $10 per month, which gives you access to thousands of additional resources including actions, brushes and vectors.

A commercial licence is usually included with all the resources but do check the terms to be certain of the specifics. As with Design Cuts, this is a site I go back to time and time again.

Pinterest

Pinterest has many uses but what I love most are the multitudes of tutorials they have all gathered in one place (for graphic design, crafts, DIY, cooking, cosplay, makeup effects - if you can think of it, you can probably find it on Pinterest). I also obsessively hoard collect colour palettes on there, so I can quickly find great colour schemes for any projects I’m working on. You can find this palette here.

Creative Bloq

A huge site filled with tips, inspiration and tutorials. I love their curated list of the best free fonts available for designers, saving you the effort of trawling through font download sites. You can find it here. 

Hongkiat

Lots of tutorials, freebies and design tips can be found here. Not everything you find on there will be available for commercial use, so check the terms carefully. There's a great list of Illustrator tutorials to try out which you can find here.

Free Design Resources

High quality design resources that are totally free for commercial use. Their freebies include fonts, mockups, graphics and templates.

I hope you find some of the websites as useful as I have!

Photo Typography Tutorial

Open a new document, size A4

Select Image, Image Rotation, then select 90° clockwise

Choose Text (or hit T on the keyboard)

Choose font (Impact) size 90

Type “escape the ordinary” in capital letters 

Click on the Move tool and drag the words to bottom of screen

   

Go to Pixabey click download and save this image https://pixabay.com/en/alpine-lake-turquoise-water-person-768638/  (I used the 1920×1271 one)

Open it up in Photoshop and press Ctrl A then Ctrl C to copy the image.

Paste it into your Escape the Ordinary document by hitting Ctrl P 

 

Making sure the image layer is selected, hit Ctrl T to open the Transform tool

Hover the mouse over one corner of the image and the curser will change into a diagonal arrow. Hold down the shift key and pull on the corners of the image until it fills the page.

It will be slightly too wide so just position it roughly in the centre.

Click on Layer 1 and drag it below the text layer. Double click Layer 1 and rename it Image

Hit M on the keyboard to select the Marquee tool

Draw a selection (click and drag) so that it's the same width as the letter E, then drag it up to the top of the screen. 

Click the create a new layer button (bottom of the layer palette) 

 

and hit Shift F5. This opens the fill tool. Click on the Contents box and select black. Hit OK and (with the marquee tool selected) click anywhere on the screen to remove the marquee box. 

Repeat for all of the other letters. As a shortcut you can copy any duplicate letters in the word. Drag Layer 1 down to the new layer button to duplicate it. You can also duplicate any of the filled boxes and use the Transform tool (T) to make it fit the next letter. 

On curved letters like the “S” and "P" the edges wont look very neat. You can tidy this up by beginning the marquee box lower down the letter. Fill it with black then make a small marquee selection over the curve detail and press backspace to delete.

Draw a marquee box below the curved part of the letter

Fill with black then draw another box over the interior curve

Press Backspace to delete the inside of the box (make sure you have the fill layer selected!)

Once you are done making any adjustments you can merge the layers together. Select the top marquee layer, hold down shift and click on the bottom marquee layer to select them all. Right click and select “merge layers.” 

Right click on the text layer and select “rasterize font”

Left click on the text layer, hold CTRL and click on the merged marquee boxes layer so both are selected. Right click and select “merge layers”.

Reduce the opacity of the text layer to 50%. We want any interesting features to be within the bounds of the letters but the man in the centre of the image is not quite in the best place. 

Select the move tool and make sure you have the image layer active. Move it around until you are happy with its placement.

Click on the Magic Wand tool (or press W on your keyboard). 

Click anywhere on the first letter “E”. Right click and select “similar”. This will select all of the extended letter (You'll see marquee boxes around each letter).

Right click again and select “inverse”. Click on the image layer and hit backspace on your keyboard to remove the image outside of the letters.

Click anywhere on the page to remove the selection.

On the layers section, toggle the eye switch next to the text (this hides the text layer without deleting it).

Let’s just tidy up the image a little more before we finish and remove the faint sky detail from the right hand side.

Click CTRL L to open the Levels tool. Change Input Level 255 to 235 (or you can click on the right hand slider and move it slightly the left) and Input Level 0 to 30 (or slide it to the right). Click Ok.

Fin! You can save it as a JPG if you want to keep the white background. Or you can toggle off the background layer and save it as a PNG instead.