PHLEARN Help Center & Frequently Asked Questions

A free account lets you stream hundreds of free Photoshop and Lightroom tutorials, save lessons to your Favorites, and download the practice files for select free series like 30 Days of Photoshop and Intro to Lightroom Classic. It is free forever and does not require a credit card.

Click the account icon in the top-right corner of any page on PHLEARN.com and choose to sign in or create an account. Sign in using the same method you originally registered with — if you signed up with Facebook or Google, use that same button rather than an email and password.

If you cannot remember which method you used, or your login is not working, contact our support team and we will sort it out for you.

Everything lives in My PHLEARN. Click the PH logo in the upper-right corner of the site and select My PHLEARN. From there you can update your email address, password, billing details, and payment method, and review your subscriptions and downloads.

Click Add to Favorites on any tutorial — free or PRO — and it is saved to your account. You can find everything you have saved in My PHLEARN, and PRO members can pick up where they left off from the Continue Watching dashboard.

Free tutorials are focused lessons that teach a single technique or effect, start to finish. PRO tutorials are in-depth, multi-part courses that combine many techniques into a complete professional workflow, and they include the full project files — RAW images, PSDs, and practice guides — so you can follow along with the exact same images used in the lesson.

PHLEARN PRO unlocks everything on the site:

• Unlimited streaming access to our entire catalog of PRO tutorials, plus every new release
• All downloadable project files — RAW photos, PSDs, and sample images
• Our full library of Lightroom Presets, Photoshop Actions, Photoshop Brushes, and LUTs
• Structured Learning Paths for Photoshop, Lightroom, retouching, and compositing
• A Continue Watching dashboard and unlimited Favorites
• Dedicated help from our customer support team

PHLEARN PRO is $12.99 per month, or $99.99 per year. The annual plan works out to about $8.33 a month and saves you roughly 35% compared to paying monthly. Both plans unlock exactly the same content — the only difference is how often you are billed. Compare plans and subscribe here.

If you want to try PHLEARN PRO without committing, start monthly — you can cancel any time. If you already know you are in it for the long haul, the annual plan is the better value at about 35% less per month. You can switch between the two whenever you like, with no fee.

We publish new PRO tutorials every month and new free tutorials regularly throughout the month, so there is always something new to work through.

As many times as you want. There are no view limits — stop, rewind, and revisit any lesson as often as you like for as long as your membership is active.

No. A PHLEARN PRO membership is for individual use by the account holder. Sharing login credentials is a violation of our Terms of Service and can result in the account being suspended. If someone you know wants access, a gift card makes a good present.

You can cancel at any time, and it only takes a moment:

• Click the PH logo in the upper-right corner of the site and select My PHLEARN
• Open Orders & Downloads
• Find your subscription and choose Cancel

There are no cancellation fees, and you keep full PRO access until the end of the billing period you have already paid for.

Nothing changes right away. Your cancellation stops the next renewal, but your membership stays active — with full access to every PRO tutorial and download — until the end of the cycle you have already paid for.

Head to Orders & Downloads in My PHLEARN, find your subscription, and use the option to change your plan. You can move from monthly to annual or annual to monthly at any time, with no penalty or hidden fees.

A $99.99 charge means the annual plan was selected at checkout, which covers a full year of PHLEARN PRO and saves about 35% versus paying monthly. If you would rather be billed monthly, you can switch your plan in Orders & Downloads, or get in touch with us and we will help sort it out.

A subscription usually goes on hold because a renewal payment did not go through — most often an expired card or a change of billing address. To restart it:

• Go to Orders & Downloads in My PHLEARN
• Find your subscription and click the Pay button
• Complete checkout with a current payment method

Your access returns immediately, and your account, Favorites, and watch history are all exactly where you left them.

We accept all major credit and debit cards — Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover — as well as PayPal. You choose your payment method at checkout, and all transactions are processed over an encrypted connection.

On the checkout page, look for the Have a discount code? link, enter your code, and apply it. The discount is reflected in your order total before you complete the purchase.

A receipt is emailed to you automatically after every purchase and renewal. You can also find every receipt in Orders & Downloads under My PHLEARN.

Yes. PHLEARN gift cards are available in a range of amounts, including three-month and six-month membership options. You can send one to any email address with a personal note at checkout, and they never expire.

Any device with a modern web browser and an internet connection — desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone. There is nothing to install and no limit on which device you use; just sign in at PHLEARN.com and start watching.

Yes. PRO tutorials are filmed and delivered in 4K, so you can see every slider, brush stroke, and pixel-level adjustment clearly. Playback quality adapts to your connection speed, so slower connections still stream smoothly at a lower resolution.

Buffering is almost always something in the connection between you and our video host rather than the video itself. These steps resolve it in most cases:

• Sign out, clear your browser cache and cookies, and sign back in. This makes sure you are on the current version of the site.
• Try a different browser. We recommend an up-to-date version of Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge.
• Turn off your VPN. VPNs frequently route video traffic through slow or distant servers.
• Check your router’s Quality of Service (QoS) settings. QoS gives certain applications priority over others and can throttle video streaming.

If none of that helps, let us know — tell us your location, browser, and which tutorial you were watching, and we will look into it. Some buffering is regional and outside our control, but we would rather know about it than not.

PHLEARN PRO is a streaming membership, so PRO tutorial videos are watched online rather than downloaded. Video downloads are available for individually purchased tutorials, which you can access from Orders & Downloads.

Project files are a different story — every PRO member can download those, as described below.

Look for the download button in the overview section at the top of any tutorial page. That is where the RAW images, PSDs, and any presets or actions used in that lesson live. Files you have purchased or downloaded are also listed in Orders & Downloads.

We teach Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, and Adobe Camera Raw. You will find dedicated Lightroom tutorials alongside our Photoshop library, plus Learning Paths that walk you through each program from the beginning.

Our tutorials are recorded in the current release of Photoshop at the time of filming, so a Creative Cloud subscription gives you the closest match to what you see on screen. That said, the majority of the tools we teach — layers, masks, adjustment layers, blending modes, frequency separation, dodging and burning — have been part of Photoshop for years, so most lessons translate to older versions with only minor differences in menu placement.

Photoshop Elements is a different application with a reduced tool set, and our tutorials are not built for it.

Adobe ships two different applications with similar names. Lightroom Classic is the desktop-focused program built around a local catalog, and Lightroom is the newer cloud-based version that syncs across devices. Most of our tutorials are recorded in Lightroom Classic, though the editing concepts — and most of the sliders themselves — carry over to either one.

Yes. We cover Adobe’s AI features, including Generative Fill and Firefly, alongside traditional techniques — and, just as importantly, when to reach for each one. AI is a tool in the workflow, not a replacement for understanding how an image is built.

No. Our tutorials use the tools built into Adobe software, plus the practice files we provide. You will never need to buy a plugin to complete a lesson.

Yes. A PHLEARN PRO membership includes our complete library of Lightroom Presets, Photoshop Actions, Photoshop Brushes, and LUTs at no extra cost. Download them from the overview section of each product page.

In current versions of Lightroom Classic, open the File menu and choose Import Profiles & Presets, then select the preset files you downloaded. The presets appear in the Presets panel of the Develop module.

If your download contains older .lrtemplate files, use Lightroom → Preferences → Presets → Show Lightroom Presets Folder, drop the folder into Develop Presets, then restart Lightroom. Our full installation guide walks through both methods step by step.

Open the Actions panel from the Window menu, click the panel menu icon in its top-right corner, and choose Load Actions. Select the .ATN file you downloaded, then pick an action in the panel and press play. See our step-by-step guide for a full walkthrough.

The quickest way is to double-click the .ABR file with Photoshop open — the brushes load automatically. You can also open the Brushes panel from the Window menu, click the panel menu icon, and choose Import Brushes. Your new brushes appear at the bottom of the Brushes panel.

Aaron’s time is currently focused on producing new tutorials and building out the site, so he is not able to take on individual photo critiques or edits.

For feedback on your work, the PHLEARN Phamily group on Facebook is the place to go. It is a large, active community of PHLEARN photographers and retouchers who share their work, answer each other’s questions, and give genuinely useful critique.

Join the PHLEARN Phamily on Facebook to post your edits, ask questions, and connect with other photographers working through the same tutorials you are.

If your question is not answered here, send us a message and a real person on our team will get back to you. When your question is about an order or your subscription, include the email address on your account so we can find it quickly.