49 Most Creative Photoshop Tutorials of 2009

What a year it has been for Photoshop… so many new techniques, so many fresh ideas and so many new and creative web sites offering free tutorials. In this post we have collected the best of them, focusing on photo manipulation, design and drawing, poster design, caricature design and finally, illustration within Photoshop. We have purposely omitted icon design, text effects and GUI tutorials, these will be following in the coming weeks, keep an eye out for them.

Photo Manipulation Tutorials

Create Frozen Liquid Effects

In this tutorial they show you some techniques for giving almost anything a liquid or frozen fluid effect. It’ll also reveal the easiest way to extract liquid images and keep them transparent.

Create a Happy Girl Wallpaper

In this tutorial, you will be taught how to create a wallpaper of a very happy girl, who enjoys life. The tutorial is for Photoshop, but some small step are done in Illustrator.

Create a Funky Perspective of a Model Riding

This is a tutorial illustrating perspective techniques and how you can achieve the feeling of depth and motion. You will be doing this in a few steps, such as placing the main character, creating the volume fading away and adding foreground and background images.

The Making of “Constant Slip”

In this tut they'll take you through the creative process of making intriguing light effects and applying them in your work. This is more a process description of making this illustration, than a detailed step by step how to. It gives you some good guidance on how to deal with an illustration like this and cover the overall workflow.

Fantastic Tree Photo Manipulations

Learn how to recreate this fantastic tree manipulation with some stock images and textures.

How to Create a Chilling Photo Manipulation

In this tutorial y0u will learn how to create this fantasy photo manipulation called "You Can Not Frost The Time", using several Photoshop tools such as Color Range, different blending modes, and more.

Create a Fiery Face Explosion

In this tut you will learn how to manipulate images of flame and smoke to create a glowing, intense facial explosion effect.

Use Lighting Effects to Make Photos Sparkle

From fashion shots to portraits, here’s how to add a touch of magic with lighting effects. Turning a run-of-the-mill photo into a dazzling one is simple – when you know the right tricks. In this tutorial, Photoshop maestro Aeiko shows how to create a variety of light effects that can be applied to photography or illustration with equal impact.

How To Create the Photo Manipulation “Brightness Tomorrows”

In this tutorial, you'll be shown how to create a futuristic looking photo manipulation using some special tools, such as the Background Eraser Tool and how to blend pictures properly using Match Color Adjustments and Lighting Effects.

Manipulate Smoke to Create Hyper-Real Images

Learn how to apply the Warp Tool effectively and a few other tricks to make smoke look like a skull. This technique has a variety of outcomes and works well with water, clouds and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Create a Catastrophic Tsunami, Impacting the Statue of Liberty

How to Make a Dark, Post-Apocalyptic City Illustration

In this tutorial, you'll change a full of sunshine, ordinary photograph into a gloomy image of the world after destruction of mankind. Using simple tools, you'll turn lively streets into abandoned ruins overgrown with weeds. A number of stock images and a few little tricks will let you optimize your work and make this job more interesting and spectacular.

How to Mold Paint Splatter to a Face in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to take splattered paint Photoshop brushes and apply them to the contours of a model's face. This is a relatively simple technique, which yields excellent artistic results.

How to Create a Hellacious Flaming Skull in Photoshop

In this tutorial, you'll go through all the steps of creating a flaming skull in Photoshop. You'll be using some images of flames, and a stock Designious vector skull to get you started. This tutorial covers some relatively simple steps and some clever photo manipulation techniques.

Lighting a Giant Elephant

Every now and then you may find yourself needing to insert a subject image into a background where the lighting between the two doesn't quite match. Your subject image may be flatly lit, while your background contains crisp shadows and highlights, and if you don't correct the problem you run the risk of getting a load of critical comments.
The wisest thing to do is to keep hunting for source images where the lighting does match. But sometimes you can effectively fix lighting problems and an example of how do to this can be seen in the giant elephant image named One Way Street.

Mysterious Hollow and Horror Landscape

You will learn how to recreate this this creepy and mysterious horror landscape, using stock images, textures and some creative effects.

Combine Photo Elements to Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation

In this Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to use a variety of color, lighting, and cut and paste techniques to create a surreal photo manipulation.

Create Dynamic Distortion Effects

In this tutorial you’ll use brushes to create what look like stains of paint, but in your future work you can use similar techniques with any number of style forms to dissect and distort your subject.

Design an Epic Fantasy Scene with Photoshop

In this tutorial you are going to create a photo manipulation inspired by Valhalla, one of Mariusz Karasiewicz`s works. He is an amazing artist and his work is absolutely stunning.

How to Create a Flaming Photo Manipulation

In this tutorial, you'll manipulate a picture so it looks like a woman burning in flames. The idea behind this manipulation was to create a nice looking illustration, only by using simple techniques and tools such as the Brush tool and Warp command.

Making of “Color Combustion” a Photo Manipulation

In this Photoshop tutorial you’ll be walked through the process of making a digital photo manipulation called Color Combustion. You’ll use a few simple techniques, and combine a whole heap of images together to make a wonderful creative collage.

Creating a Smoke Fading Effect

You will be using a stock image of a model, and also the awesome Smoke Brushes Set 1 designed by Falln-Stock to recreate this amazing fading smoke effect.

Create a Divine Angel Montage in Photoshop

The final image is an Angel that lights his way in the dark forest. This photo manipulation can be recreated by using stock images provided by some really great artists, which can be downloaded on the website.

Human Statue Effect: Cursed by Medusa

Medusa, in the Greek mythology, is a female monster that, gazing directly upon her, would turn onlookers to stone. With this tut you’ll make a Stone Cursed person effect in Photoshop.

Give a Car Photo Super Slick Lighting Effects

In this tut you will learn how to combine photos and brush strokes to give a car photo slick dusky lighting effects.

How to Create Retro Art in Photoshop

Design and Drawing Tutorials

How To Create a Futuristic Sci-Fi Scene

In this tutorial, you will be taken through the steps of recreating this futuristic sci-fi scene. You will transform original pictures using Photoshop tools that will help to give the image a more spectacular look

Making of Eastern Dragon Rider

In this five part indepth tutorial you will be taken through the process of firstly sketching your art on paper, and then bringing it all to life with Photoshop.

How to Create a Surreal Scene of Flying Bombs on Fire

In this tutorial, you'll make a scene with flaming bombs pouring from the sky. This tut is made to show some down and dirty Photoshop tricks that beginners can quickly pick up. It also includes some relatively advanced techniques to help budding designers enhance their workflow.

Self-Initiated Abstract Art

At the end of the tutorial, you should have two new libraries of elements to use in your future projects. The processes and techniques in this tutorial can be broken up and used in many different ways. Likewise, the final image of this tutorial can look as different as you want it to. It’s up to you to experiment with the results.

Create A Slow Motion Bullet Shot Effect

"In this tutorial I'm going to show you how to make a nice bullet shot effect. I decided to use a technological object such as a remote control to show a lot of tiny parts flying off after the impact: the circuit board, the buttons, a few chips…"

Create a Beautiful Photo Film Strip

This is a Photoshop tutorial on how to create a beautiful photo film strip, as seen in Apple’s iLife package design (’06 version) and DigitalMash website. The warp tool will be used to create the twisting effect (so, you need Photoshop CS2 or above to complete this tutorial). With the completion of this tutorial, you will be able build a photo strip with your own photos or artwork.

Design a Realistic 3D Baseball Cap in Photoshop

In this Photoshop tutorial, you will be shown how to create a realistic 3D Baseball cap in Adobe Photoshop using the Pen tool, brushes and some nifty tricks.

Character and Portrait Tutorials

Craft a Caricature

In this project, you will be shown how to create a caricature, covering everything from choosing which features to exaggerate, to selecting assets and a suitable pose.

Pop Art-Inspired Fashion Illustration

This tutorial will guide you through the initial steps of scanning your sketch, cleaning it up and adding color to it using Photoshop. Resource files of dots, which you can use for your own illustrations, can be found in the support download.

How to Create Striking Portraits

Basic composition is very important. Many artists put too much distracting detail in their painting, so in this project you’ll focus on how to direct viewers into the image and simplify the background, so it doesn’t overwhelm the main theme. Then you’ll explore how to create an interesting background to complement the subject. Lastly, you’ll define where the light source is coming from, to tie all the elements together.

Creating Retro Pop Art in Photoshop

Learn how to recreate this cool retro pop-art inspired from a portrait image using Photoshop.

How to Turn Humdrum Photos into Cinematic Portraits

In this tut you will learn how to add drama or a cinematic quality to a regular, humdrum portrait. There is even a little fake HDR effect, that way if you work on a project that requires a stunning shot without the stunning photography, you'll be able to cobble something together using this technique.

Poster and Ad Design Tutorials

Create an Artistic Vintage Poster

In this tutorial you’ll cover some of the basics of Daz Studio, such as how to load a figure, apply injection morphs and adds art props. You’ll then discover some great Photoshop techniques to recreate a stylised poster from a bygone era.

Create a Super Cool Retro Poster in 10 Steps

In this tutorial you will be shown how to create a very cool retro poster in just 10 steps. You will, of course use Adobe Photoshop, and also Illustrator.

How to Create a Vintage Radio Poster

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how simple it is to create a vintage poster using different brushes, blend mode, adjustment layers and some very simple filters in Photoshop.

Abstract Watercolor Wallpaper in Photoshop

There are plenty of ways to create a Watercolor Effect in Photoshop. Some are very cheesy and you can easily tell that a simple filter has been used. In this tutorial, you will be using Layer Masking. It is one of the most fascinating and powerful Photoshop method, to use layer masks in your designs.

Soul Rebel Poster Tutorial

In this tutorial you will recreate an awesome illustration that can be printed as a poster to hang it on your wall. The author has written a very clear and defined step by step tutorial, so you can follow and understand exactly what I went through while making this piece, and you get to download the .psd at the end.

Design a Stunning Sneaker Advert

In this tut you will learn how to design a stunning sneaker advert, using a variety of lighting effects, inspired by the incredible works of Peter Jaworowski.

Recreating The Dark Knight Poster

In this tutorial you’re going to attempt to recreate a Dark Knight poster (unofficial, mind you) that you can see here in all its glory. It’s a rather complex poster, but with this tut you should be able to create something similar.

Design a Vintage Horror Movie Poster

In this tutorial you will be taught how to use basic tools and photo manipulation techniques to design a vintage looking horror movie poster similar to the classic Zombie film ‘Day of the Dead’ by George A. Romero.

Illustration in Photoshop

Creating a Space-Helmeted Future Retro Illustration

This tutorial goes over the meat and potatoes of creating a future retro (odd description), inspired by the visionary work of Electrik Suicide and Sakke Soini.

Create an Out of Bounds Fantasy Illustration

In this tutorial, you will be taken through the process of creating a fantasy scene, make water pour out of a painting, make some sort of a absorption effect and end up with a really nice looking color. The main idea behind this surreal illustration is that we are actually in a painting and the painting on the wall is the real world, the world where our vulture tries to escape.

Combine Textures with Vectors

Blending modes, masks and Alpha Channels can give a convincing distressed effect to your vectors. In reality, a scratched surface would be neither uniform nor consistent across the surface area. That is why you’ll use a number of real-world image resources as the basis for this effect, achieving a tactile imperfection.

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