Al's Photoshop Tutorial
Downloadable Version 1.3
See Table of Contents or History for what's new.

This was downloaded from Al's Photoshop Tutorial at:
http://www.fur.com/~almackey/tutorial/

Welcome! I've gotten a number of letters asking me how I do some of the effects I do on my digitally-colored pictures, so I thought I'd make a tutorial that covers some of the techniques. This tutorial is aimed at people who are artistically inclined but may not know much about digital paint programs, and covers digital inking, coloring, shading, and some basic effects used to produce cartoon-like imagery. This tutorial focuses on not only methods and techniques, but also tries to shed light on a deeper understanding of how Photoshop works. This tutorial aims to teach you both the basics and some more advanced concepts.

A note on terminology: In the tutorial, I will use a sort of shorthand to indicate were a menu item is located. For example, an action that I refer to as "Image > Adjust > Desaturate" could be found in Photoshop by going into the "Image" menu on the top bar of the screen, moving down to the "Adjust" sign until it shows its sub-menu, and selecting "Desaturate" there.

What you'll need:

  • Photoshop. All the screenshots in this example come from version 5 and 5.5 for Windows, but Macintosh/IRIX/etc should be almost identical, and previous versions back to version 4 should also be fairly similar.
  • A Scanner is needed, unless you have a digital drawing pad such as a Wacom ArtPad that you're comfortable enough to sketch with, or if you have a freakish and uncanny ability to draw with a mouse.
  • A Digital Drawing Pad is recommended, but is not needed. It's a lot easier to do some of the steps with one, but it is possible, if time-consuming, to do them with just a mouse.

Relevant pages:
Step 1 Begin the tutorial! Starts at the very start.
Advanced Concepts Techniques for more experienced Photoshop users
Download Download all the pages and images used in the tutorial so you can follow it off-line
Table of Contents A list of all pages, including the sub-steps
Gallery A gallery of some works others have done using this tutorial's techniques
History Page history and news
Others Other Photoshop tutorials available on the Internet
Feedback Send your feedback to almackey@fur.com
Home Al's home page, with more artwork and other things


All images and other content found in this tutorial (except of course for screenshots of Photoshop's interface) are copyright 1999-2000 by Alan Mackey.