Photoshop Tutorials That Will Change Your Life

Photoshop tutorials are a dime a dozen, and simply googling for “photoshop tutorials” will net you over ten million results, and the majority of them aren’t worth the pixels they’re printed on. Some, on the other hand, are simply jaw-dropping. This post is not geared towards the professional graphic designers – it’s geared at the people who ave Photoshop, but have been too intimated to really experiment much.

I have more IT geek friends than I have designer friends, and some of these geek friends are starting to dabble a little in design. Many are intimidated because they don’t know where to begin, or because the interface is so foreign to them, they don’t even know what tools are available. This post is for them – and anyone else who feels like they’re “not creative enough” to design anything worthwhile in Photoshop.

If you don’t believe me, the lead image in this article was composited entirely in Photoshop – and there’s even a tutorial to show you how it was done. You’re wrong, I’m right. Read on.

Every one of the tutorials in this list are perfect demonstrations of how easy it can be to come up with amazing designs without years of Photoshop know-how. Each one features a stunning end result, and step-by-step directions that show you exactly how to get there yourself. I promise you, you really can do more than you imagine in Photoshop. Yes, even you.

A quick note: I strongly, strongly recommend actually going through these tutorials step-by-step. At the end of the tutorial, your end result may not look exactly like theirs, but I bet you’ll be impressed at what you managed to pull off. Plus, you may find yourself inspired half-way through, and take your design in a totally different direction. You just won’t get nearly as much out of these if you don’t actually spend some time working them.

Website Design

Would you think you were pretty hot shit if you could whip out a design like these? Keep reading – you can, and you don’t have to be a design guru to do it.

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1. Premium WordPress Theme Design Part 1 – The Photoshop Mock Up – This is my all-time favorite Photoshop tutorial, especially for creating website designs. The author takes you through the the process starting with a blank canvas, and ending with a fantastically rich design. He even shows you where to get the stock art he used, so you really can follow the tutorial step-by-step. What’s particularly awesome about this tutorial is that once you’ve created the Photoshop file, the next parts in the series tell you exactly how to slice the images, code the CSS/XTHML, and convert it into a WordPress template! This is the first place I send any code geeks who want to learn how to design websites.

2. Create a Magic Night Themed Web Design from Scratch in Photoshop – Another fantastic step-by-step tutorial with links to download each of the images used. Incredibly detailed and easy to follow, even for novice Photoshoppers. This tutorial demonstrates how subtle color shading, text and light effects can create an ethereal design from a little stock art and elbow-grease.

3. How to Create a Grunge Web Design in Photoshop – Another fabulous artsy-grunge web design tutorial. This one goes into an incredible level of detail, and is an excellent start point for any Photoshop noob. Every nuance is clearly documented and explained to show you

4. How a Simple Layout Can Be Mixed ‘n’ Matched with Patterns, Photos and Backgrounds – If you’re more into straight lines and clean edges, and feel like the first two examples were a little froo-froo for your style, this tutorial is priceless. In nine simple steps, you learn how to transform a blank canvas into a tight, clean web design. An added bonus, they show you results from quite a few variations of color and images, to show you how just a few tiny tweaks can completely change the feel of the design.

5. Design a Cartoon Grunge Web site Layout – While this tutorial won’t show you how to make the actual cartoon that forms the focal point of the design, it shows you how to do just about everything else. This is a great tutorial that walks you through a fun, lighthearted design with a casual flair.

6. Photoshop Paper Texture from Scratch then Create a Grungy Web Design with it! – This tutorial has the same easy walk-through style as the others, plus it shows you how to create the textured paper background from scratch. What you end up with is a business-casual design with just the slightest hint of hip grunge.

Photo Composites & Effects

Think these photo manipulations are way too advanced for you? Think again! There were NO special filters used for these – everything you need is in Photoshop, and these tutorials walk you through it step by step!