Twenty Great Useful Tutorials for Photoshop Beginners

If you're a newcomer to Photoshop, you may be tempted to learn the ropes by diving right into the type of tutorials that teach you how to create dazzling, eye popping special effects. That's all well and good; however, there's a problem with this approach. Because most of these tutorials are about producing eye candy, much of the stuff you learn to make isn't really practical in the long run. Sure, it may be cool and even fun to learn how to turn someone into an alien or create a ball of lightning, but when will you ever really use effects like that ever again?

What you really need starting out are tutorials showing commonplace graphic techniques and effects that will come in handy for future projects. To point you in the right direction, I've compiled what I believe to be 20 of the most useful tutorials for Photoshop beginners. They won't help you produce gorgeous masterpieces or impressive cinematic special effects like something out of Industrial Light and Magic. But they'll provide you with an arsenal of techniques and image effects that you'll most likely come to use and rely on for a wide variety of projects, whether it be whipping up a simple message board signature, creating a poster, or polishing up a photograph.

Enjoy!

1. Photo Blending
Learn how to blend one photograph seamlessly into another using layer masks and gradients. As an added bonus, this tutorial will also show you how to give an image a monotone color scheme.
http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/photo-blend/

2. Guide to Patterns
A popular graphic effect is to overlay an image with a pixel-based pattern to give it a more stylish flare. Learn how to create the most common types of pixel patterns, such as diagonal stripes, scanlines, grids, and a few others.
http://www.tutorialstream.com/tutorials/photoshop/stylish-patterns-guide-and-samples/

3. Create a Starburst
Visit this tutorial to learn not one, but two methods of creating a starburst.
http://www.biorust.com/tutorials/detail/72/en/

4. Remove the Background of an Image
This lesson will show you a very useful technique for changing an image's background or isolating an object to be used in another composition.
http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/cutout/cutout.htm

5. Colorize a Photo
Visit this tutorial to learn how to hand tint a black and white photograph.
http://www.worth1000.com/tutorial.asp?sid=161018&page=1

6. Vintage Colored Photograph
Because of increasing interest in anything vintage, photographs that look like they were taken with old color film has become all the rage. If you'd like to learn how to fake that look, check out this in-depth tutorial.
http://veerle.duoh.com/blog/comments/photoshop_vintage_effect/

7. Wrinkled Paper
Does that sheet of paper you drew in Photoshop look a little too unrealistic? Add wrinkles to it with this tutorial using gradient fills, filters, and layer styles.
http://hv-designs.co.uk/2007/10/01/wrinkled-up-paper-tutorial/

8. Simple Stars
If you're interested in creating sci-far art, this basic tutorial will teach you how to make one of the most important elements of a space landscape-- a starfield.
http://www.tutorialwiz.com/simple_stars/

9. Radial Blur
Learn how to create drama and impact in an otherwise dull photograph by blurring its background.
http://www.picturecorrect.com/photoshoptips/radialblur.htm

10. Create 3D Text
Believe it or not, 3D effects are very possible in Photoshop without any need for 3rd party plugins. Find out how to create some 3d text with this great tutorial.
http://www.tutorialwiz.com/3D_text/

11. Make a Silhouette
This lesson will show you how to take any object in a photograph or image and turn it into a silhouette.
http://graphicreporter.com/tutorials/photoshop_silhouette.html

12. Recolor An Object
In this tutorial, you learn an important Photoshop trick-- using masks and image adjustment tweaks to change the color of just one part of a photograph without affecting the rest of it.
http://www.homephotog.com/tutorials/PS-mask-car.shtml

13. Folded Flag
Just because Photoshop is a 2D program, it doesn't mean you're stuck with 2 dimensional artwork. Visit this tutorial to learn how to use the displacement map feature to give a flag hyper-realistic wrinkles and shadows that seem to pop off the screen.
http://www.mickm.com/tutorial/202-Folded-Flag

14. Advanced Brush Tutorial
If you thought that all you could do with the brush tool was draw straight lines, think again. Read this tutorial to find out some advanced techniques to get the most mileage out of this often under-utilised tool.
http://www.graphicdesignpro.net/2009/06/advanced-brush-tool-techniques-in-photoshop/

15. Water Drop Tutorial
Add sparkling, photorealistic water droplets to your images without the need for special plugins, using nothing more than layer styles.
http://www.lunacore.com/photoshop/tutorials/tut006.htm

16. Artistic Color Isolation
Ever wanted to know how to edit a photograph so that all but one part of it is in color? Learn two ways of achieving this stylish effect.
http://www.biorust.com/tutorials/detail/137/en/

17. Mock Up a 3D Box
As this tutorial will show, you don't need a high end program like Maya or 3D Max to create a 3 dimensional mock up of a software box. It can all be done in Photoshop in just a few easy steps.
http://tutorialblog.org/create-a-software-box/

18. Cheetos Text
Create some splashy, cool looking text using layer styles.
http://www.mickm.com/tutorial/179-Cheetos-Text

19. Beautiful Reflected Text
This terrific tutorial will show you the basics of creating text that looks like it's sitting on a shiny, reflective surface. It's not just good for text, however; you can also use this technique to reflect objects.
http://www.graphicdesignpro.net/2009/06/make-a-beautiful-reflected-text-effect-in-photoshop/

20. Create Seamless Backgrounds
Make a seamless tileable background from any graphic using Photoshop's offset and clone stamp tools.
http://biorust.com/index.php?page=tutorial_detail&tutid=18