10 Websites To Make You A Photoshop Ninja

learn photoshop onlinePhotoshop is hard. There’s all kinds of menus, commands, and keyboard shortcuts that you’ve got to figure out. Once you learn how it works, it’s an unbelievably useful and powerful tool, but the learning curve is enormous.

Using the Web though, you can learn how to do just about anything in Photoshop, and either become great at it or just get really good at faking it. Either way, you’re doing cool stuff.

Here are ten sites to learn Photoshop online and get you Photoshopping like a champion:

You Suck at Photoshop

yousuckat

You Suck at Photoshop is the place to start, just to defeat you a little bit and make you realize how badly you need to learn Photoshop. In all seriousness, though, Donnie Hoyle’s video tutorial series is both hilarious and informative. They’re helpful for learning how to do simple things, where to find particular tools, and how to mess with the pictures of people you love.

Tutorial9

tutorial9

Tutorial9 has a ton of different tutorials, including a lot of them for Photoshop. Every tutorial has step-by-step instructions, complete with pictures of the tools you need and the buttons you should click on (really helpful- what in the world does the “capture” tool look like?).

Then, for everything you need to do, there’s a quick video showing you what it looks like. There’s no narration, but that’s okay- the step-by-step instructions do everything you need. Tutorial9 helps you do all kinds of things with Photoshop- my favorite was creating burnt parchment. You know, without burning anything. Definitely agreat site to learn photoshop online.

PSDTUTS

psdtuts

With PSDTUTS, you’ll see lots and lots of pictures. Tutorials are made up almost entirely of pictures that give you the slightest detail instructions on how to do various things in Photoshop.

One of the best things about PSDTUTS are the comments on the tutorials, which help to iron out the possible issues with the tutorials as presented. The tutorials are long, because they’re so broken down, but if they can teach me to make a Web banner out of a motorcycle, they’re doing something right.

Good-Tutorials

good-tutorials

There’s nothing terribly unique about Good-Tutorials, except that it’s more of a general guide to using Photoshop than a guide to achieving a particular effect in Photoshop.

Though Good-Tutorials does have those tutorials, it’s also got things like “Create a Photoshop Action for Screenshots” to help save you time and effort in Photoshop. Simple tutorials and powerful Photoshopping both come from Good-Tutorials.

Photoshop Lady

photoshoplady

The Photoshop Lady pulls together some of the best Photoshop tutorials from around the Web, and lets you read and watch them easily. If you create an account, you can save tutorials for later, and you can also see the “Most Viewed” and “Highest Rated” tutorials to see what other people are learning how to do.  Since it’s not centralized, some tutorials are better than others, but most of it is good stuff.

Photoshop Tutorials

pstutorials

Photoshop Tutorials combines tutorials for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Photography. It covers a whole range of things, and always tells you how advanced the particular tutorial is. Some are incredibly complicated, and some are great ways to do really basic things in Photoshop.

Though it doesn’t have the largest database I found, it probably wins my award for easiest-to-follow tutorials. Users also rate and comment on tutorials, so you can see what people liked and hated on the site.

Luxa

luxa

Luxa calls itself a “social learning site for Photoshop artists.” It’s a combination of tutorials, videos, and design articles. Users suggest video and tutorial topics, and Luxa helps them learn Photoshop.

To really appreciate Luxa’s community, you’ll want to become a member, which is a bit of a pain but creates a lot of benefits. There’s also a voting system (though not an oft-used one yet) that helps bring the best to the top. In addition to all the tutorials too, Luxa also has a large collection of Photoshop brushes that will let you achieve before-impossible awesomeness.

Photoshop Contest

pscontest

Photoshop Contest is one part site for Photoshop ninjas, one part site for becoming one. There are contests for people doing cool things with Photoshop, but also a big repository of tutorials and videos.

Since the makers of the tutorials are usually on the site because they know Photoshop inside and out, they often have cool tips for how to take shortcuts and “cheat” an image. Most of the tutorials are pretty basic, though at least for me, there’s nothing basic about any of Photoshop.

PSHero

pshero

PSHero gets onto the list for being the most practical of the bunch, and sharing the most tutorials that the average user would actually want. If you’re looking to do things like design a website, create logos, or make your photos grungier, you’re set with PSHero.

There’s not a lot of higher-level stuff to be found, but I found that PSHero was perfect for someone like me, who’s more likely to be creating a logo than an anime airplane eating a lion on top of a mountain. The tutorials are easy to follow, and definitely geared toward the inexperienced Photoshopper.

PSDTop

psdtop

Another aggregator (I think the name might have taken from AllTop), PSDTop is a great place to find all kinds of cool Photoshop Tutorials.

Though it’s not the only site to have categories, its breakdown of the tutorials into various types (Drawing, Digital Art, etc.) is a great way to become ninja-like at a particular skill in Photoshop. Since it’s an aggregator, it too will have the occasional dud tutorial, but most are good.

From introductions to Photoshop to doing things that couldn’t possibly exist in the real world, these ten sites will help you earn your black belt in the wide world of Photoshopping.   But obviously many more Photoshopping tutorial websites exist out there so tell us your recommendations in the comments below.


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David Pierce

I'm a college student, Ultimate Frisbee Player, and massive tech geek. I love to read, watch TV on DVD (boo, commercials), and break things so I can figure out how to fix them.

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Hide 52 Comments

  • Nero January 29, 2009
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    Great post. Any chance that a GIMP Ninja post is close behind? :)

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    • Abd Allah Diab January 29, 2009
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      Yeah I hope to see a GIMP Ninja soon too.

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    • David Pierce January 29, 2009
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      Definitely stay tuned on that one. Great idea!

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      • Abd Allah Diab February 8, 2009
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        I found this post on Six Revisions today about GIMP:

        sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/10-websites-to-help-you-master-gimp/

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  • Robin January 29, 2009
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    Awsome list of sites! Been looking for a bunch of decent tutorial websites for a while now since I wanted to get back into Photoshopping.

    Robin

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  • lori January 29, 2009
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    Yet another helpful article from your site. Photoshop scares the daylights out of me! Somehow, settling for an untouched photo is easier to deal with than getting lost in the morass that is PS. Though PS is amazing, Picasa works just fine for low level techies like myself.

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  • John January 30, 2009
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    Another that has FREE PS tutorial is Suprised it has never been mentioned on makeuseof. They also have great tutorial for animation. You need to register. Many free tutorials and some paid.

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    • John January 30, 2009
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      Hmmm… I don’t know whhat went wrong. The site i recommended was 3DBuzz.com. I said i was suprised it has not been featured on makeuseof. It is primarily an animation site and has some free turorials for registered users including a PS tutorial.

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  • Isabel January 30, 2009
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    Great post! Thanks! is always good to have this links in case of any doubt!

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  • Lorne Pike January 30, 2009
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    Good stuff here. Reminds me that there is always more and more and more to learn. Now if only we had more and more and more time to learn!

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  • Timothy January 30, 2009
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    Nice list. Didn’t know of some of these before.

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  • HERO January 30, 2009
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    Great list. I love that you took the time to really point out each sites strengths so clearly. And of course, thanks for including pshero. I’m honored to be in such distinguished company.

    Keep up the great work!

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    • Bonnie February 2, 2009
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      Are you really that hot or is your pic photoshopped?

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  • Mike January 30, 2009
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    Great post, a lot of very helpful and unique stuff.

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  • LaLo January 30, 2009
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    nice…

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  • PSuser January 30, 2009
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    Thanks for the list.

    I’ve tried Gimp, but it would take a real ninja to figure to become productive with that interface! Someone should start a new interface from scratch using the better bits of code.

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    • nero February 1, 2009
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      Well there is GimpShop which is Gimp with a rebuilt Photoshop style interface: gimpshop.com/

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  • John Davis January 30, 2009
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    Wow dude that is like way cool!

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  • Alex January 30, 2009
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    Those are some good resources. I have always liked Good-Tutorials.com and psptut.com. But thanks for informing about the others.

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  • PSDTOP January 31, 2009
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    Great list. Thanks for including PSDTOP.COM.
    Our website is structured in 3 main parts :
    * the tutorials section (includes Video Tutorials category);
    * the webtips section, including loads of freebies, brushes, textures, actions & more;
    * the Photoshop Blog which includes a comprehensive coverage of the art of graphic design, photo effects, drawing, animation, effects, web and interactive design.

    The tutorials section is a collection of the best tutorials you can find on the web. It’s organized in 15 subcategories and it includes quite a few video tutorials. Each tutorial has both a small image and a large preview of the result of the tutorial. You can also rate, save and share each tutorial.

    The webtips section includes a selection of quality textures, brushes, actions, fonts, freebies, inspiration, wallpapers and photography resources. Each resource has a large preview so you can see exactly what’s it about before downloading it. The updating process is quite amazing. Basically both sections (Tutorials and Webtips) are updated daily.

    Keep up the great work!

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  • digitalpharaoh January 31, 2009
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    I’m kinda partial to only one of those sites…but that’s only because I’m a member. ;)

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  • justin January 31, 2009
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    Thank you for this list. I have to design a site with HIGH texture feel to it. I’m sure i’ll find the tutorial I need to pull this one off from one of these sites.

    Cheers,
    Me

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  • Sanjay January 31, 2009
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    Hi David – we have tons of great howcast.com/categories/1505-Photoshop-Software as videos on Howcast.

    Would love to hear what you think.

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  • Ferrari Guy February 1, 2009
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    I love you suck at photoshop that guy is just plain awesome

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  • Juli February 2, 2009
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    The site i recommended is http://www.artistsofphotoshop.com. Greats portfolios to inspirations!

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  • P@r@noid February 3, 2009
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    I was using few of them but i think I should check others too now.
    Let me see if they are of nay help or not.
    Giving a thumbs up here for the nice article.

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  • swifttallon February 4, 2009
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    This is a great list , im going to pass it on to a few (thousand) friends …swift

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  • spellathon February 7, 2009
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    Informative list. Never knew about photoshoptutorials. Will check it now. Giving a thumb up.

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  • Matthews February 9, 2009
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    Actually, now that I think about it, abduzeedo.com/ is a good one too.

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  • Matthews February 9, 2009
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    Maybe add Tutorial FX (tutorialfx.com). If nothing else, the website layout is helpful. ^^

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  • ScottieL February 10, 2009
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    I LOVE the fark dot com photoshop contests. Each day many brilliant folks do their best with it.

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  • Zam February 10, 2009
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    This is very nice. I’m learning it myself. Fantastic!

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  • John February 15, 2009
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    Thanks! great list you’ve got here..

    I’m an amateur photographer an here’s my fave: http://www.dphotojournal.com/category/tutorials/

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  • http://the3cashmachine.blogspot.com/ March 3, 2009
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    Great tips on photoshop, I really needed them! I’ll share them with someone that needs help too.

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  • Utensils March 7, 2009
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    That elephant really confused me, what an amazing illusion I sent it to my entire buddy list! Grandma loved it!

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  • xea March 15, 2009
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    Thanks very much! I linked these tutorials in my blog ;)

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  • Wallpapers March 18, 2009
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    As I have a Wallpaper site i got all of this very useful…
    All tips are great and some of them are new for me…
    Thanks…
    Good Luck…

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  • hukares March 23, 2009
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    sixrevisions.com/graphics-design/10-websites-to-help-you-master-gim 10 Websites to Help You Master GIMP rocks!

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  • photoshopguy March 26, 2009
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    Anyone create your own photoshop tutorials? I’ve tried scateignite.com and sourceforge.net/projects/camstudio…they’ve worked really well. I’ve heard of people using demobuilder, camtasia, and captivate. Which one do you use/like?

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  • wayne golliday March 28, 2009
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    As always you have again given us another great post with very useful links. Thanks again.

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  • himanshu April 20, 2009
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    Thanks for the gr8 article,it will help me a lot to learn the things

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  • VirginTech April 29, 2009
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    Great informative article…thanks for sharing!
    I really want to get familiar with it because of its widespread use!

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  • Tyler H May 4, 2009
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    Check out Bert’s videos at

    http://www.revision3.com/pixelperfect/

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  • all politics aside May 25, 2009
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    To be a ninja you must have photoshop. Photoshop and a peeeenis.

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  • nh website design May 28, 2009
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    Thanks a ton. Another nice site is bittbox.com/category/photoshop/

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  • Mammootty July 1, 2009
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    Tutorials was very helpful.
    i make Use Of it when making Wallpapers and calendar for my celibrity fan sites…
    thank you…
    good luck…

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  • Christina Hill September 4, 2009
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    GREAT! :D I just bought the photoshop package and this will help me get things rolling. I have several pictures that need editing and this will help me learn how to do it right! Yaaay!

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  • Honey Singh September 8, 2009
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    An awesome resource for designers and developers !

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  • incurable hippie October 31, 2009
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    Some great resources here, thanks so much for putting them all together!

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  • mrak911 November 15, 2009
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    Great post.Thanks

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  • jat December 19, 2009
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    thanks they all are helpful websites

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  • my free flash games December 28, 2009
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    very nice list, i have seen some but the rest are amazing as well, thank you

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