How the picture actually gets made

It ran as a multi author tutorial site from 2006 to 2018, and what it kept from that is the only thing worth keeping: a 20 year memory of which techniques were taught, and therefore which ones still hold. So every page here starts with a judgement rather than a step. A technique is still exactly how you do it, or the software has since absorbed it into a single button, or it works perfectly and dates the picture the moment anyone looks at it, or the program it belonged to is gone. A page that only lists steps has not earned its place, because a thousand pages already list steps and none of them will tell you that the effect you are about to apply was last fashionable in 2006. This site is not Adobe, not Corel and not any other vendor, and it never writes as one.

The 4 judgements, and what they mean

Each technique page opens with 1 of 4 verdicts, and then earns it in the body:

• CURRENT. This is still how you do it, and nothing has replaced it.
• ONE CLICK NOW. The software absorbed it. The page names the button, and says when the long way still wins.
• DATES THE PICTURE. It works, and anyone can tell. The page says exactly what gives it away.
• DISCONTINUED. The tool is gone. History only, and never instructions.

Where a technique has not been checked against the current software, the page says so instead of guessing. An unjudged technique is honest. A wrong verdict is the one mistake a reference like this cannot carry, because it sends somebody to spend 40 minutes doing by hand what the program now does automatically.

The operations covered here

The operations are the unit of this site, not the software. Each one is a named job somebody is trying to finish right now:

• Removing a background, which is the single most asked question in this subject and now begins with 1 click, so the page is mostly about the cases where the automatic selection loses: hair, glass, and a subject the same tone as what is behind it.
• Removing an object from a picture, which is a different operation from removing a background and uses healing and fill rather than selection.
• Retouching a portrait, colour work such as selective colour and colour to black and white, and the adjustments that keep an edit reversible.
• Patterns, brushes and textures, including how to build a tile that actually tiles and where free sets lawfully come from.
• The effects this archive itself taught, from chrome text to the vintage look, each one judged rather than reprinted.
• Working on a phone, where the answer is better than most people expect, since Photoshop on a phone covers a free app that does layers, masks and selections.
• Illustrator and vector work, plus PaintShop Pro, which is alive and still sold, and Fireworks, which is not and gets history instead.

What this site will not do

Three limits, stated plainly. There is no PDF to download and no beginners course in numbered classes: every page is one operation, written for someone with the program open on a second monitor who will read 4 sentences and switch back. Every page is in English, so if you need a tutorial in Tamil or Bangla this is not the site that can help you honestly. And this site names no crack, no serial, no keygen and no unauthorised download, for any program, in any version. The question underneath that search is a fair one and it gets a full answer: the free and lawful routes, including a free Photoshop app and 4 free desktop and browser programs, are set out on their own page rather than avoided.

The operations, and what each one is worth now

By program