By

Share Pin Share +1 Shares 10K

Imagine a world where Adobe Photoshop and photo editing don’t exist—where the photos in your print marketing collateral have the same visual impact as your driver’s license photo. A world where you can’t tell the difference between a professional direct mail campaign and your Aunt Judy’s tacky holiday greeting card.

Pretty scary, huh?

Fortunately, Photoshop exists (along with many free Photoshop alternatives), allowing print media designers to transform photographs into really cool works of art. To ensure that this terrible alternate reality never comes to fruition, we’re offering up our top 51 must-read free tutorials for amazing photo editing and manipulation with Photoshop.

Basic, Easy Photoshop Tutorials

These quick and easy Photoshop tutorials are best for beginners, but there are great tips for photo editing veterans as well. A number of different topics are covered, from basic resizing and retouching techniques to adding simple photo effects and optimizing colors and contrast.

9. Five Easy Steps to Produce Intense Colors in Your Photographs

20. Dreamy Photo Effects (No longer available)

21. Basic Techniques to Make Your Photo Impressive (No longer available)

Intermediate Photoshop Tutorials

The following free photo editing tutorials are a little more advanced and require some basic familiarity with Photoshop, but are still relatively simple and super easy to understand. Many of these intermediate level techniques will help you create bold and cool photo effects, while others help explain some of the more powerful tools available in Photoshop.

23. Color Corrections by the Numbers

25. Improve Your Landscape Photographs with Photoshop

27. Using Vignetting to Add Interest (No longer available)

Advanced Photoshop Tutorials

These high-level tutorials give you a look at some of the more complex tools available in Photoshop, while also providing step-by-step instructions on how to create amazing photo effects. These lessons require an advanced understanding of Adobe Photoshop and some may also require some good knowledge of photography.

50. Advanced Skin Softening

Conclusion

Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? The best designers (even seasoned ones) are always pushing themselves to learn more about their craft and to improve their work. Whether you’re learning more about Photoshop techniques or just basic design philosophy, keeping your mind open to new lessons and experiences will help you grow as a graphic artist. Once you’ve learned the ropes from these tutorials, don’t be afraid to innovate and experiment with your own creative photo effects to develop your own distinct style and taste.

Of course, we’ve only scratched the surface of the best free Photoshop tutorials. Do you know of more tutorials for amazing photo editing that belong on this list? Any cool Photoshop techniques you want to share with us? We’d love to see them, so please comment below!