Photoshop: the first hour

Layers, which is the whole idea

Layers are stacked transparent sheets, and understanding that one sentence is most of what separates somebody who can use Photoshop from somebody who cannot. The layer at the top of the Layers panel covers the ones beneath it, each layer moves and edits independently, and the picture you see is the stack looked at from above.

1. Open Window > Layers and dock the panel where you can see it, because every operation on this page starts by choosing a layer in it.
2. Press Ctrl+J (Cmd+J on macOS) to duplicate the current layer, and do this before any edit you might regret.
3. Double click the locked layer named Background and accept the rename, since a locked layer refuses most commands.
4. Click the eye icon beside a layer to hide it, which is how you compare a change against the original in 1 second.
5. Drag a layer up or down the stack to change what covers what, and press V for the Move Tool to reposition its contents.
6. Lower Opacity at the top of the panel to about 50% to blend 2 layers, which is the whole mechanism behind double exposure and collage work.

What goes wrong here is editing the wrong layer. Photoshop applies every brush stroke, filter and adjustment to whichever layer is highlighted, and the commonest beginner half hour is spent painting confidently onto an invisible layer. Look at the Layers panel before every action until it is a reflex.

Selections, which decide where an edit lands

Selections limit an edit to one area, and once a selection is active nothing you do affects anything outside it. The marching ants outline is the boundary, and there are 5 tools worth knowing on day 1.

• Object Selection Tool at W, dragged around one object, which does the work automatically and is where you should always start.
• Quick Selection Tool in the same slot, painted across a shape, growing to the edges it detects.
• Magic Wand in the same slot again, clicked on a flat colour, with Tolerance set to about 32.
• Rectangular Marquee at M, for crops, borders and anything with straight sides.
• Lasso Tool at L, drawn freehand, for the rough areas where precision does not matter.

Hold Shift while you drag to add to a selection and Alt (Option) to subtract, press Ctrl+Shift+I to invert it onto everything else, and press Ctrl+D to deselect. That last shortcut solves the beginner problem that looks like a broken program: with a selection still active somewhere off screen, every tool appears to do nothing at all.

Masks, and why you never press Delete

Masks hide part of a layer instead of deleting it, and switching from deleting to masking is the single change that makes work repeatable. A layer mask is a greyscale image attached to the layer: black hides, white shows, and grey is partial.

1. Make a selection, then click the Add Layer Mask button at the foot of the Layers panel to hide everything outside it.
2. Click the mask thumbnail to target it, so your brush paints the mask rather than the picture.
3. Press B for the Brush Tool, press D to reset the colours to black and white, and press X to swap them.
4. Paint with black to hide more, paint with white to bring it back, and lower brush opacity to 20% for a gradual edge.
5. Press \ to see the mask as a red overlay on the picture, and Alt click the mask thumbnail to see it alone in black and white.
6. Add a Gradient to a mask, dragged with G, to fade one layer into another across the frame.

Adjustment layers work the same way and are the second half of the same habit. Add a Curves or Hue/Saturation adjustment layer from the Layers panel rather than from Image > Adjustments, and the edit stays live and re editable instead of being burned into the pixels. Press Ctrl+Alt+G to clip an adjustment to the one layer directly below it.

Undo, history, and getting out of trouble

Undo in Photoshop is Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z), pressed repeatedly to step further back, and Ctrl+Shift+Z to step forward again. That behaviour changed at one point in the program's history, so older tutorials tell you Ctrl+Z only toggles the last action and that Ctrl+Alt+Z is the real step backward. Both shortcuts still exist, and if a tutorial insists on the second one, you are reading something written for an older release, which is a useful thing to notice about any tutorial you find. Open Window > History to jump back 15 or 20 steps at once, and remember the history is discarded when the document closes.

Exporting, including exporting as PDF

To export from Photoshop, choose the format by what the file has to do, because the wrong one silently destroys the work.

• Save as PSD for the working file, which keeps layers, masks and adjustment layers intact.
• Export to PNG when the image has transparency, since JPEG has no alpha channel and fills a cutout with white.
• Export to JPEG at quality 80 or higher for photographs on a web page, where file size matters and transparency does not.
• Save as Photoshop PDF through File > Save As for anything going to print or to a client for review, ticking Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabilities to keep the layers inside the PDF.
• Use File > Export > Export As with Ctrl+Shift+Alt+W for web sized copies, where you can set dimensions and see the resulting file size before saving.

What to learn next, and what not to bother with

After the first hour, the next thing to learn is whichever operation you actually need, not a curriculum. Removing a background in Photoshop is the operation most beginners want first, and it is largely a single button now, which makes it a fast win and a good demonstration of masks. From there the useful order is retouching, colour adjustment, then type and layout. Photoshop, operation by operation lists them as separate operations rather than as a course, and Illustrator: the first hour does the same job for vector work, which is a different program for a different kind of file.

2 things are worth skipping. A downloadable tutorial PDF is the format most likely to be wrong, because it freezes menu positions and tool names from the year it was written and gives you no way to tell which year that was, and this site publishes none. Video tutorials on YouTube have the same problem in a less obvious form: check the upload date before you follow the steps, since a beginner series from 2016 will send you to a Refine Edge dialog that has since been replaced. This site is written in English only, so where you need instruction in Hindi, Tamil, Bangla, Malayalam, Kannada or Tagalog, look for a source dated within the last 2 years in that language rather than an older one in this one.

If you do not own the program, the free routes are real. The Photoshop mobile app launched on iPhone in February 2025, with Android later that year, and the base app is free, including selections, layers, masks, compositing, Tap Select and the Spot Healing Brush, which covers every concept on this page. The full feature set needs a subscription, either an existing desktop plan or the Photoshop Mobile and Web plan at $7.99 a month or $69.99 a year, and Photoshop on a phone sets out where the line falls. On a desktop, GIMP, which released 3.0.8 on 24 January 2026, Krita at 5.3.2.1 from 1 June 2026, Photopea in a browser and Paint.NET on Windows all have layers, selections and masks, so the first hour transfers to any of them.

Where to go next

PHOTOSHOPPhotoshop, operation by operationPHOTOSHOPRemoving a background in PhotoshopHow to remove a background in PhotoshopPHOTOSHOPPhotoshop on a phoneWhat actually worksILLUSTRATORIllustrator: the first hourIllustrator for beginners: the first hour