Are you trying to learn Photoshop but everything feels too complicated? Great, then this video’s for you. Everything you need to know to get started in just 20 minutes. First: what’s Photoshop and who’s it for? Well, Photoshop is a raster graphics editor, which is just a fancy way of saying it is a software used to create and edit images made out of pixels, like JPEGs and PNGs. For this reason, it’s primarily used by photographers and digital artists. As the name itself implies, Photoshop is at its best when working with photography, as it has a wide array of features that allow you to completely transform your photos into the masterpieces they were always meant to be. This is the main focus of the software, it’s what it does best, and it does it better than any other software out there. However, Photoshop also has a pretty sturdy set of brush features and customizations options, making it just as good of a choice when working with digital art. Lastly, Photoshop is also used a lot by designers, but it’s important to say that we also have Adobe Illustrator, which is far better suited for things like graphic design. If that’s what you’re looking for, I have a video just like this one, but for Illustrator, and I’ll leave the link in the description down below. Now, enough chatting! Let’s open Photoshop and get started. When we open Photoshop, we always start on the home screen. Here’s where we can create a new file or browse our computer to open a file. On the center of the screen we also have a list of recently opened files, to quickly resume working on a project we haven’t finished. The home screen also has a learning section with tutorials made by Adobe, which can be helpful for beginners. Clicking on the New File button opens this window with a bunch presets on the left, and settings we can customize on the right. Here, we can set things like size, measurement unit, resolution and color mode of our project. However, a very common thing to do is to just drag and drop an image inside Photoshop, which will automatically open it as a new file, so that's what we'll do. Once the image is open, we are properly inside Photoshop, so let’s have a look at the interface. This entire screen we’re seeing right now is called the workspace, and most of these elements can be moved around and customized depending on what we’re using Photoshop for. We have a few different workspace layouts we can access through this menu on the top right corner, and we can even save our own layouts. However, for now, let’s both select the Essentials workspace, just to make sure your Photoshop is looking the same as mine. We can break down Photoshop’s interface into 4 main areas. On the center of the screen we have the canvas, which is essentially the file we have open. It takes up most of the screen so we can have a pretty good view of what we’re working with. Multiple files can be opened at once, and they’ll appear as tabs at the top, just like on a web browser. On the left side we have the toolbar, and Photoshop has a lot of tools. Tools for moving layers, tools to make selections, tools to draw, tools to repair skin, and the list goes on. We’ll see the most important ones later in this video. If a tool has a small arrow in the corner, which most of them do, it means there are other similar tools grouped there, and you can click and hold to see them all. Hovering over a tool will also bring a pop up showing the tool’s name, its shortcut, and a video explaining how to use it. At the top, we have two separate elements. First we have all the menus, where we can do things like manage our files, edit selections, work with text and add filters. Then, below the menus, we have the Options Bar, which is what we call a context-based interface, meaning the options we see there will change based on which tool and layer we have selected. Or, based on context. Another piece of context-based interface is the Contextual Task Bar, which appears by default at the bottom of the screen, or below a selection when we have one. This is where we can use Generative Fill, in case AI images are of your interest. And finally, we have the panels on the right side, which are dockable windows that can perform a multitude of tasks, like selecting colors, adding adjustments and managing layers. New panels can be added through the Window menu, which is where you can also hide items like the Contextual Task Bar and the Options bar. And yes, I know, that’s already quite a lot to take in, and we’re just looking at the interface. Photoshop is a wonderful, but complex software, so I stress the importance of both taking your time, and having access to the right tools and resources. Which is why, as the next step on your learning journey, I’d like to recommend you the sponsor of this video: Bring Your Own Laptop. Bring Your Own Laptop is an online creative community led by fellow graphic designer and Adobe Certified Professional Daniel Scott. They offer more than 30 classes in Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma and much more - everything you need to take your creative skills to the next level. At BYOL you can learn at your own pace, download resource files and engage with design challenges, live streams and Q&As, all without being interrupted by ads. You can also celebrate and share the milestones in your learning journey with their Certificates of Achievement, to keep you motivated all the way through. For a limited time, you can join BYOL with a 10% off discount using my link in the description - that’s only 75 dollars a year! Start learning a new creative skill today while also joining a wonderful community of creative people just like you. Now, back to the video - and we’re done looking at the screen, so let’s dive into Photoshop and finally tame this beast. There are 4 features that I consider the foundation of how Photoshop works. I’m talking about layers, masks, selections and adjustments. They are the cornerstone of the software and if we know how to work with them, we can already do A LOT of things in Photoshop. So let’s say we took a great picture but it needs some adjustments, the sky is a little too bright and the colors are a little dull, so we open it on Photoshop. We start by fixing the colors, so we add an Adjustment Layer and bump up the saturation. Then, we need to make the sky a little bit darker, so we add a second Adjustment Layer and make the image darker. But now everything is darker, and not just the sky, so we make a selection of the sky and add a mask to this Adjustment Layer, which prevents it from affecting the entire image. Now, only the sky is getting darker. This workflow of adding adjustment layers with masks allows us to make all kinds of targeted adjustments to our image, so I bet you can image how powerful it is. But don’t worry, we’re gonna go over these items one by one, starting with layers. Photoshop works in a layer system, and it’s essential that we understand this as soon as possible. I like to think that working with layers is just like making a collage on a sheet of paper - everything we add to our file will be a new layer on the collage. We can manage these layers on the Layers Panel, and the order they appear there also dictates the order of these elements on the canvas, so something’s always on the front, and something’s always on the back. We also have different types of layers, like pixel layers, text layers and adjustment layers. Each layer has its own unique benefits and limitations. For example, on a pixel layer we can paint using a brush or apply filters, something that is not possible on a text layer. However, this happens because text remains editable, so only text goes in a text layer. Layers can also be grouped by selecting them and pressing Ctrl+G, and renamed by double clicking on the layer name. This is a very good practice to keep things organized. And since we’re talking about layers, let’s have a look at adjustment layers. They are special layers that manipulate the color and tone of all layers beneath them. If you’ve ever used a photo editing app on your phone, you’ll find them very familiar. With adjustment layers, we’re able to make images lighter, darker, change the color of an object, make the colors more intense, apply LUTs and a whole lot more. Adjustment layers can be added through the bottom of the Layers Panel, by clicking on the circle icon, and yes, there are a lot of them, but for a beginner I would recommend starting with Curves to change the lighting and Hue/Saturation to change the color. Once we select an adjustment, it will be added to the Layers Panel as an adjustment layer, and with the layer selected, we can edit the adjustment itself on the Properties Panel, which is just above. Once we tweaked the adjustment to our liking, we can quickly check the before and after by clicking on the eye icon, either on the Properties Panel, or next to the layer on the Layers Panel. The great thing about adjustment layers is that we can go back and disable or edit any changes we made to the original image, either by tweaking the adjustment, deleting the layer, or just hiding it with the eye icon. We can also make layers transparent by reducing their opacity, and with adjustment layers this basically reduces the intensity of the adjustment. We call all this non-destructive workflow, because we can always revert changes and have the original image back. This can make your life a whole lot easier, so always keep it in mind. Sometimes, however, we don’t want an adjustment layer to affect the entire image, and that’s where masks come into play. Just like a mask in real life hides part of your face, a mask in Photoshop hides part of a layer, something that is very useful with adjustments. So much so that adjustment layers already come with a mask applied - that’s what the white rectangle on the layer is - but we can add masks to any layer by clicking on the Layer Mask button at the bottom of the Layers Panel. Masks can only be painted black and white, and the darker we paint the mask, the more we hide the layer, so white means the layer is 100% visible, black means it’s 100% hidden, and all shades of gray in between hide the layer according to how dark they are. With that in mind, a very common workflow is to select the mask, pick the color black, and use the Brush Tool to paint the parts we want to hide, always playing with the brush opacity to get different shades of gray and different levels of visibility on the mask. However, while painting the mask with the Brush Tool is a great option, sometimes it’s better to work with selections, so that’s our next topic. Photoshop has many, many tools to make selections. Some tools make geometric selections, some tools are for manual selections, some tools select pixels with similar colors, and some tools even use AI to identify what we’re trying to select. All these tools are available on these 3 groups at the top of the toolbar. A great option for beginners is the Object Selection, one of the AI tools, since it requires less manual work. There’s even a button that appears on the Options Bar that auto identifies the subject of the image and selects it. Selections are super useful because they restrict the area we can work with, so if we’re painting a mask on a layer, we can use a selection to avoid painting areas we don’t want to. Also, if we mask a layer with a selection active, the mask will automatically be created with that selection. This makes it super easy for us to just select the subject of the image and then add a layer mask to remove the background. Working with selections is where I think shortcuts are the most useful. We have shortcuts like Ctrl+Shift+I to invert a selection, Alt+Backspace to paint a selection with the selected color, Ctrl+D to deselect, and so on. But shortcuts can be challenging for beginners, so I don’t expect you to remember the shortcuts I mention here. Instead, I’ll leave a link in the description with a list of Photoshop shortcuts that you can consult whenever you’re working on the software. Don’t forget to check it out. Alongside adjustments, filters are another great way to change the appearance of a layer. However, while we can think of adjustments as corrections to the image, filters are more like effects or stylizations. With filters, we can blur the image, distort it in many different ways, add noise and scratches to simulate film, or even stylize it like an oil painting or mosaic tiles. A filter that is definitely a must-know is the Gaussian Blur, probably the most used filter of them all, and present in all sorts of tutorials out there, from color correction, to compositing and restoration. Filters can be added up here through the Filter menu, and they are applied directly to the selected layer, instead of being on a layer of their own, like adjustments do. This means that once we apply a filter to a layer and move on with our project, we cannot go back later to edit the filter, or even remove it. This is a problem when we’re trying to follow a non-destructive workflow, as I mentioned before. A workaround to this problem is converting the layer into a Smart Object before applying the filter. This might be a more complex concept for beginners, so don’t feel bad if you don’t quite understand it just now. Think of a smart object as a special layer that always remembers its original appearance. They have two main properties: first, you can scale down a smart object and then scale it up again, and it will preserve the original resolution. A regular layer would just get pixelated. The other property is that, when we add a filter, instead of the filter being rendered directly to the image, it will now appear on a list inside the Layers Panel, and we even get the option to mask it out if we want to. So, if we’re planning to add filters to a layer, it’s a good practice to convert it to a Smart Object before, just so we can go back later and edit or remove the filters. A few Photoshop versions ago, filters became even more powerful with the introduction of Neural Filters, which use AI to enhance, restore and stylize images. These filters have a whole interface of their own and can also be accessed through the Filter menu. I have an entire video going over all of them, so if you’re interested the link is in the description down below. And of course, I couldn’t talk about filters without mentioning Camera Raw. Camera Raw is a RAW images processor built in on Photoshop as a filter. If you’ve never heard of a RAW file, they are high quality, unprocessed files created by more professional cameras that have yet to be converted into images, and this process can be done through Camera Raw. However, since Camera Raw is built in on Photoshop as a filter, this means we can apply it to any layer on our project, instead of just using it on RAW files. And let me tell you something, Camera Raw is basically a full-fledged photo editing app on itself. It handles lighting correction, color correction, temperature and tone, sharpness, noise reduction, lens distortion, color grading, LUTs, and much, much more. You can definitely edit photos using only Camera Raw and get absolutely stunning images, so definitely something worth exploring. And obviously, I couldn’t finish this video without covering a few of the essential tools in Photoshop, so let’s go. The most basic tool is the Move Tool, shortcut V, which we use to select layers, move them around, scale them up or down, and rotate them. It’s our default mouse cursor for doing general things. A popular tool to make selections is the Lasso Tool, shortcut L, which we can use to make freehand selections. We can be pretty accurate with this tool, it only depends on how precisely we can move the cursor. For photography work, a must-know is the Crop Tool, shortcut C, which allows us to crop the canvas. We can use the Options Bar at the top to select a specific ratio to crop, or even a specific size and resolution. If we’re doing any kind of restoration work, like restoring an old scanned photo, or removing pimples on a person’s skin, the easiest tool to use is the Spot Healing Brush Tool, shortcut J. With this tool we can simply paint on the area we want to restore, and the tool will use the surrounding pixels to fill that area as best as possible. It produces really good results and we’re just a click away from a pimple free skin. Now, if digital art is your thing, then the Brush Tool, shortcut B, is what you’re looking for. This tool offers endless possibilities to create and customize all sorts of brushes, and it must be paired with the Brushes and Brush Settings Panels, which can be opened through the Window Menu, and allow us to tweak all sorts of settings on the brush to get our own custom looks. And we cannot talk about the Brush Tool without mentioning its best friend - the Eraser Tool, shortcut E. Works the same way as the Brush Tool, but it erases instead of drawing. Further down we have the Type Tool, shortcut T, that allows us to add text to our file. You can change settings like font and size either through the Properties Panel, or the Options Bar. And lastly, if you really want to design in Photoshop, we have a few geometric shapes on this group here - just click and drag to draw, and use the Properties Panel to edit the color and the outline. And this pretty much sums up everything you need to know to get started with Photoshop. Thank you once again to Bring Your Own Laptop for sponsoring this video, and don’t forget to check out the link in the description for an exclusive 10% discount offer. If you enjoyed this video, check this other one here. A special thanks to all my Patreon supporters who help me make high quality content like this one. More on how you can support the channel in the description down below. Don’t forget to like, subscribe and leave a comment if you have any doubts. Thank you so much for watching and have a great day. Bye!