My Favorite Photoshop Tricks for Beginners

Photoshop Beginners, welcome to Photoshop's secret weapon: the Layers Palette! Open it under the "Window" Menu.

1. List of layers. Each layer sits on top of the one below. By changing opacity, using filters or setting blending modes, you can choose how the top layers affect the ones below. The eyeball icon lets you show/hide each layer. The Lock menu lets you lock the opacity, contents, position, or all of a layer.

2. Blending Mode pulldown menu. Normal layers stack like painted panes of glass: you can change the opacity or erase areas to let the layers below show through. Special blending modes make a layer act as a special effects filter: darken, recolor, and many other effects.

3. Opacity Slider -- Lower this to make a layer semi-transparent. The Fill slider works the same way, except it doesn't change "Layer Effects" like drop shadows and outlines. (Fun Text effect: set fill opacity to zero, add a drop shadow.)

4. Layers Palette Menu: click this triangle to get a popup menu; this includes the "duplicate layer" and "merge layers" commands.

5. Universally Confusing Icons. From left to right: the F is "Layer Effects" like drop shadow, the white spot is "add a mask" (I never use this), the folder creates folders in the layers list to help you organize, the black/white circle adds an adjustment layer like Curves, the page icon creates a new layer (or drag a layer on it to duplicate), the trash can deletes a the currently selected (highlighted) layer.

Photoshop Tricks: How to Lighten a Dark Photo

This Photoshop tutorial teaches you how to brighten and darken photos. Follow along step-by-step with two different examples. Along the way, you'll learn about adjustment layers, blending modes, levels and curves. All of these are powerful ways to adjust and retouch photos and lighting.

Photoshop Tricks: Clipping Masks



Photoshop clipping masks are really easy to make, and really powerful. They're your virtual scissors, letting you extract just part of a photo and paste it onto another image. They can act like stencils, letting part of another layer show through. Or they can act like a cookie cutter, letting you create an interesting frame for a photo.

Click the title above to start at the beginning, or click on an example to go to that sub-tutorial.

Photoshop Tricks: Web 2.0 Glossy Buttons Tutorial

This is an easy, fun tutorial that teaches you how to make shiny 3-D buttons like the ones at left. I even teach you how to extract a graphic like Squidoo's squid to add it to a button.

Photoshop Tricks: Add a 3D Frame to a Photograph

This was my very first Photoshop tutorial. With the lessons I taught you above, you can probably make something even better. Still, this is a quick and easy way to make a 3-D frame to add a little pop to your photos.