Useful and Professional Photoshop Tutorials of 2014

Useful Photoshop Tutorials of 2014

Photoshop is such amazingly powerful software, and I seriously wonder if anyone in the world – and I include the developers – knows everything there is to know about Photoshop. Many people are very skilled at particular aspects of the software, often not really needing to know other aspects for their work. We are fortunate that those that have particular skills in Photoshop will sometimes share their knowledge with us in the form of tutorials – and as we all know, there are hundreds of thousands of tutorials out there. So today we have sought out a selection of tutorials for Photoshop that have been published in 2014 and that are or could be very useful for designers.

Photoshop Tutorials

Create a Seamless, Circular, Geometric Background Pattern in Photoshop

With the current trends of background patterns and patterned transparencies in web design, this is a great tutorial if you are unsure how to create seamless patterns. My only observations would be to use a transparent background when you create your file, and create your pattern in a light gray color so you can overlay it with a solid color or gradient when you come to use it.

Background Pattern in Photoshop

Create a Seamless Argyle Pattern with a Fabric Texture

This pattern tutorial is relatively easy, but I think the mathematics could be a little more accurate, particularly on the stitching lines. For this pattern, the sky is the limit for color scheme variations, you need 4 colors. The scheme I used was taken from a Scottish tartan. The image below shows the tutorial image in the middle and my adaptation around the edges.

Seamless Argyle Pattern

Create a Colorful Geometric Pattern in Photoshop

Here is another easy-to-follow tutorial to create a pattern. This time it is a geometric pattern using Photoshop’s Polygonal Shape tool. The tutorial gives you a color swatch for their blue and orange pattern, but I made the pattern in gray shades then added color after applying the pattern overlay – this way you can use a single color or a gradient for different effects. The image below shows the tutorial image in the middle and my adaptation with a blue overlay around the edges.

Geometric Pattern

Create a Kaleidoscope Effect in Photoshop

This style of art for web design may be a little out of date now, but I am guessing it could still be useful in some projects, especially in pastel color schemes.

Kaleidoscope Effect

Stylise Photos Using Colourful Shapes

This tutorial is a great way of creating a different look to your photos. Good for website design for many industries, trades and services.

Stylize Photos Using Colorful Shapes

How to Create a Realistic Money Effect in Photoshop

For this tutorial you will need to use Illustrator to create the screens to lay over the image. A very interesting final effect that would work well for any kind of financial company or charitable appeal websites.

Money Effect

How to Create a Colorful Fluoro Duotone Photo Effect

Pop Art was really popular in the 80s, so if you want a retro effect on a website, a pop art style image will fit in beautifully, and here Chris Spooner walks you through a few simple steps on how to achieve a great result.

Fluoro Duotone Photo Effect

How to Create a Grainy B&W High Fashion Photo Effect

Here is another photo effect tutorial from Chris Spooner. This monochrome, grainy photo effect is perfect for fashion houses and hairdressing website designs, and this tutorial will show you how to create the effect easily.

Grainy High Fashion Photo Effect

Creating Double Exposure Photographs

This style of presenting images will set a mood for a website. Here you will learn how to blend your two photographs together perfectly.

Creating Double Exposure Photographs

Create a Mobile Weather App Interface in Photoshop

By including this tutorial, you may think I am trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, but the interesting thing about this tut is that it shows how to create the weather icons, which I thought could be very useful.

Mobile Weather App Interface

How to Create an Instagram Style Vintage Photo Filter

This tutorial really needs no introduction, we all know the popularity of Instagram filters, and this is just one of many tutorials out there that will show you how to create a similar type of effect on an image. The image below shows the tutorial example on the right and my variation on the left – my original image was far more color saturated than the one used in the tutorial, so I addressed that issue before starting the tutorial.

Instagram Style Vintage Photo Filter

How to Turn Your Image into a Color Mixture Photo

This is another high fashion effect and could be useful for marketing cosmetics, clothing, jewelry and many other fashion trades.

Color Mixture Photo

How to Combine Stock Photos into a GIF Animation

With animation currently trending in web design, this is a useful tutorial if you want to use Photoshop to create your GIFs – even if you only use this tut for the technique!

Combine Stock Photos into a GIF Animation

Create a Run Cycle Animation from Scratch

This is a very indepth tutorial and will take a lot of time to complete, but the result is worth it, and you will learn not only about creating animations in Photoshop, but also about the mechanics of moving animals.

Create an Animation From Scratch

Design an Eye-Catching Voucher in Photoshop

This tutorial will walk you through how to create a voucher for print in Photoshop. As it is for print, it is created at 300ppi and in CMYK color. As the author says, you can use the ideas and techniques shown here to design your own print-ready documents.

Voucher

Create an Address Book Icon in Photoshop

This tutorial is not difficult, it is very well explained, but it is time-consuming. The techniques used are good learning opportunities, and of course you can change the lettering on the tabs, the cover material, etc.

Address Book Icon

Create a Simple Notebook Icon in Adobe Photoshop

This is another nice little icon – the finished product is actually 120px x 125px. I like the flexibility of this design – it could be used on a lot of different sites and look at home.

Notebook Icon

Sea Foam Text Effect

This is a fun, seasonal text effect using textures, brushes and layer styles.

Sea Foam Text Effect

How to Create a Retro, 3-Dimensional Text Effect in Photoshop

This is a nice retro text effect that you can create with most versions of Photoshop as it doesn’t use the 3D Photoshop effects.

Retro 3-Dimensional Text Effect

Create a Unique Neon Text Effect

This neon light text effect set on a brick wall is an ideal effect for nightclubs and ‘happening’ websites.

Neon Light Text Effect

How to Cut Out Hair Smoothly in Photoshop

This is the bane of the lives of photo manipulators – both hair and fur! This tutorial helps out with a technique for getting a smooth, natural look on extracting hair from its background.

How to Cut Out Hair Smoothly

How to Clean Up Your Photo Backgrounds in Photoshop

This tutorial assumes the background on your image is fine if a bit creased, grubby, etc. Using a variety of Photoshop’s built-in tools you will learn how to greatly improve a distressed background.

How to Clean Up Your Photo Backgrounds

Conclusion

Hopefully you will have learned something useful for your current or future projects through some of these tutorials and/or found some worth bookmarking. Do you seek out useful tutorials for your work? Perhaps you write tutorials – if so, we would love to see them. Please share your comments and links with us in the section below.

Deals

Iconfinder Coupon Code and Review

Iconfinder offers over 1.5 million beautiful icons for creative professionals to use in websites, apps, and printed publications. Whatever your project, you’re sure to find an icon or icon…

WP Engine Coupon

Considered by many to be the best managed hosting for WordPress out there, WP Engine offers superior technology and customer support in order to keep your WordPress sites secure…

InMotion Hosting Coupon Code

InMotion Hosting has been a top rated CNET hosting company for over 14 years so you know you’ll be getting good service and won’t be risking your hosting company…

SiteGround Coupon: 60% OFF

SiteGround offers a number of hosting solutions and services for including shared hosting, cloud hosting, dedicated servers, reseller hosting, enterprise hosting, and WordPress and Joomla specific hosting.