Photoshop and photography go hand in hand. Photoshop is the world’s most popular software for post processing photographs. Here, I have rounded up a collection of quintessential Photoshop tutorials for working with Photoshop. If you go through these tutorials, your photos can’t help by get better. This is probably one of those pages you should bookmark and drag to your browser bar, because we know you’ll be wanting to return here, often.
This Photoshop tutorial shows you how you can easily remove or reduce harsh shadows from any photograph in Photoshop CC and Photoshop CS6.
Learn how to remove reflections and glare from glasses in Photoshop. This tutorial shows an unexpected and effective way to easily remove glare and reflections for glasses without losing the original eye details.
You see the photos with no-one around and wonder how that’s possible. Did they get there super early, off-season? With a little help from Photoshop, you can now visit the busiest of places and easily remove people, crowds, cars and more in Photoshop. I’m going to show you 2 tourist removal tricks in Photoshop. Check out the quick video and then bookmark this page for reference.
When you are shooting with a good camera and lens and the aperture is wide open, you can create a nice shallow depth-of-field effect. This is used in portraiture photography. You know the look, it’s that prized, soft, out of focus background with the nice sharp subject. Then there are lights in the background, they turn into little round disks, called light Bokeh (bo-kah). This is easily achieved in camera, if you have good enough gear. If you don’t have a nice DSLR camera, or you have an existing photography that you want to add production value, this tutorial will show you how to achieve this soft/out of focus effect in photoshop.
This Photoshop tutorial shows you how to use the powerful Camera RAW (new interface) to apply all kinds of adjustments and enhancements to your photos. Learn how to work with color, tone and understand what the most important sliders do. You will keep coming back to this tutorial, because it will make all your photos look better.
One of the fastest ways to get amazing looking images is by using Blending modes. Each blending mode changes the way that a layer reacts with the layer underneath it. There is a scientific explanation of each blending mode in the help menu of Photoshop. Don’t get too caught up in the definitions. What matters is how it looks and the best way to determine this is to experiment.
In this tutorial, I’m going to show you a some tricks with the crop tool, show you how to automatically crop to the exact size you need without math and then provide a few practical cropping tips in Photoshop. It’s pretty much a Photoshop crop tool primer.
In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you exactly how Layer Masks work and how to take pinpoint control over them. Then I will share 7 tips on using Layer Masks. In the process we will have a little fun and create a lion woman.
This Photoshop tutorial shows you how to make HDR photos in Photoshop Camera RAW for the most realistic HDR photos possible, This enables you to show both the details inside a room as well as the details outside through the windows at the same time.
This is one of the most popular HDR tutorials in the world (for real) Its fully updated for the latest version of Photoshop and will show you everything you wanted to know about HDR photography and processing in Photoshop and Camera RAW.
A really powerful tool for collaging and compositing in Photoshop is layer masks. When we want to combine photos, we combine layer masks and gradients, it’s laughably easy to create stunning looking composited that are actually very easy to do. Check out this tutorial to get your creative motors running.
This tutorial shows you how to add depth to your flat photo by creating a background blur that emulates using a camera with a wide aperture. This is called Bokeh when the background falls out of focus. Its a really nice look and commonly done in camera. If you are the photographer and didn’t choose the settings in camera, or you as most designers, have to work with the photos given to you, what do you do with a flat photo. In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you how to create this nice high end look
This tutorial shows you the fastest way to remove distractions in photos such as power lines. This works for any linear distraction in a photo. It makes it so fast and simple, you will laugh (or cry at the time you have wasted in the past).
In this tutorial I’m going to show you Photo Editing with LAB in Photoshop. You’ll learn how to take control over the detail, texture and color of your photo in an amazing way. We’re going to be doing that using LAB Mode and you’ll also learn couple of useful tricks along the way.
How to use High Pass sharpen in Photoshop. The best way to selectively sharpen photos in Photoshop. This tutorial shows a non destructive way to sharpen photos using the high pass mask in Photoshop. Also, learn how to create an action.
Changing colors of an object in Photoshop is not that hard. But what about getting and exact color? In this tutorial Colin Smith shows how to sample the color of a fish and change a dress to the identical color. Combining the power of curves and LAB mode make this difficult sounding task easy. This is an advanced topic, but presenting in a very simple way that anyone can do.
In this Photoshop Tutorial, I’ll quickly show you how to replace this sky without making any selections.
Content aware scale is great for resizing photos, or more accurately, changing the shape of photos without losing important elements. This Photoshop tutorial shows you how to use this Photoshop feature. There is a trick to make it much more accurate and you will learn that in this tut!
In this Photoshop tutorial, Colin Smith shows you how to use gradient maps for color grading photos. You can use it on fashion, portrait, landscape, product, commercial, really all photography and even illustrations!
An often overlooked tool in Photoshop is the eyedroppers, They really are powerful once you know how to use them. This tutorial will shows you exacly how you can get quick and reliable color and luminance correction is Photoshop. I’m using Photoshop CC, but this will work with just about any version.
Exposure blending is a great way to craft your photo, showing details in highlight areas such as skies and brighter areas, as well as showing details in shadows. The main difference between this and HDR, is that HDR affects the entire photograph, where as exposure blending, allows you to brush in the details exactly where you like.
You may have heard the term Frequency Separation and wondered what it is. Or you have heard that all the high end retouchers are using this technique. Or, you may wonder how to smoothen out skin and remove blemishes and uneven coloring. In this Photoshop tutorial, Colin Smith explains what frequency separations is and how to use it without all the jargon. We pull back the veil and the mystery and lay it out in easy to follow steps.
In this Photoshop tutorial, Colin Smith shows the entire process of editing landscape photos, start to finish. This tutorial joins all the dots and shows the production pipeline for photo retouching and editing,
Have you ever made adjustments to a photo in Camera Raw and then wanted to blend the edited version with the original version? You are looking for a master slider that moves all the adjustments at once, like an opacity slider. This does exist, but it’s not obvious at first. This tip will help you get more out of the image adjustments in Photoshop CC.
Many of us know the ideal times for making photographs, and typically none of those are at noon or when the sun is at its peak. The light is very hard and results in high contrast. This means highlights are too bright and the shadows are very dark, resulting in a photograph thats difficult to make out details in highlights and shadows and just generally unpleasant to look at. Now reality, most of us don’t have the luxury to wait until magic hour or get to the location early enough that the morning sun is still sweet.
Here are tutorials for you to bookmark. If you do all these tutorials, you will build up the basic skills that can be combined to make any image look great.
Browse our hundreds of other free tutorials here, or search for what you are looking for in the search at the top of the page.
You can also browse by topics in the free tutorials menu.
If you are ready to get serious about Photoshop, see our full length courses here
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Great to see you here at the CAFE,
Colin
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Colin,
What a wonderful service you are providing to photographers all over the world. Thank You
Awesome stuff, Colin….thanks so much
Hi Colin just joined and love what I’ve seen so far in some tutorials, you are so good and explaining how to do things and at a steady pace too. I was wondering if there’s a way in photoshop to create a graphic watermark logo and text, that you can save and install on images ready for printing or posting on social media? How would one go about creating one that you can just do with a click?
Yes there is
Ill do tutorial on it
photographer