If you want to learn how to use Photoshop for everything from removing a background to making a cute photo manipulation of your dog, check out this roundup of recent courses and tutorials.
ByAndrew Blackman|Updated July 8, 2022
You can use Photoshop for all kinds of different graphic design projects, but it has so many features that even the experts don’t always know all of them. These free Photoshop tutorials will unlock its secrets.
If you want to learn how to use Photoshop for everything from removing a background to making a cute photo manipulation of your dog, check out this roundup of recent courses and tutorials. You’re sure to find something here to help you reach your creative goals.
1. Remove Shadows in Photoshop
Have you ever taken a great photo, only to see an annoying shadow right across someone’s face? Or are you trying to create a photo manipulation and need to remove shadows in Photoshop? In this useful free tutorial, you’ll learn a quick, simple method to get rid of shadows in Photoshop.
2. Make a Dog General Photo Manipulation
Speaking of photo manipulations, how would you like to turn your dog into a decorated army general? If the thought had never occurred to you, then watch this video and you’ll be convinced. It’s a cute, fun effect, and you’ll learn loads of useful Photoshop skills along the way.
3. Make a Photo Into an Illustration
Our world is saturated in photos, so it’s not surprising that illustrations are so popular these days. Want to try turning a photo into a cool illustration in Photoshop? You can learn how to do it by reading a step-by-step tutorial or watching the video below—the choice is yours!
4. Create a Stripe Brush
Making custom brushes is a great way to save time and make your design work go faster. For example, why spend time creating stripes over and over again when you could make a custom Photoshop stripe brush to create the effect as often as you want?
5. Make a Diwali Greeting Card and Poster
Diwali is still a few months away, but it doesn’t hurt to get ahead, right? The “festival of lights” is a great subject for beautiful, creative designs, and you can join in by reading this tutorial on how to create a Diwali greeting card and this companion piece on creating a Diwali poster, both giving step-by-step instructions to help you create beautiful results in Photoshop.
6. Make Yourself Into a Vampire
Sharp vampire fangs? Red eyes? Dripping blood? These are the key ingredients of a good vampire photo manipulation, and you’ll learn how to create all those effects and more in this free Photoshop tutorial with Abbey Esparza.
7. Make a Chalkboard Sign
Chalkboard signs are popular at cool cafes and other businesses, but what if you want to create one digitally? This video shows you the whole process of making a chalkboard sign and adding chalk text in Photoshop.
8. Draw an Arrow
We’ve looked at some pretty complex projects in this post, but sometimes you just need to do a small thing and can’t figure out how to get it done. If you’re not sure how to make an arrow in Photoshop, for example, check out this quick, simple tutorial to find a few different methods.
9. Remove the Background
Making the background transparent in Photoshop is a common task you need to perform for all kinds of design work, such as photo manipulation or simply making a portrait pop. There are a few different ways of doing it, and in this video, you’ll learn four methods and see the pros and cons of each.
10. Create Moon Brushes for Photoshop
Adding a beautiful, silvery moon to the night sky is a great way to add drama to any image. In this free Photoshop tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a full moon brush and a crescent moon brush in Photoshop, so that you’ll be able to add as many moons as you want, as often as you want!
More Free Photoshop Courses and Tutorials
In this post, we’ve covered ten of the best free Photoshop tutorials and courses published recently, but that’s just scratching the surface of what you can find in the full Envato Tuts+ library of more than 1,250 courses and 28,000 tutorials. Here are some of the best Photoshop tutorials and courses from previous months.
Create a Cartoon Effect
Why not turn a photo into a cartoon? This Photoshop tutorial video shows you how it’s done. You could try this with your own photo, or have a bit of fun by making a cartoon out of your friend’s photo. Watch the free video tutorial on YouTube.
Make a Rainbow Gradient
A rainbow gradient is not only a beautiful effect, but also a great way to show support for the LGBTQIA community. Read this simple step-by-step tutorial to find out how to use Photoshop to create a rainbow gradient that you can apply to any photo of your choice.
Avoid Basic Digital Painting Mistakes
Digital painting may seem easier than traditional art because of all the great features Photoshop provides, but there are still plenty of mistakes you can make. In this video, Monika Zagrobelna outlines ten common beginner mistakes in digital painting. Are you making any of them? Watch the video to find out!
Make 3D Isometric Text
See how that text in the video below seems to pop right off the screen? The isometric perspective can be a great way to add a 3D effect to your designs. In this video, Jonathan Lam shows you how to convert two-dimensional text into 3D isometric text using Photoshop’s 3D Workspace.
Create a Seamless Water Ripple Texture
The great thing about these free Photoshop tutorials is that while you’re creating a certain effect, you’re picking up useful design skills that you can then apply to other projects. So whether you want to create a water ripple texture or not, you’ll learn a lot about making textures and seamless patterns in Photoshop in this tutorial. Get started here!
Learn Some Advanced Photoshop Effects
This one-hour free Photoshop course has everything! Learn to apply some advanced photo manipulation techniques and really take your work to the next level. It’s called “Advanced Photoshop for Everyone”, so it’s definitely accessible, but there’s so much to learn here that even Photoshop experts will find something new.
Make It Rain!
Want to add rain to your photo? How about some storm-clouds and lightning? You’ll learn how it’s done in this free Photoshop tutorial over on YouTube.
Adobe Photoshop for Beginners
If you want to learn how to use Photoshop, this is the best place to start. It’s a free three-hour video course that takes you through Photoshop from start to finish. Learn everything from layers and selections to masking and retouching, all in one place!
Learn Photoshop From A to Z
This video is the next one to watch. It takes you through Photoshop from A to Z, looking at a different tool or function for each letter of the alphabet.
Design a Movie Poster
Looking for something more advanced? Try this detailed Photoshop course, which takes you through the process of designing a Hollywood-style movie poster. And, like everything else mentioned in this post, it’s completely free!
Make a Watercolor Effect
OK, let’s switch gears. From the in-your-face style of heavy metal, let’s move to the soft, calming look of a watercolor still-life painting. Photoshop is so versatile that it can create all kinds of different effects. Watch the video to see how to recreate this one.
Use the Spot Healing Brush
See how the two photographs below are almost identical, except that in the one on the right, the crack in the wall has been removed and some bricks have been cleared up from the floor? That’s the magic of the Spot Healing Brush in Photoshop—it lets you remove objects easily, while leaving the background untouched. See how it works in this tutorial.
Creative Compositing in Photoshop
One of the best things you can do in Photoshop is photo manipulation, or compositing a scene from different photos and graphics. In this free course, you get to explore lots of compositing techniques while creating a scene from a robot apocalypse.
Design a Business Card in Photoshop
We’ve looked at some creative projects in this roundup, but what about something more practical, like a business card? You can learn how to use Photoshop to create your own business cards in this course—and the good news is, they can be pretty creative too! Read how it’s done.
Make an Album Cover
Look at that striking piece of album cover art! If you want to know how to use Photoshop to create something like that, then check out the free tutorial and get all the steps!
Resize Images en Masse
Resizing a single image in Photoshop is straightforward. But what if you have dozens of images to resize, or even hundreds? Save yourself a lot of time by reading this tutorial or watching the video below. You’ll discover how to create your own simple Photoshop action to resize multiple images with a single click.
Create an Elegant Japanese Brush Font in Photoshop
Check out this YouTube video, which takes you through the process of designing your own brush font in that iconic Japanese text style. It’s proven popular with the YouTube audience, and there’s also a written version of the tutorial if you prefer to follow along that way.
Create a Light Leak Effect
Back in the days of film photography, a light leak was a dreaded mistake. Now it’s a much sought-after digital effect to give your images a warm, nostalgic, retro look. Learn how to create it in this tutorial, or simply watch the video below.
Make an Image Sparkle
With the techniques you’ll learn in this tutorial, you’ll be able to add a magical sparkle to any photo. You’ll see the steps involved in producing the effect in the image below in Photoshop, and then you’ll see how to use a simple Photoshop action to apply the effect to any image of your choosing. Read the tutorial.
Create Your Own Smartphone Mockup
Envato recently launched a new partnership with Placeit, which makes it easy to create photo-realistic mockups with no design skills at all. But if you want to create a mockup the old-school way, with smart objects and smart filters in Photoshop, then read this tutorial for the full lowdown on how to do it.
Brush Up on Photoshop Brushes
I included this course not just for its pun potential, but also because it’s a really useful guide to getting the most out of Photoshop brushes. If you do any kind of art, design or other creative work in Photoshop, you need to watch this video. Oh, did I mention it’s a free course? That’s another good reason to watch it.
Create a Shatter Effect in Photoshop
A shatter effect is a powerful visual metaphor that you can use in a range of designs to illustrate progress, change, or breaking through boundaries. This tutorial shows you how to create the effect easily in Photoshop, starting with a stock image and creating a special “shatter brush” to let you apply the effect, before making all the necessary adjustments so that it looks realistic. Get the full instructions here.
Create a Surreal Portrait in Photoshop
Some designs are so striking that you just think, “Wow, I could never create that.” Well, I do, anyway. But this tutorial breaks the whole process down into easily manageable steps. If you’ve got a copy of Photoshop and some time available, you can work your way through this and create a stunning photo manipulation with a stitching effect. Get the full set of instructions.
Master Photo Manipulation Techniques
The great thing about photo manipulation is that if, like me, you can’t draw to save your life, you can still create some amazing scenes like the one below, just by merging photos together and applying some effects. There’s a bit more to it than that, of course, but this tutorial breaks it all down into easy steps. So why not learn photo manipulation today?
And There’s More…
This post has highlighted the best free Photoshop tutorials and courses that Tuts+ has published recently, but you’ll find a lot more in the full archives going back over ten years. With Tuts+, you can learn how to use Photoshop, as well as mastering photography, video, graphic design, web design, and more. Search the full Tuts+ library to find exactly what you need.
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Get a Photoshop lesson from YouTubers PiXimperfect, Benny Productions, Nemanja Sekulic and Imad Awan with our video on Photoshop compositing.
