If you want to improve your skills in photography and photo editing, there are countless Youtube channels to help. YouTube is one of the single biggest resources out there for learning new skills and improving the ones you already have – and this especially applies to photography!
There are a lot of channels out there that specialize in helping you get better at taking and editing photos, and in this article, we’ll go over some of the best ones to check out right now.
This list will be full of some channels you may already be familiar with, along with some hidden gems you NEED to know about. Since each of these photography Youtube channels offers something unique, this list isn’t rated in any particular order.
With that out of the way, let’s get started!
Best Youtube Channels For Learning Photography
Whether you haven’t picked up a camera yet or you’re a seasoned pro looking for tips to improve further, these channels will help you with the art of actually capturing the images of your dreams.
1. Jessica Kobeissi
Able to boast 1.89 million subscribers and hailing from Detroit, Michigan, a quick look at Jessica Kobeissi’s portfolio will reveal that she’s deeply involved in fashion and portrait photography. While some of her most popular videos revolve around reactions, photographers may find her ones about outdoor photoshoots as well as editing and retouching to be useful.Â
Also, her vlogs can give a look into how a professional does things. If you’re part of the fashion community, this is a channel to subscribe to for both the reaction content and the photography videos that involve both tutorials and vlogs.
2. Nigel Danson
Landscape photography is particularly challenging for those who haven’t approached it before, and if you want to get better at these kinds of photos, you should check out Nigel Danson’s channel. While Danson provides general photography tips also, his real expertise is in photographing landscapes and the right compositions, gear, and techniques for these kinds of shots. He also has a few videos on how to properly edit these pictures after taking them.
3. Peter McKinnon
If you want videos about some of the more active sides of photography and cinematography, Peter McKinnon has a number of them on his channel. With 5.3 million subscribers, McKinnon has videos on drone photography, GoPro cameras, and more subjects that might be useful to vloggers.Â
There are, of course, unique challenges to dealing with these types of cameras over more traditional ones. If you have plans to start using them, or even if you already do, you might benefit from the perspective of someone that works with them on a regular basis. Like some of the other channels listed here, he also has some general photography tips and motivational videos.
4. Sean Tucker
There are tons of channels out there about the technical side of photography, but Sean Tucker’s channel is more dedicated to the theory of it. His channel banner describes the channel as ‘a philosophical approach to life and capturing light,’ and his videos might just give you the next bit of motivation you’re looking for or give you an interesting new perspective on photography subjects.
5. Jamie Windsor
As another YouTuber that focuses on the artistic side of photography, Jame Windsor is one more source of information for those looking to learn about the theory behind taking pictures. His video topics include composition, street photography, as well as motivation, and creativity. Is wedding photography boring? Can photography make you unhappy? These are some of the topics you’ll find in his videos.
There are also some videos on the channel about Adobe Lightroom and how to use it to get a certain look. Also, this channel is for you if you’re interested in getting an older style for your photos. He has videos about film emulation and capturing a general retro look, as well as the nature of nostalgia.Â
With retro trends often coming back in the internet age, we’ve seen a resurgence in photos edited to have a retro feel to them. There are not really any other channels on this list that go into that kind of thing, so if you’re interested in it, you should have a look at the videos from Windsor.
6. SLR Lounge
Unlike some of the channels that focus on one specific topic over the rest, SLR Lounge covers just about every aspect of photography you could come up with. The channel also uploads fairly often, with a large back-catalog of tutorial videos as well as lists of tips and techniques and reviews of gear.
7. FStoppers
FStoppers has a presence off YouTube with a website that’s well known in its own right – and their videos have a similar type of content to the articles they run on that site. They have a lot of general photography videos across multiple subjects but one notable trait is their longer tutorial videos that go in-depth and can run from between twenty minutes to a half-hour long.
Some of their content will be very useful to freelancers doing work at a professional or part-time level. Want to know how to edit a promo video? How to light up a music video with only a couple of lights? Or whether using AI technology is good or bad for your end results? These subjects, and more, are some of the ones covered by the FStoppers channel.
They also have a tutorial series on creating a website as a photographer and are the only channel on this list to have such a series. A website can be a pretty big deal for taking the next step in your photography business, so if you don’t have one yet, you might want to check this channel and their guides out.
8. The School of Photography
The name of this channel gives away the main purpose – it’s a tutorial channel primarily, that does reviews and guides but also hosts live question and answer sessions about photography from time to time. The people behind the channel run a business selling online courses, but you won’t have to pay for anything to take advantage of the info posted on their YouTube channel for free.
9. Mango Street
With two hosts and 1.3 million subscribers, Mango Street is worth checking out for their content aimed at beginners as well as photographers that are on a budget. They have a number of videos about doing home photoshoots and shooting on phones, and also cover the subject of cinematography and capturing footage for videos and vlogs. While cinematography is a different field, there’s enough overlap with photographers that many will find the videos useful anyway.
10. Chris Hau
Chris Hau’s videos fall into a few different niches, all of which have value to photographers. One of the main ones is gear reviews, as he has a number of videos up on his channel about both lenses and cameras. Also, the more cinematography inclined will like his content about travel vlogging and capturing footage.
11. Thomas Heaton
Thomas Heaton has one of the more interesting perspectives in the YouTube photography space. Not only does he focus on outdoor photography, but he also vlogs about using a 4×4 van as a mobile home for photography adventures. While traveling around in a van isn’t something every photographer will get to try, this alone still makes the channel worth checking out.
12. Jordi Koalitic
Mobile photography has been getting more popular in recent years thanks to improvements in phone cameras, and Jordi Koalitic is one YouTuber that has a number of videos on the subject. Sporting 1.3 million subscribers, his channel will definitely be a help for those trying to create content on their phones – especially for social media platforms such as TikTok.Â
The Best Youtube Channels For Learning Photo Editing
After you’ve captured images, editing them can take them to the next level. But just like with taking pictures in the first place, editing can be a confusing process if you don’t have experience with it. In this section, we’ll go over some of the best youtube channels that will help you master the art of editing your pictures.
13. Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop is the most popular image editing software around. In fact, even just the name Photoshop has become a synonym for editing photos in and of itself. For those that want to learn how to use this extremely powerful program, the official Adobe Photoshop channel on YouTube has many tutorials. Some of them are more relevant to photographers than others, but having a strong grasp of the program’s features is always a benefit.
14. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
The sister program to Photoshop is Lightroom, and like its more well-known counterpart, Lightroom deals with improving photos after they’ve been taken. However, while Photoshop is a general image editing program that more or less acts as a jack-of-all-trades, Lightroom specifically targets photographers and has features relevant to them. You can learn when and why to edit in Photoshop or Lightroom HERE.
Just like the official Photoshop channel, the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom channel contains tutorials straight from the source on how to use the program.
15. PiXimperfect
PiXimperfect is another channel focusing on how to use Photoshop, and his content will specifically help you with digitally manipulating photos. That is, changing them entirely from what they were when you started. Want to change the color of someone’s shirt, or replace yellow teeth in a portrait with white ones? You might just find a tutorial for that on this channel.
16. PHLEARN
Another teaching channel that focuses on Photoshop, the most notable thing on the PHLEARN channel may just be their ‘Master Photoshop in 30 Days’ playlist which will take you from a beginner level to being able to use techniques such as masks, adjustment layers, and more to improve your photos. The videos are less than half an hour long each, so you won’t have to put too much time in every day to follow these lessons.
Some of the skills taught in these videos are more relevant to photographers than others, but many of them will be of use for you. For example, one video in the series describes editing RAW photos in Photoshop while another one goes into the process of color grading.Â
17. Matt Klosowski
Matt Klosowski is an accomplished name in photo editing. He’s been named a Sony Artisan of Imagery and is also a member of the Photoshop Hall of Fame. On his YouTube channel, he gives out some of his knowledge through both tutorials and morning coffee live streams where he gives out tips on Photoshop. When it comes to photography and editing, many of his pictures focus on the outdoors and landscapes.
18. Maarten Schrader
Everyone has their own style of editing photos, and many of us want to capture a specific idea from our head when we take a picture and start editing it. If that’s the case for you, Maarten Schrader’s videos could be of use to you. Much of his content is about using Lightroom to achieve a specific look while editing, such as a cinematic film look.Â
Also, a large number of his tutorials will tell you about the editing styles of famous influencers. If you want to understand what makes their styles tick, and how you can use these concepts for your own editing, you should definitely have a look at these tutorials.
19. Blue Lightning TV Photoshop
Many of the channels listed here have just been about editing. It’s not hard to find tutorials about things like changing colors in Photoshop or applying a certain color palette in Lightroom, but the content on Blue Lightning TV is a bit different. There are more videos about creating things in Photoshop rather than just editing them.
Some of these examples include creating a portrait out of text and creating your own version of the Northern Lights. Not all of these things are as directly connected to photography compared to something like editing the lighting or removing blemishes, but learning to use Photoshop to its fullest has several advantages for photographers.
20. Photoshop Essentials
Like the name might suggest, Photoshop Essentials is a channel filled with tutorials about just that: some of the essential skills you might want to have in your arsenal when working with the program. You won’t have to spend too long figuring these things out because most of the videos are of a shorter length and are about eight to fifteen minutes long.Â
If you’re in the middle of editing and just want to pick up something quickly, tutorials like these can be a great resource to draw from. Some of the things the channel can teach you include how to add stars to the night sky in Photoshop and how to create a vertical collage from your photos. Also, how to create a mirror image effect that has been used in Hollywood promotions a number of times.
21. Photoshop Training Channel
Photoshop Training Channel has over a million subscribers and the name of the channel says enough about what the content is about. There’s plenty of tutorials here ranging from the shorter two to three-minute ones to the longer ones that run about twenty minutes or more.Â
Some of the most useful tutorials on the channel include their ones about how to remove backgrounds from photos and how to remove a green screen also. Those are skills that everyone will end up using at some point in Photoshop, so you might as well head over to this channel and learn them now if you aren’t already aware of how to do those things.Â
22. PhotoshopCAFE
The name of the channel only mentions Photoshop, but this one covers both Photoshop and Lightroom. The tutorials here might be considered more directly relevant to photographers than some of the more general Photoshop-based channels. They include topics like color grading, touching-up photos, and sky replacement.
The owner of the channel also does live streams from time to time which may be a chance to get interesting info on subjects that wouldn’t otherwise get a video all to themselves.
23. Lucy Martin
Lucy Martin produces editing tutorials just like the other channels on the list above, however, there is something that sets her apart. That something is the social media related content that she produces, and one of the more popular videos on her channel happens to be about mobile editing – something directly relevant to influencers who need to get pictures edited and posted quickly.
Her channel does have more of a focus on Lightroom, so if you’re tired of seeing Photoshop content and want to see some guides for its sister program, be sure to check it out for yourself.
24. Signature Edits
Signature Edits is focused specifically on targeting photographers, unlike the channels that just cover photo editing in general, and this is useful because you don’t have to spend time sorting out which tutorials are relevant to your needs and which ones aren’t. Lightroom is the program of choice in most of these videos, and in addition to videos about editing, there’s also some about photography in general.Â
Many of these tutorials are longer when it comes to length. For example, one video about adding colors to a sunset in Lightroom (watch here) is over an hour long. But, fortunately for those without the attention span to sit through longer videos, many of them are also only ten to twenty minutes long. Some of this channel’s most interesting videos are the ones going through the process of editing a wedding, from beginning to end in real time.
25. Brendan Williams
Maybe this name sounds familiar? Well, that’s because it’s in the title of this blog!
Alongside all of the photography and photo editing tutorials on the site, I also share weekly photo editing tips on my Youtube Channel. There you can find in-depth how-to videos about individual tools in Lightroom or Photoshop, or follow along with step-by-step editing processes!
My channel focuses on helping photographers fast track their skills in Photoshop and Lightroom. Rather than spending years of trial and error to learn the program, my videos help give you a more direct way of improvement.
Focusing primarily on Lightroom and Photoshop, this channel is perfect for those wanting to make their photos look more professional while learning about new adjustments along the way.
So those are 25 of the best youtube channels to follow as a photographer. With these channels on your subscription list, you’re guaranteed to start seeing improvements in your own work!
– Brendan 🙂
