Photoshop Tutorials

by Chad Neuman

While teaching layout and design, magazine design and production, and web design at the university level, I’ve noticed a few common mistakes students make while creating designs in either Adobe InDesign or Adobe Photoshop. Here are five prominent bad examples with five corrections for making better publication designs. I’ll provide better alternatives to make various designs more professional. Check these out to avoid those design faux pas, and in the process we’ll learn the design principles of repetition, contrast, alignment, and proximity. Read the rest of this entry »

By Chad Neuman

This is an often-requested technique from some of my university students, so here’s a tutorial on it. Sometimes you may need to cut out the background from part of a photo and keep the background transparent. Reasons for this include needing a transparent background in a web page design or in an InDesign file. Here’s how to do this. Read the rest of this entry »

by Chad Neuman

This technique can be useful when creating brochure, web site, or poster designs. Creating duplicated layers from selections and then applying layer styles to them is a simple yet effective technique. Let’s get started. Read the rest of this entry »

by Chad Neuman

Here’s another way to create a Holga effect. Some Holga photos have varying hues or vignettes, and the one shown here. But others have a faded out focus on parts of the photo and a faded look. Here’s how to achieve that in Photoshop. Read the rest of this entry »

by Chad Neuman

Holga cameras were created in China decades ago in order to create an affordable camera for the masses. Now hipsters and artists alike have discovered the Holga, taking photos that often turn out very suprising. Waiting for the photos to develop results in often desaturated photos, vignettes, and extra saturated areas on the photos. Here’s one way to add a Holga look to a normal photo by using Photoshop. Read the rest of this entry »

by Chad Neuman

Here is how to use layer clipping masks with photos and text in Adobe Photoshop for unique looks for brochures, web sites, and posters. Read the rest of this entry »

by Chad Neuman

We can use Adobe Photoshop not just for editing photos but for creating artistic design and effects as well. Here’s one way to create an interesting and aesthetically-pleasing look. Read the rest of this entry »

by Chad Neuman

Adjusting the opacity of shapes and lines can help create interesting designs for flyers, advertisements, or magazine layouts. Here’s a basic technique to add to your design repertoire. Read the rest of this entry »

by Chad Neuman

Here are a few techniques to create an “electrifying” design. Using soft white brushes is a popular technique in creating a hip layout, but we’ll use a few other techniques as well to create this design, including threshold, hue/saturation adjustments, and layer blending modes. Read the rest of this entry »

by Chad Neuman

Photo mosaics are photos comprised of many other photos. Photos are places in square or rectangle areas of the image, almost like pixels. Each photo has a certain hue that matches what the part of the master photo should be. Here’s a quicker way than trying to find photos that match specific parts of a photo. Read the rest of this entry »