Photoshop Retouching Tutorials

Photoshop Tutorial – Adjustment layers

This video is available Free for Everyone.
Running Time: 5 minutes

Adjustment Layers work like tinted sheets of glass that you overlay on top of your image one at a time. It’s kind of like a tinted or colored light bulb. You can turn on/off the effect, or adjust the values as a separate layer on top of your original image background layer. For instance, on top of your base layer (original image), we can make tone adjustments as well as color adjustments. Each of these adjustments will be placed on separate layers, on top of your original background image.

Because you’re working on a separate layer for all these adjustments, you are not causing any permanent damage to your original background base image. You are effectively preserving it pixel by pixel in case you need to undo your changes later. As an example, when you click on one of the icons in the Adjustments Palette, it will automatically add a new layer in your Layers Palette, as well as open up the Properties window for that particular adjustment you chose.

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Photoshop Tutorial – Color Picker

This video is available Free for Everyone.
Running Time: 3 minutes

The Color Picker in Photoshop is used for a variety of different reasons. At a basic level, it can be used to choose a color, and then then you can paint with that color. Once you become more familiar with how it works, it can be used to match colors, transfer color values from one program to another, for internet use, or otherwise communicate with graphic designers and pressmen. This will be a simple introduction at this point. None of that creazy stuff.

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Photoshop Tutorial – Spot Healing

This video is available Free for Everyone.
Running Time: 11 minutes

Nearly every image can benefit from Cloning or Healing. It could be removing flyaway hair, dust on the lens, skin blemishes, or any of the other hundred things I could think of. Some corrections require some skill, and knowledge to handle the various tools properly. One tool stands alone for it’s absolute simplicity, the Spot Healing Brush.

Older versions of this tool were pretty crappy, and gave it immediate negative feels, and no one really wanted to use it. Myself included. However, with the release of CS6 and then CC, Adobe has continued to improve upon how smart it’s automatic functions work. If you are new to Photoshop, check out how easy it is to clean up your images.

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Photoshop Tutorial – Navigator Palette, Hand Tool, and Zoom Tool

This video is available Free for Everyone.
Running Time: 4 minutes

When it comes to navigating around your image, there are two tools and one palette that will come in really handy. This video will walk you through how to use the Navigator Palette, Hand Tool, and Zoom Tool. These are some of the most basic items in Photoshop, and they are really easy to use. Except maybe the Zoom Tool (otherwise known as the Magnifaction Tool). Adobe broke it in back in CS4, but I will show you how to make it work like it used to, in case you find that you hate it as much as I do.

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Photoshop Tutorial – History Palette

This video is available Free for Everyone.
Running Time: 2 minutes

Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes, especially when it comes to perfecting our retouching. In those moments when you just can’t find the right adjustment for something, the History Palette comes to the rescue. By default, you will have 20 past steps that you can undo.

The history palette basically just allows you to go back to your previous actions and correct past mistakes. Initially, when you go to the history palette, you will see your image and the label that says “Open”. This means that you haven’t really done anything yet but open the image. Start by clicking the pulldown Window – History, and it will open the History Palette.

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Photoshop Tutorial – Options Bar

This video is available Free for Everyone.
Running Time: 2 minutes

Do you see that toolbar that runs along the top of Photoshop, below the main menu? That is the Options bar.

The Options bar changes depending on the tool that you have selected. For instance, if we click on the Eyedropper tool, the Options bar changes into the different options and settings specifically for the Eyedropper tool only.

As we go further in this whole Retouching for Beginners crash course, we’ll eventually get to the nitty-gritty of every single tool and their corresponding Options.

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Photoshop Tutorial – Info Palette

This video is available Free for Everyone.
Running Time: 3 minutes

The Info Palette shows you different information about your image, based on your selected tool. It will tell you about color breakdown, measurements, and other useful tidbits.

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Photoshop Tutorial – CC Preferences

This video is available Free for Everyone.
Running Time: 8 minutes

Eager beaver beginners usually just want to start editing photos without even giving much thought to settings and preferences. This is a big no-no, which is precisely why amateurs make this mistake all the time. Preferences greatly affect the workflow of your photos depending on how you want to edit them, so your road to Photoshop excellence starts with the “boring” settings people so often skip.

There have been a ton of versions for Photoshop over the years, but here we’ll be talking about the Preferences for the latest version called Photoshop CC. If you’re interested to find out about the older versions’ Preferences, you can check out the videos for Photoshop CS5 and CS6 right here on my website.

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