In this initial section, I’ll guide you through what the Adobe Photoshop course entails. I’ll outline all the topics we’re set to cover over the next three hours and provide you with the essential information to kickstart your journey. To get started, make sure you have a copy of Photoshop at your disposal. Don’t worry if you lack any design experience—I’ll begin from scratch, assuming no prior knowledge of the software or design. It’s a beginner-friendly ride, so let’s embark on this learning adventure
Watch the video lesson (2 mins) ↗
Now, set up your workspace for the upcoming Photoshop tutorials. Download the free source files by clicking the link below to follow along with the exercises. It’ll enhance your learning experience and provide valuable resources for the course. Let’s optimize your workspace and get ready to explore Photoshop with confidence!
OK, let’s dive in and learn about some basic image adjustments:
These are some quick and easy techniques to help you make your images look better. We’ll also look at how to add layers in Photoshop and how to edit them.
Now that you’ve gained some insight into photo adjustments, your next journey in Photoshop for beginners involves mastering the art of navigating the software. In this tutorial, you’ll delve into the intricacies of working with multiple images simultaneously. Learn the techniques of seamlessly moving images around and combining them to craft a unified and stunning result.
Watch the video lesson (5 mins) ↗
Transitioning to the next section of your Photoshop learning journey, it’s time to move beyond automatic adjustments and delve into more advanced techniques. Follow these steps to unlock the full potential of Photoshop:
Explore Levels:
While automatic adjustments serve as a good starting point, to truly maximize Photoshop’s capabilities, we’ll focus on utilizing “Levels.”
Highlight, Mid-tone, and Shadow Correction:
The fundamental step in perfecting any photograph is ensuring the highlights, mid-tones, and shadows are accurately balanced. Learn the intricacies of using Photoshop’s Levels adjustments to achieve this precision.
By mastering Levels, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of image correction, setting the stage for more refined and professional-looking photographs.
Optimizing your colors is the next crucial step to enhance the quality of your images. Follow these instructions to make sure your colors are at their best:
Continue with Photoshop Levels:
Building on our previous work with Photoshop levels, proceed to the next stage.
Adjust Color Levels using Vibrance and Saturation:
Explore the tools available in Photoshop, specifically Vibrance and Saturation, to make precise adjustments to the color levels in your image.
By leveraging these features, you’ll be able to correct and enhance the overall color balance of your images. Let’s dive into the process and elevate the vibrancy of your visuals!
Sometimes, you need to adjust the colors in more detail. So now, let’s explore how to fix the color cast of an image. You will also learn how to change a specific color in an image completely.
We’ll do all of that with the help of the Hue and Saturation sliders, which you can find here:
Watch video lesson (12 mins) ↗
This Photoshop learning chapter is all about working with text. Watch the video to see how to create a simple, elegant postcard flyer that looks like this:
In this Adobe Photoshop course section, we’ll cover how to create the correct page size and dimensions for a printable postcard, and you will also master using expanding and fixed-width type boxes for typing text.
Then, as you create the flyer, you’ll learn how to use the Type Tool and customize the text by changing some settings in the Properties panel.
Watch video lesson (18 mins) ↗
Unlock the full potential of text in your designs by learning how to create curved text in Photoshop. Follow these steps to add a dynamic touch to your visuals:
Explore Curved Text:
While your design might look satisfactory, there’s so much more you can achieve with text in Photoshop. Let’s focus on creating curved text to elevate the design.
Curved Text Examples:
Take a look at the image below for inspiration. Notice how curved text is applied in a badge at the bottom right and a photographer’s credit follows the shape of a leaf in the top right.
Tips for Typing on a Path: Use the regular Type Tool.
Hover your cursor over a shape or path until it transforms into the Type on a Path icon.
Start typing, and watch your text gracefully follow the curve.
To do this, we’ll look at how to type on a path in Photoshop. Creating curved text is easier than you may think—watch this video to learn how to get text to follow a curved line using the Type on a Path feature.
And to distort your text in all sorts of interesting ways, you can use the Warp Text options.
Watch video lesson (17 mins) ↗
Let’s go to the next Photoshop for beginners tutorial: Layer styles allow you to add all sorts of effects to your designs. You can add shadows, bevel, emboss, and many other styles to text and images.
So in this part of the course, you’ll learn how to add a drop shadow in Photoshop. You’ll create a text shadow and then use Photoshop layer styles to add a bevel, emboss, and strokes to text and images.
You’ll also learn how to create other Photoshop effects, such as a gradient overlay.
Now, you’ll learn how to crop an image in Photoshop. First, we’ll perform simple crops on images, including cropping and rotating simultaneously.
And after that, you’ll learn more details, such as:
This second technique is particularly useful when you’re converting an image from portrait to landscape or vice versa, so watch the video to see how it’s done.
Watch video lesson (10 mins) ↗
Of course, creating a beautiful image is no good if you don’t have the right resolution and image quality. In the worst-case scenario, you might end up with something like this:
So in this part of the course, you’ll learn how to resize an image in Photoshop without losing quality. You’ll discover how resolution works and how it affects image quality and file size. This Adobe Photoshop course chapter covers all the best practices for resizing and exporting so that you end up with something more like this:
What if you want to put the universe inside a coffee cup? Yes, you can do that in Photoshop, just by using the Photoshop marquee tools.
This is a great way to pick up specific parts of an image. You’ll get some practice using both the Rectangular Marquee Tool and the Elliptical Marquee Tool in this part of the Photoshop for beginners course. You’ll then learn how to copy and paste selections into another image so that we can start making a collage and blending images together.
Clipping Masks are a quick, simple way to put images inside shapes and even text. Watch the video to see how to take the image on the left and put it inside the letter shown on the right. It’s a powerful technique, and it’s easier than you’d think! Using Photoshop doesn’t need to be complicated!
To learn Adobe Photoshop, you often need to take an image off its background so that you can put it somewhere else. The Quick Selection Tool is great for that.
For example, what if you wanted to extract this flower from its black background so that you can add it to the design shown below? That’s exactly what you’ll learn how to do in this part of the course.
An important concept to learn in Adobe Photoshop is “non-destructive editing”.
Non-destructive editing means that you can edit your image while preserving the option to go back and change things without starting from scratch.
A great way to accomplish that is by using Layer Masks.
Watch the video to see how you can create the same “Dublin florists” image that we worked on before, but this time in a non-destructive way, by using a layer mask.
Watch video lesson (12 mins) ↗
The flower we worked on before was quite easy to select because of its sharp edges and plain black background. But what if you need to make more complex selections, such as selecting a person with out-of-focus strands of hair? That’s the next Photoshop for beginners tutorial.
Then you’ll need Photoshop’s Select and Mask feature. Let’s see how to tidy up selections made with the Quick Selection Tool, starting with simple masks and then working through to harder ones. You’ll see exactly how to select the model below and place her on a completely new background.
Watch video lesson (12 mins) ↗
Another key technique in the area of non-destructive editing is a Smart Object.
A Smart Object is a way of preserving all the original information and pixels in an image, so that you can make it smaller or larger and manipulate it in other ways without losing any of the image quality.
Watch the video to learn how to use Smart Objects and why it’s important to use them.
What if you wanted to put this logo onto this coffee cup? You can’t just paste it on because the cup is rounded, so the logo needs to be distorted to make the perspective look realistic.
The solution is the Warp Tool in Photoshop. In this part of the Adobe Photoshop course, I’ll show you how to warp a layer in Photoshop, how to resize a layer in Photoshop, and more.
While learning about these tools, you will also discover how to mock up a logo and make it look as if it’s part of a real image:
Now it’s time to learn about an important retouching tool: the Spot Healing Brush. You can use this brush to do a few cool things:
I’ll teach you how to do all of those things, so watch the video and follow along on your own computer using the source files provided! And if you want to go into more detail, check out our free Photoshop retouching course:
51 Minutes
What if you need to make an image wider? Of course, you don’t want to just stretch it and make everything distorted. Fortunately, Photoshop provides a wonderful feature called Content Aware Scale, which lets you stretch an image and have Photoshop fill in the missing background:
Watch the video for full instructions on completing this example and a few more as well!
TIP
Content Aware Scale is a great tool to use when you’re creating banner ads, social media headers, or other cases where you need a very wide image.
Watch video lesson (10 mins) ↗
Now that we’ve created lots of great images, we need to export them from Photoshop so that they’re ready for use in a print document, a website, or for social media.
So now let’s look at how to export in Photoshop. We’ll talk about the pros and cons of JPEG, PNG, and PSD files, and we’ll also see how to create a Photoshop file ready for use with other Adobe software products such as InDesign, Illustrator, and After Effects.
Scott, D. W. (2023). Adobe Photoshop for Beginners: Envato Tuts+. Retrieved from https://design.tutsplus.com/articles/photoshop-for-beginners–cms-93368