PiXimperfect is an excellent resource for learning Photoshop techniques and in this 10-minute video, host Unmesh Dinda shows you how to add believable-looking snow to any image using Adobe Photoshop.
If you want to manipulate the light and color information in an image using Photoshop, two of the most common tools for the task are Curves and Levels. But how do these two adjustments actually differ? And when might you choose to use one instead of the other? That's exactly what Aaron Nace explains in this helpful video.
Our friend Pye Jirsa from SLR Lounge recently teamed up with the folks from Adorama to put together a very handy Photoshop tutorial you may want to bookmark for later. In this video, he shows you how to swap faces and expressions in four easy steps.
Photoshop master Unmesh Dinda at PIXimperfect has put together a simple tutorial that could have a significant impact on your photo editing workflow. In a few minutes, he'll show you how to customize your editing experience and create your personal "dream Photoshop toolbar."
Los Angeles-based automotive photographer Dave Cox (AKA @ShootingDave) has put together a useful beginner's guide that will help you master what he's calling "the sexiest tool" in Photoshop: the Pen Tool. "Sexy" might sound like a stretch, but Dave has a point. The Pen Tool can make detailed masking a breeze... if you know how to use it.
Want to create an epic 'dual lighting' effect for your studio portraits, but don't have any gels or LEDs to work with? No problem. In this short tutorial, Photoshop master Unmesh Dinda of PIXimperfect will show you how to create this effect in post using just 2 layers!
Unmesh Dinda of PIXimperfect has put together a brilliant educational video on the oft-confusing Divide blend mode in Photoshop. In this tutorial he'll show you how to use it to remove any color cast, before diving into the fascinating mathematics behind this useful tool.
In the most recent episode of Adobe's "Photoshop Magic Minute," Photoshop Product Manager Meredith Stotzner shows you how to create your own custom keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop in just 60 seconds.
Photoshop expert Sid Vasandani of StyleMyPic has put together a fantastic, in-depth look at luminosity masks that could significantly speed up your photo editing workflow. If you don't understand luminosity or you've never used luminosity masks, this tutorial could legitimately change the way you make selections.
Talented landscape photographer Michael Shainblum has put together a helpful tutorial that shows you two ways to dodge and burn your landscape photos depending on how selective you want to be.
Here'a neat trick for you Photoshop lovers out there. If you've shot a subject in front of a gray background, you can actually swap that gray background very easily using only Blend Modes. No selection or refine edge necessary.
If you're not sure how to properly sharpen your images in Photoshop, this tutorial from the Photoshop Training Channel is a godsend—a deep dive into the most common sharpening techniques complete with an explanation of which ones are better and why.
If you are troubled by blemishes big or small in your portrait work, this 16-minute tutorial by Nathaniel Dodson over at Tutvid will teach you how to use Photoshop to properly clean and heal skin in a flash.
There's a simple way to make your subject's eyes pop in a portrait, and it doesn't involve touching vibrance, saturation, luminosity, or any other color-based edit. In fact, you can make the full edit in 30 seconds.
When you look at the work of a professional, award-winning beauty photographer like Zoë Noble, it just has that something extra. If you're wondering what that "something" is, this tutorial Noble created reveals one of the most important ingredients: color grading.
We love a good in-camera double exposure; done right, they can look as surreal as anything we can create in post. But if you don't have the skills, expertise, or interest in doing it in-camera, this quick tutorial shows you exactly how to fake the 'double exposure effect' in Photoshop.
Photoshop's tools frequently overlap, and a great example of this is Luminosity Masks vs Blend If. Both can be used to do the same thing, but they work in slightly different ways. This useful tutorial breaks down the differences so you know when and how to use each tool.
Photographer, weird lens expert, and friend of PetaPixel Mathieu Stern created this very simple and straightforward Photoshop tutorial for anybody out there who wishes they were a Jedi and wants to impress their friends.
Adobe is dedicated to updating Photoshop consistently, but those updates don't always go so well. A lot of people have rolled back their healing brush tool, and ever since Select and Mask replaced Refine Edge this summer, people have been complaining. Meanwhile, Nate Dodson over at Tutvid has been desperately trying to make this new tool work.
Making mistakes is a powerful learning tool, but that statement only holds true if you realize what you're doing is a mistake. To that end, here are 5 of the most common Photoshop mistakes photographers make.
When you sharpen a photograph, what you're doing is adding contrast to the edges in an image, but unfortunately, that often leads to black and white edging in some areas. In this short, useful Photoshop tutorial, Jimmy McIntyre will show you how to avoid this and sharpen your photos cleanly in Photoshop.
While Photoshop does have the "Dodge" and "Burn" tools, using them destructively on your original image is definitely not the best way to edit your photos. Check out this tutorial to discover two dodge and burn techniques that are more effective, cleaner, and smarter.
Everyone's digging that "faded" film look nowadays, but here's a secret: you don't have to have a VSCO preset pack to get it. In this short tutorial, Mathieu Stern will show you three very quick and very effective ways to "crush the blacks" and get that popular look using just Photoshop.
If you want ultimate control over your High Dynamic Range images, manual blending is still the way to go. But creating a perfectly blended image from two or more exposures using layer masks can be challenging.
We're always looking to up our Photoshop game, but the lists of Must Know "techniques" or "skills" or "tools" we run across typically disappoint us by being either to basic or too niche. This useful Top 10 by Nate Dodson of Tutvid is an exception.
You don't need ON1 Effects 10 or Topaz Clarity to get that "Dynamic Contrast" pop in your landscape images. This short tutorial shows you how to create the effect from start to finish using only Photoshop.
Window reflection portraits are a popular style, but you don't need to live near an empty cafe on a busy New York City street (do those even exist?) to create a photo like this. The effect is pretty easy to replicate in Photoshop in just a few steps.
In this Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to walk through the many different ways to create this pixel dispersion fragmenting effect to make your model or object look like it is bursting into little particles and pieces.
Here's a quick retouching tip that almost every portrait photographer will end up using at least once: how to quickly and easily fix shiny or oily skin in both Photoshop and Lightroom.
Accurately selecting a subject's hair is not an easy task; a bit of frizz is enough to make a photographer pull their own hair out. But have no fear, there's an advanced Photoshop tutorial for that.
If you've ever tried to stitch a panorama in Photoshop, you know that the program is not always up to the task. In this "Photoshop Secrets" tutorial, photographer Jimmy McIntyre will show you two tricks that will help Photoshop stitch even the most difficult tiles together into a beautiful pano.
Noise reduction for night sky photos can be tricky, because the algorithms at play often reduce the sharpness of your stars while removing noise in the darkest parts of the sky. In this video tutorial, photographer Dave Morrow shows you how to avoid this issue altogether using a simple, effective editing technique.
Seeing and photographing the Aurora Borealis is pretty high on many a photographer's wish list, but if you don't live in the arctic circle (or don't have the budget to get there), then capturing this amazing display may have to wait a while. In the meantime, let the folks at Phlearn show you how to fake the Northern Lights using Photoshop.
One problem almost all portrait photographers are going to run into at one point or another is skin redness. We're human, there's blood flowing through our faces, it's inevitable and even natural.
At times, however, it shows up just a bit too much around the nose, eyes, and cheeks. That's when you hop on Photoshop and pull up the tutorial above.
One of the basic Photoshop skills that many beginners want to learn early on is how to change something's color in one of their images (be that an object or someone's eye color). Well, you're in luck, because Aaron Nace and Phlearn are here with a simple tutorial that will show you how to do just that, and do it well.
One of the issues talented photographer and retoucher Michael Woloszynowicz often runs into when he's taking portraits is mismatched skin tones. Using a light modifier of some sort he'll get the tone he wants in the face, but the tones or colors in another part of the subject's skin simply don't match.
You could correct for this using curves, selective color or hue/saturation, but Woloszynowicz has a better way: using solid fill layers and tonal averaging, he's able to "take the guesswork" out of it and perfectly match tones every time.
There are many options for recovering shadow detail in post, but if you still haven't settled on one or you want a technique that will give you more control, then we have a great tutorial for you.
One of our favorite Photoshop tutorial websites, Phlearn, yesterday put out a tutorial that is both incredibly useful and a bit scary. Useful because making eyes pop in post is probably one of the most sought after Photoshop skills. Scary because this kind of manipulation is a slippery slope that could lead to photographers getting lazy and using the "fix it in post" excuse... so proceed with caution.
Colorized historical images are very popular in the photo community, but how exactly does one start colorizing photos? Getting to the skill level demonstrated by the Photoshoppers in Reddit's ColorizedHistory subreddit will take countless hours of practice, but if you want to start this Tutorial from Tuts+ is a great primer.
When it comes to sharpening an image, more than likely, your technique involves using a certain method over the entire image all at once. However, that's rarely the best way to do it, because how much and where to sharpen varies quite a bit depending on what you're shooting.