PS Instant Expert Training: Working with Layers
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PS Instant Expert Training: Working with Layers
Table of Contents
Understanding Backgrounds and Layers, Layers and Stacking Order, Locking a Layer, Changing the Visibility of a Layer ................................................................................................................... 3 Working Through Layer Options, Organizing Layers into Groups, Layer Opacity and Blend Modes ........................................................................................................................................................ 8 Working with Adjustment Layers, Alpha Channels, and Layer Masks .......................................... 18
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Understanding Backgrounds and Layers, Layers and Stacking Order, Locking a Layer, Changing the Visibility of a Layer
The ‘Layers’ feature is one of the foundational features in Photoshop, and it is a feature that you are going to using on a regular basis. You should basically think of them as building blocks because essentially what they are. You can design each layer so that it can perform a different function, as you will soon see. As you can see in the picture above, the only layer that currently exists is the ‘Background’ layer is a usually the foundational layer. It may be a solid color like it is now, or it could consist of a photograph or some other form of graphic design. Since this is the foundational layer, you cannot move this particular layer. It is locked into place, and if you tried to move it, nothing would happen. The layer is locked and you cannot unlock it. You can make changes to this layer, as you have seen in previous lessons of this course. You just can’t use this layer to affect other layers, unless you make a copy of it. You can see that this ‘Background’ layer is shown inside of the right-‐hand side panel of the interface. This is the ‘Layers Pallet’. Other layers will be listed here as you create them as well. At the bottom of the ‘Layers Pallet’ there are a number of small buttons. As you follow this course, you are going to come to know many of these options and their functions.
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Moving from left to right, the first button you’ll find is the ‘Trash’ button. Basically, this is what you can use to delete layers that you no longer want or need. The next one is the ‘Create’ button. You can click on this button anytime that you want to create a new layer. You can actually use this in a number of ways. First of all, you can simply click it to create a new layer. Also, you can use it to make a copy of an existing layer. All you have to do is click on a layer that you want to make a copy of and drag it over to this icon. When you release it, a duplication of that layer will appear in your ‘Layers Pallet’. Once you have created a new layer, you can do a lot of different things with it. Your options are truly limitless, in fact. It’s essentially a brand new sheet of paper that you can draw on, paint on, type on, etc. Before you begin working with layers, you should know that it’s really important that you are deliberate with your naming structure. By default, they will be named ‘Background’, ‘Layer 1’, ‘Layer 2’, and so on. If you make a copy, then it will be called ‘Copy of’ followed by the name of whatever layer you copied. All you have to do to change a layer name is to click on the default name. A field will then appear allowing you to change it. Let’s say that you had a picture of a rose on ‘Layer 1’. Well, it would obviously make sense for you to rename the layer ‘Rose’. That sounds simple, and it is. However, don’t underestimate the importance of doing so because as you add more and more layers, things can get confusing.
If you were to right mouse click on one of these layers, you would see that there are more controls available to you. In fact, you can see the menu that would appear in the screenshot above. As you can see, you have the option of controlling the size of the thumbnail. You can
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also color-‐code your layers. This feature can really come in handy when it comes to identifying certain parts of a larger project. For instance, if there are certain layers which together for a very detailed piece of a bigger design, you can assign those layers a certain color in order to better organize your work. This will help you to quickly recognize which layers are related to others. If you were to right mouse click on the right side of the layer, the area that is just highlighted, some different options will show up. This menu includes some blending options, which you will learn about later on in this course. You’ll also see that you have the option to duplicate the layer, so you can choose this instead of dragging the layer to the bottom of the screen. By right-‐clicking you can also delete a layer, and you have the option to group the layer, which is also something that you will learn more about shortly. Additionally, this menu contains the following options: •
Convert to Smart Object
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Create Clipping Mask
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Merge Down
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Merge Visible
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Flatten Image
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Etc.
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A screenshot of these options are shown above. Some of these options will become active when you begin to add objects to the layer. Most of them will be explained further throughout this lesson. Right above the layers on the ‘Layer Pallet’, you’ll find a dropdown menu that says ‘Normal’ by default. It is right beside the ‘Opacity’ option. This dropdown menu contains the blending modes for the layers. These basically determine how a layer interacts with the layers beneath it. The ‘Opacity’ function is a very useful option that you have available. This setting simply determines how ‘see-‐through’ the elements within a layer are. Below this, you will find ‘Fill', which you can also apply to affect objects within a specific layer. You will also notice that the option to ‘Lock’ the layer can be found in this portion of the panel. You lock a layer if you don’t want it to be affected by the editing you do to other layers. Beside the ‘Lock’ option, you’ll find an icon which looks like a paintbrush. This option allows you to lock only the image pixels. If only part of the layer consists of a photograph, you can lock only the pixels of that of that image, for example. The next option to the right allows you to lock the position of an object so that it cannot be moved. The last option allows you to lock everything. So, if you are done working on a particular layer and you don’t want there to be any more changes to it at all, you can click this option to protect it. You can always select the layer and push this again to unlock it, by the way.
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Above the ‘Opacity’ option, you’ll find even more buttons which provide additional options. These options include: •
Filter for pixel layers
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Filter for adjustment layers
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Filter for type layers
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Filter for smart layers
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Filter for smart objects
As you can probably tell by now, there are a lot of different options available within the ‘Layers Pallet’. You’ll learn more about these options and how to use them throughout the remainder of this course. Many of these options are very useful and can allow you to achieve results that you never thought possible.
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Working Through Layer Options, Organizing Layers into Groups, Layer Opacity and Blend Modes
One of the best ways to become familiar with layers is to spend some time working with them. Doing so will help you to better understand how you can use them to build groups of objects and things like that. You may notice that the heart in the picture above is a little off center. This was done purposely so that some type could be added to the right side of the picture in the future. Let’s say that you wanted to use the picture above to create a post to share on Facebook or some similar site. In this case, you would need to build from the ground up. Obviously, you would set this photograph as the background. So, the first thing you would want to edit is this photo. Are there any changes that you would make to it? The first thing that you might choose to do is make the photo look a bit darker. You can start to do that by bringing up the ‘Levels’ window (Ctrl+L, Cmd+L). All you would have to do to darken this image would be to move the mid-‐tone slider to the right just a bit. It doesn’t really need to be darkened very much. When you are done, you can simply click ‘OK’ to apply your settings. Another thing that you might want to do is create a box
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with a rounded edge that can surround the text that will soon be added. The easiest way to do that would be to use paths. The ‘Rounded Rectangle Tool’ would be perfect for this task. Once your path tool is selected, you might want to change the ‘Fill’ color to white. You can always change it later if you like, but this will give you a good basis to start from. When working with a picture like the one above, you would usually want your box to balance with the main object on the other side of the picture. So, you would probably want to make your box approximately the same size, and you may even want to align it with the main object in your picture. You can see that this has been done in the picture below.
One of the first things that you may want to change at this point is the corners of this box. They are rounded, but they just don’t seem to be round enough. You may remember that you can round them off easily with the options in the path ‘Properties’ window. When you look at the picture above, you may notice that the white box is on its own layer. The program automatically created a layer for it when it was created. Since this box is on its own layers, you can really do quite a bit with it. For instance, you could change the opacity of the box so that the background shines through a bit.
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If you were to right-‐click on the top layer, one of the options that would appear is the ‘Blending Options’. If you select this, a ‘Layer Style’ window will appear. This window is shown above. As you can see, it contains a great deal of options. To begin, you will want to pay attention to the ‘Layer Styles’, otherwise known as ‘Blending Options’; these are listed on the left-‐hand side. Some of these may seem familiar to you because they have counterparts in some of the tools. For instance, ‘Gradient’ and ‘Stroke’ are some of the options that you often find in the tools. However, these options specifically apply to working with layers. Let’s say that you wanted to add a drop shadow, just to accentuate the white box a bit. You could easily click ‘Drop Shadow’ to turn this option on and some ‘Drop Shadow’ settings would immediately appear in the center of this window. These settings are shown above. As you can see, you can control things like the ‘Size’ of it, the ‘Distance’ that the shadow should be from the object it is being applied to, and even the ‘Opacity’ of this shadow. Another thing that you can do is adjust the ‘Angle’ of the shadow. You can see that you can make this adjustment simply by changing the number in the ‘Angle’ field or do so by adjusting the line within the circle aside the word ‘Angle’. Another option you’ll notice is ‘Anit-‐aliased’. If you select this, your drop shadow will smooth out a lot better when it is interacting with different colors. You can also select a ‘Contour’ for your drop shadow to follow. This will add another element of dimension to it. You probably won’t use these much, but it helps to know that they are there. There is also a ‘Color’ option up at the top of the window. This, of course, will allow you to change the color of your drop
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shadow. In this case, the drop shadow could be given a slight green cast that would correspond with the background. Within this window, you will also find some ‘Blend Mode’ options. Each one of them will give you a different result, so you might want to experiment with them a bit. The ‘Multiply’ blend mode will take the color and multiply it with whatever is underneath. The ‘Hard Light’ blend mode works much the same way, except that it also enhances the saturation. There are a lot of other options that you can try as well, although with something like a drop shadow, it may just be best to stick with the default. One thing that you could do is add an ‘Outer Glow’ to this box instead of a drop shadow. You might also decide to add a ‘Gradient Overlay’ to the box. The options that are in this window for ‘Gradient’ are mostly the same ones that you have seen in previous portions of the course. In this case this gradient would only be applied to the text box that you are creating, however. There is also a ‘Color Overlay’ option that would allow you to quickly shift the color of the white box within this layer. Just above this, you’ll find an option titled ‘Satin’. This option will add a little bit of dimension to your box. You can see the effect of this option being applied in the screenshot below.
The ‘Inner Glow’ option works much like the ‘Outer Glow’ option, except that the glow appears on the inside borders of the object you are working with. You can achieve some amazing effects just by adjusting the glows in various ways. The ‘Inner Glow’ options also allow you to
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choose how precise or soft you want this glow to be, how much opacity the glow has, and even the color of the glow. You could add an inner shadow instead of an out drop shadow as well. One cool thing about this option is that it often makes an object look as though it is sunk in to the previous layer. In other words, by selecting this option and increasing the ‘Size’ and ‘Distance’ settings, you can actually make it look as though your text box is sunk into the background. This is demonstrated in the picture below.
The ‘Stroke’ option is the one you would use to put an outline around the white box. The ‘Bevel & Emboss’ settings will give it a 3D effect. You can control the depth and softness of the effect. You can also control the effects shadows, highlights, and angle. There are also several types of effects to choose from in the ‘Technique’ window. For instance, if you chose ‘Chisel Hard’ from this menu, your box will have a much more pronounced effect. As you can see, there are a lot of different options here that you can experiment with. The ones that you will most likely use the most are: •
Drop Shadow
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Outer Glow
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Inner Glow
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Inner Shadow
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Stroke
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Color Overlay
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Gradient Overlay
In the case study, the only effect that was applied was the drop shadow with the greenish tint. This added a little more dimension to the box. You can see this affect applied in the picture below. You’ll also notice that there is a slight outline around this box. That’s really only there because this box was made with a path. If you were to click on the background layer, you would notice that this outline is no longer visible.
Now that your box is exactly the way that you want it to be, you’ll need to add some type. The type tools have not been covered in this course yet, but you’ll get to learn a little bit about them right now. When using type, it’s a good idea to switch over to the ‘Typography’ workspace. This way, you will have easy access to your type tools. At this point, you could choose any color and font that you wanted to. In the case study, a dark green color was sampled. After sampling your color, you will need to select the ‘Type Tool’ which you will find on the Tools Panel. You can see it selected in the screenshot below.
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The font that was chosen in the case study was ‘Great Vibes’. This is a nice script to use for this type of subject matter. You will need to select the layer that you want your type to go on. In this scenario, you would want it to go on the box that you have created. If you don’t want your text to be confined to the path that you have created, you will need to place your cursor outside of the path, at least at first. You will be able to draw a type box and type within it. Another thing that you can do is select your background layer. This way you can type anywhere and not even have to worry about the path. That may be best because it will give you more freedom when it comes to the placement of your words. Once you have placed your cursor, a layer containing the text will appear on the Layer’s Pallet. You can now double-‐click on this ‘layer’ to select your text. At first, your font may be a little small. You can select up to ’72 pt’ for the font size. If you need your font to be larger, you can type in a larger number like ‘200’. Once you have the text sized the way you want it, you can select the ‘Move’ tool to move the text into place. In the case study, “Love Never Fails!” was written for the message. Obviously, this statement is so short that it did not take up very much room. So, the font size was increased to ‘500’, and the words were arranged so that each was on its own line. When the lines were added, the words appeared all jumbled together. That was because the lines were too close together. There is a setting for line spacing on the panel to the right; it is located right next to the field for the font size. If you changed the value in this field to ‘500’ just like the text, your text will
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rearrange itself so that it is balanced. You could change the value to an even higher number, if you like, to space out the lines even more.
Above you can see the result of this overall process. If you are happy with your work at this point, you can go ahead and group some of the elements of your picture together. To do so, you would select the two layers that you wanted to combine. You can select more than one layer, by the way, by holding the ‘Shift’ key down as you click them one at a time. Once you have your layers selected, you can right-‐click to bring up a menu. In this menu, you’ll find that you have a number of options. They include: •
Duplicate Layers
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Delete Layers
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Convert to Smart Object
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Link Layers
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Rasterize Type
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Rasterize Layer Style
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Etc.
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There are some cases where it would make sense to rasterize the type. For instance, you may need to edit the shape of the type, rather than the font itself. However, you should know that if you rasterize the type in your image, it will no longer be editable. The options listed above are just the ones that you get when you right mouse click on the selected layers. There is a button just above the ‘Layers Pallet’ that looks like a page with lines. If you click on this, another menu of options will appear. These options are shown in the picture above. Some of these options were included in the last menu, but a lot of them are different. There are new options to be found here too, such as ‘New Group’ and ‘New Group from Layers’. These options also give you the ability to: •
Merge Layers
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Merge Visible
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Flatten Image
In the case study, the ‘New Group from Layers’ option was selected. When you select this option, a window appeared. This window allows you to name the group and assign a color to it. The color application is just a method of organizing your layers, by the way. The group was titled ‘Love Text’, by the way. When you name a group, just name it something that will help you differentiate it, but keep it short and simple. So, what’s the advantage of grouping these layers? Once you group two layers together like this, everything that is in the group folder is locked together. In this case, the text layer and the box layer is grouped together in a folder, which means you can now click on the box to move it and the text will move with it. Any edits that you make will affect the whole group as well at this point. Now, if you wanted to edit a specific layer in this group, you still could. Just click on the down arrow in the group layer to open this folder up and then choose the layer that you wish to work within. Grouping your layers in this way can help to keep you organized and it helps you to make your workspace easier to manage. For instance, designing a book cover is a pretty big job, and you can very quickly windup with a very long list of layers because a book cover can contain a large number of different elements. In a case such as this, you might want to create different groups for each segment of your cover and even color code these groups to organize them. So, you might create a group for the front color, one for the back cover, and one for the spine, and each group would contain content for that specific part of the cover. Aside from keeping you well organized, these groups make things simpler because you can turn them off. So, in keeping with the book cover example, if you wanted to just concentrate on the
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back of the book cover you are working on, then you could turn off the group for the spine and the group for the front cover. In the picture below, you can see that the text box and the text have disappeared from the picture. That is because the ‘Love Text’ group has been turned off. They are still there and will reappear when you turn this group back on. However, for now they are neatly tucked away so that you can concentrate on other elements of your creation.
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Working with Adjustment Layers, Alpha Channels, and Layer Masks
This portion of the lesson contains more information about layers and working with type. There are a lot of features available to you when you work with layers that you probably don’t know much about yet. You can be assured that these options will open up a world of opportunities to you. In the picture above, you can see that a bible verse has been pasted into the image. This is such a long verse that the text doesn’t even fit inside of the picture as-‐is. So, obviously this text is going to have to be edited and reorganized so that it looks presentable. This will be taken a step further, in fact, because this verse will be broken up to be used in combination with the “Love Never Fails!” message that was added in the last section. The first thing that you would need to do to achieve something like this is break this bible verse into different sections of text in a logical manner. You’ll also want to do your best to keep the portions of the text as equal in length as possible. It may make it a little bit easier for you to see what you are doing if you turn off the background layer. That, of course, is up to you.
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You can see that the text is now broken up in the picture above. The lines are also nicely spaced. A value of ‘72’ was entered into the ‘Spacing’ field to achieve this. In the case study, the “Love Never Fails!” message was recreated. The same spacing was used, but the font was changed to ‘Satisfaction’. You may or may not have this font in your own collection. If you don’t, you can likely find a font that is styled similarly. Once this text was created, it was resized to ‘120’ and the spacing was set to ‘160’. Then, the color of it was changed from black to green. If you look at the picture below, you can see that this text is under the other type. This was simply done by shifting the stacking order of the layers. You can simply click and drag a layer beneath another one to reorder them like this, and doing so affects the way that their content appears.
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Next, the blend mode was changed from ‘Normal’ to ‘Multiply’, and the ‘Opacity’ was changed to ‘35%’. At this point, you might want to play around with the different types of blend modes. In this case, if you tried ‘Screen’, the text in the background would look quite a bit darker. On the other hand, if you chose ‘Hard Light’, the text would appear much greener. Another one you might try is ‘Overlay’; it usually brings about a pretty nice effect. In fact, this was what was ultimately applied in the case study. In the case study, the font of the bible verse was changed to ‘Italic’. Then the last line of the text, which says “Love Never Fails” was changed into a bold italic. It was also changed into a darker green, instead of black like the rest. You can see the result of this overall process in the screenshot below.
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There is a lot of ways that you could handle this design. This is just one way of handling it. Another thing that you could use to better create something like this is a layer mask. This hasn’t really been covered by the training yet, but you will have the chance to learn a little bit about them now. Let’s say that you wanted to create another box for the text much like the one presented in the last lesson. A new path was created in the case study. It was colored a light gold color, and the corners were rounded a bit. Then, the ‘Opacity’ of the box was changed to ‘40%’. The ‘Width’ was then changed to ‘2,700’, and the ‘Move’ tool was selected in order to move this box over a bit so that it overlapped the heart a little. Down at the bottom of the screen there is an ‘FX’ icon. Right next to this icon is a rectangle with a circle inside. When you click this icon, a mask will be added to the layer that is currently selected. Once this mask is added to your layer, then you can draw on this mask to add to your design. Anything painted in black will make anything that you are masking disappear, and anything that is painted in white will end up looking solid on the layer. Furthermore, any variation in grayscale between black and white will determine the opacity of what has been drawn. When you use the mask, the first thing that you’ll want to do is make sure that the mask is selected. After that, you’ll want to select a brush. Then, you’ll want to make sure that the foreground color is either set to black or white. You might want to zoom into your picture a bit
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before you begin painting as well. Then, you can begin painting. When you have black selected as the foreground color, anything that you paint over that is in the layer will disappear. This can come in handy in many different scenarios. In the case study, the mask was used to paint over the yellow box so that the heart pendant looked as though it were lying on top instead of behind the box. You can see this demonstrated in the picture below.
One of the great things about working with a mask is that if you make a mistake as you are drawing, you can fix it easily. For instance, if you accidently paint in a spot you didn’t intend to, you can switch the foreground color to white and fill this spot back in. You always have the ability to go in and edit the masks that you create, which you can’t always do using the eraser tool and many other tools in the program. With the mask, you can simply move back and forth between the white and the black to get things just as precise as you need them to be. Now, let’s say that you wanted to change the color of the background without affecting the image within it. Right next to the ‘Mask’ icon at the bottom of the screen is another tool that you can use for this. This is for the ‘Adjustment Layers’, and whenever you click on this icon, a number of option appear. They include: •
Solid Color
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Gradient
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Pattern
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•
Brightness/Contrast
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Curves
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Exposture
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Vibrance
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Hue/Saturation
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Color Balance
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Black & White
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Photo Filter
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Channel Mixer
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Color Lookup
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Invert Posterize
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Threshold
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Gradient Map
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Selective Color
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Most of these should sound familiar because they are tools that are available through other options. With layers, they work a little bit differently. Since you want to shift the color, you would choose ‘Hue/Saturation’. When you do, the window shown above will appear. As you can see, these are your typical hue and saturation options. You may also notice that there is a ‘Hue/Saturation’ layer mask in the ‘Layers Pallet’ now. When you turn this off, you can see that the original image still remains intact, and since the color was changed on a layer mask, you can actually paint on the mask to let the original color show through in certain places. So, you can mask out the effect that this color shift has had on the pendant. Also, take note that this adjustment layer will only affect the layers beneath it. In the case study, for example, the only layer that was affected was the ‘Background’ layer because it was the only one under the adjustment layer. If the layer with the rectangular box were beneath the mask, it would have been affected too. Using the ‘Adjustment Layers’ option is yet another way that you can edit certain areas without affecting others. Hopefully, you can see how this can give you a great deal of control over the outcome of your picture. It is recommended that you experiment with these options in order to better understand the different things that you can do with them. You can use masking with type as well. In the picture below, the adjustment layer was turned off and so were all of the layers that contained type. Next, new words were added and moved onto the text box. As you can see in the picture below, these words were ‘Love’ and ‘Never’. Each word was on its own layer, by the way.
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You’ll notice that in the picture above, these words are positioned so that part of the letter ‘N’ is going into the loop of the ‘L’. Also, you may notice that the color of the word ‘Love’ is green and the word ‘Never’ is brown. This was done just to give each of them more definition. However, what if this was your picture, and you wanted it to appear as though one word was wrapping around another? You could do so quite easily with a layer mask. You could essentially select either layer to do this, but in the case study, the ‘Never’ layer was selected first. After that, the layer mask icon was clicked and a layer mask was added to this layer. Then, the word ‘Love’ was selected. To do this, all you would have to do is press ‘Cmd’ or ‘Ctrl’ and click on the layer that the word is in. You’d also want to make sure that the mask for ‘Never’ was also selected. Next, you would need to select a brush. For something like this, you would need to choose a pretty small one since you would be editing a very small area. You might even want to zoom in a bit. Finally, you can simply paint away part of the overlapping loop to make it look like one word is intertwined with the other. This is demonstrated below. Do you see how the loop in the ‘L’ now looks like it overlaps part of the ‘N’ and then loops back underneath it? This is yet another way that you can use layer masks effectively.
You could also apply more to the type such as drop shadows and other effects. The best way to do this would probably be through the ‘Layer Style’ window. If you achieve a look you like, don’t forget that you can use a layer style again and again by right-‐clicking on the layer and choosing ‘Copy Layer Style’. After that you can choose a layer to apply it to, right-‐click on it,
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and then choose ‘Paste Layer Style’. This was done in the case study as well. In the case study, the same drop shadow settings were applied to both words, and again, this was done quickly and easily because the settings for the first layer were simply applied to the second. Aside from making the process easier, this can also help you to maintain consistency throughout your work. Now, let’s say that you are happy with your picture, and you are ready to upload it to the Internet. The problem with that is that you have all of these layers. So, you will eventually have to combine these layers, but first you’ll want to save it as a Photoshop document so that you can go back and edit these layers at any point in time in the future. To do this, simply click on ‘File’ and choose ‘Save As’. When the ‘Save As’ window appears, name your work and then check to be sure that ‘Photoshop’ is selected for the ‘Format’. You can double check this by making sure that your doc has a ‘.psd’ extension to it. Once you have an editable Photoshop document saved, you can flatten these layers into a single document by clicking on the menu just above the ‘Layers Pallet’. When the menu pops up, you will see that one of the options is ‘Flatten Image’. Choose this to combine all of the layers and create a single layer. When you click on this option a window will appear asking whether or not you want to discard the hidden layers. You shouldn’t have any hidden layers in this case, but normally you would want to, so click ‘OK’. Once this is done, everything should be compressed. So, you can choose ‘File’ and ‘Save As’ at this point to save it as an image to use elsewhere. In most cases you would want to save it as a JPEG, but again, that depends on what you are planning on doing with it. When you hit ‘Save’ another window will appear, and in this window you will have the option to save the ‘Quality’. A quality of ‘8’ is usually good enough. Since this is the default setting, you can usually just click ‘OK’. Now, let’s say that there were still portions of your picture that you wanted to work on, but you were done with the majority of your product. One thing that you can do is merge the layers that you are done with. So, for instance, if you were done with the first four layers in your ‘Layers Pallet’. You can select multiple layers by holding down the ‘Shift’ key while you click the layers that you want to merge. Then, you would just right mouse click, and then choose ‘Merge Layers’. All the layers that you selected would then be combined into one. Take note that when this was done in the case study the masks no longer were applied. So, you want to be careful whenever you do this because the only way to fix it would be to back up in your history. This wouldn’t work if you had already saved your document though. You don’t have to be scared of using this option; just give it some thought before applying it. 26
PS Instant Expert Training: Working with Layers
Table of Contents
Understanding Backgrounds and Layers, Layers and Stacking Order, Locking a Layer, Changing the Visibility of a Layer ................................................................................................................... 3 Working Through Layer Options, Organizing Layers into Groups, Layer Opacity and Blend Modes ........................................................................................................................................................ 8 Working with Adjustment Layers, Alpha Channels, and Layer Masks .......................................... 18
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Understanding Backgrounds and Layers, Layers and Stacking Order, Locking a Layer, Changing the Visibility of a Layer
The ‘Layers’ feature is one of the foundational features in Photoshop, and it is a feature that you are going to using on a regular basis. You should basically think of them as building blocks because essentially what they are. You can design each layer so that it can perform a different function, as you will soon see. As you can see in the picture above, the only layer that currently exists is the ‘Background’ layer is a usually the foundational layer. It may be a solid color like it is now, or it could consist of a photograph or some other form of graphic design. Since this is the foundational layer, you cannot move this particular layer. It is locked into place, and if you tried to move it, nothing would happen. The layer is locked and you cannot unlock it. You can make changes to this layer, as you have seen in previous lessons of this course. You just can’t use this layer to affect other layers, unless you make a copy of it. You can see that this ‘Background’ layer is shown inside of the right-‐hand side panel of the interface. This is the ‘Layers Pallet’. Other layers will be listed here as you create them as well. At the bottom of the ‘Layers Pallet’ there are a number of small buttons. As you follow this course, you are going to come to know many of these options and their functions.
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Moving from left to right, the first button you’ll find is the ‘Trash’ button. Basically, this is what you can use to delete layers that you no longer want or need. The next one is the ‘Create’ button. You can click on this button anytime that you want to create a new layer. You can actually use this in a number of ways. First of all, you can simply click it to create a new layer. Also, you can use it to make a copy of an existing layer. All you have to do is click on a layer that you want to make a copy of and drag it over to this icon. When you release it, a duplication of that layer will appear in your ‘Layers Pallet’. Once you have created a new layer, you can do a lot of different things with it. Your options are truly limitless, in fact. It’s essentially a brand new sheet of paper that you can draw on, paint on, type on, etc. Before you begin working with layers, you should know that it’s really important that you are deliberate with your naming structure. By default, they will be named ‘Background’, ‘Layer 1’, ‘Layer 2’, and so on. If you make a copy, then it will be called ‘Copy of’ followed by the name of whatever layer you copied. All you have to do to change a layer name is to click on the default name. A field will then appear allowing you to change it. Let’s say that you had a picture of a rose on ‘Layer 1’. Well, it would obviously make sense for you to rename the layer ‘Rose’. That sounds simple, and it is. However, don’t underestimate the importance of doing so because as you add more and more layers, things can get confusing.
If you were to right mouse click on one of these layers, you would see that there are more controls available to you. In fact, you can see the menu that would appear in the screenshot above. As you can see, you have the option of controlling the size of the thumbnail. You can
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also color-‐code your layers. This feature can really come in handy when it comes to identifying certain parts of a larger project. For instance, if there are certain layers which together for a very detailed piece of a bigger design, you can assign those layers a certain color in order to better organize your work. This will help you to quickly recognize which layers are related to others. If you were to right mouse click on the right side of the layer, the area that is just highlighted, some different options will show up. This menu includes some blending options, which you will learn about later on in this course. You’ll also see that you have the option to duplicate the layer, so you can choose this instead of dragging the layer to the bottom of the screen. By right-‐clicking you can also delete a layer, and you have the option to group the layer, which is also something that you will learn more about shortly. Additionally, this menu contains the following options: •
Convert to Smart Object
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Create Clipping Mask
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Merge Down
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Merge Visible
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Flatten Image
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Etc.
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A screenshot of these options are shown above. Some of these options will become active when you begin to add objects to the layer. Most of them will be explained further throughout this lesson. Right above the layers on the ‘Layer Pallet’, you’ll find a dropdown menu that says ‘Normal’ by default. It is right beside the ‘Opacity’ option. This dropdown menu contains the blending modes for the layers. These basically determine how a layer interacts with the layers beneath it. The ‘Opacity’ function is a very useful option that you have available. This setting simply determines how ‘see-‐through’ the elements within a layer are. Below this, you will find ‘Fill', which you can also apply to affect objects within a specific layer. You will also notice that the option to ‘Lock’ the layer can be found in this portion of the panel. You lock a layer if you don’t want it to be affected by the editing you do to other layers. Beside the ‘Lock’ option, you’ll find an icon which looks like a paintbrush. This option allows you to lock only the image pixels. If only part of the layer consists of a photograph, you can lock only the pixels of that of that image, for example. The next option to the right allows you to lock the position of an object so that it cannot be moved. The last option allows you to lock everything. So, if you are done working on a particular layer and you don’t want there to be any more changes to it at all, you can click this option to protect it. You can always select the layer and push this again to unlock it, by the way.
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Above the ‘Opacity’ option, you’ll find even more buttons which provide additional options. These options include: •
Filter for pixel layers
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Filter for adjustment layers
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Filter for type layers
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Filter for smart layers
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Filter for smart objects
As you can probably tell by now, there are a lot of different options available within the ‘Layers Pallet’. You’ll learn more about these options and how to use them throughout the remainder of this course. Many of these options are very useful and can allow you to achieve results that you never thought possible.
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Working Through Layer Options, Organizing Layers into Groups, Layer Opacity and Blend Modes
One of the best ways to become familiar with layers is to spend some time working with them. Doing so will help you to better understand how you can use them to build groups of objects and things like that. You may notice that the heart in the picture above is a little off center. This was done purposely so that some type could be added to the right side of the picture in the future. Let’s say that you wanted to use the picture above to create a post to share on Facebook or some similar site. In this case, you would need to build from the ground up. Obviously, you would set this photograph as the background. So, the first thing you would want to edit is this photo. Are there any changes that you would make to it? The first thing that you might choose to do is make the photo look a bit darker. You can start to do that by bringing up the ‘Levels’ window (Ctrl+L, Cmd+L). All you would have to do to darken this image would be to move the mid-‐tone slider to the right just a bit. It doesn’t really need to be darkened very much. When you are done, you can simply click ‘OK’ to apply your settings. Another thing that you might want to do is create a box
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with a rounded edge that can surround the text that will soon be added. The easiest way to do that would be to use paths. The ‘Rounded Rectangle Tool’ would be perfect for this task. Once your path tool is selected, you might want to change the ‘Fill’ color to white. You can always change it later if you like, but this will give you a good basis to start from. When working with a picture like the one above, you would usually want your box to balance with the main object on the other side of the picture. So, you would probably want to make your box approximately the same size, and you may even want to align it with the main object in your picture. You can see that this has been done in the picture below.
One of the first things that you may want to change at this point is the corners of this box. They are rounded, but they just don’t seem to be round enough. You may remember that you can round them off easily with the options in the path ‘Properties’ window. When you look at the picture above, you may notice that the white box is on its own layer. The program automatically created a layer for it when it was created. Since this box is on its own layers, you can really do quite a bit with it. For instance, you could change the opacity of the box so that the background shines through a bit.
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If you were to right-‐click on the top layer, one of the options that would appear is the ‘Blending Options’. If you select this, a ‘Layer Style’ window will appear. This window is shown above. As you can see, it contains a great deal of options. To begin, you will want to pay attention to the ‘Layer Styles’, otherwise known as ‘Blending Options’; these are listed on the left-‐hand side. Some of these may seem familiar to you because they have counterparts in some of the tools. For instance, ‘Gradient’ and ‘Stroke’ are some of the options that you often find in the tools. However, these options specifically apply to working with layers. Let’s say that you wanted to add a drop shadow, just to accentuate the white box a bit. You could easily click ‘Drop Shadow’ to turn this option on and some ‘Drop Shadow’ settings would immediately appear in the center of this window. These settings are shown above. As you can see, you can control things like the ‘Size’ of it, the ‘Distance’ that the shadow should be from the object it is being applied to, and even the ‘Opacity’ of this shadow. Another thing that you can do is adjust the ‘Angle’ of the shadow. You can see that you can make this adjustment simply by changing the number in the ‘Angle’ field or do so by adjusting the line within the circle aside the word ‘Angle’. Another option you’ll notice is ‘Anit-‐aliased’. If you select this, your drop shadow will smooth out a lot better when it is interacting with different colors. You can also select a ‘Contour’ for your drop shadow to follow. This will add another element of dimension to it. You probably won’t use these much, but it helps to know that they are there. There is also a ‘Color’ option up at the top of the window. This, of course, will allow you to change the color of your drop
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shadow. In this case, the drop shadow could be given a slight green cast that would correspond with the background. Within this window, you will also find some ‘Blend Mode’ options. Each one of them will give you a different result, so you might want to experiment with them a bit. The ‘Multiply’ blend mode will take the color and multiply it with whatever is underneath. The ‘Hard Light’ blend mode works much the same way, except that it also enhances the saturation. There are a lot of other options that you can try as well, although with something like a drop shadow, it may just be best to stick with the default. One thing that you could do is add an ‘Outer Glow’ to this box instead of a drop shadow. You might also decide to add a ‘Gradient Overlay’ to the box. The options that are in this window for ‘Gradient’ are mostly the same ones that you have seen in previous portions of the course. In this case this gradient would only be applied to the text box that you are creating, however. There is also a ‘Color Overlay’ option that would allow you to quickly shift the color of the white box within this layer. Just above this, you’ll find an option titled ‘Satin’. This option will add a little bit of dimension to your box. You can see the effect of this option being applied in the screenshot below.
The ‘Inner Glow’ option works much like the ‘Outer Glow’ option, except that the glow appears on the inside borders of the object you are working with. You can achieve some amazing effects just by adjusting the glows in various ways. The ‘Inner Glow’ options also allow you to
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choose how precise or soft you want this glow to be, how much opacity the glow has, and even the color of the glow. You could add an inner shadow instead of an out drop shadow as well. One cool thing about this option is that it often makes an object look as though it is sunk in to the previous layer. In other words, by selecting this option and increasing the ‘Size’ and ‘Distance’ settings, you can actually make it look as though your text box is sunk into the background. This is demonstrated in the picture below.
The ‘Stroke’ option is the one you would use to put an outline around the white box. The ‘Bevel & Emboss’ settings will give it a 3D effect. You can control the depth and softness of the effect. You can also control the effects shadows, highlights, and angle. There are also several types of effects to choose from in the ‘Technique’ window. For instance, if you chose ‘Chisel Hard’ from this menu, your box will have a much more pronounced effect. As you can see, there are a lot of different options here that you can experiment with. The ones that you will most likely use the most are: •
Drop Shadow
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Outer Glow
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Inner Glow
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Inner Shadow
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Stroke
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•
Color Overlay
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Gradient Overlay
In the case study, the only effect that was applied was the drop shadow with the greenish tint. This added a little more dimension to the box. You can see this affect applied in the picture below. You’ll also notice that there is a slight outline around this box. That’s really only there because this box was made with a path. If you were to click on the background layer, you would notice that this outline is no longer visible.
Now that your box is exactly the way that you want it to be, you’ll need to add some type. The type tools have not been covered in this course yet, but you’ll get to learn a little bit about them right now. When using type, it’s a good idea to switch over to the ‘Typography’ workspace. This way, you will have easy access to your type tools. At this point, you could choose any color and font that you wanted to. In the case study, a dark green color was sampled. After sampling your color, you will need to select the ‘Type Tool’ which you will find on the Tools Panel. You can see it selected in the screenshot below.
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The font that was chosen in the case study was ‘Great Vibes’. This is a nice script to use for this type of subject matter. You will need to select the layer that you want your type to go on. In this scenario, you would want it to go on the box that you have created. If you don’t want your text to be confined to the path that you have created, you will need to place your cursor outside of the path, at least at first. You will be able to draw a type box and type within it. Another thing that you can do is select your background layer. This way you can type anywhere and not even have to worry about the path. That may be best because it will give you more freedom when it comes to the placement of your words. Once you have placed your cursor, a layer containing the text will appear on the Layer’s Pallet. You can now double-‐click on this ‘layer’ to select your text. At first, your font may be a little small. You can select up to ’72 pt’ for the font size. If you need your font to be larger, you can type in a larger number like ‘200’. Once you have the text sized the way you want it, you can select the ‘Move’ tool to move the text into place. In the case study, “Love Never Fails!” was written for the message. Obviously, this statement is so short that it did not take up very much room. So, the font size was increased to ‘500’, and the words were arranged so that each was on its own line. When the lines were added, the words appeared all jumbled together. That was because the lines were too close together. There is a setting for line spacing on the panel to the right; it is located right next to the field for the font size. If you changed the value in this field to ‘500’ just like the text, your text will
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rearrange itself so that it is balanced. You could change the value to an even higher number, if you like, to space out the lines even more.
Above you can see the result of this overall process. If you are happy with your work at this point, you can go ahead and group some of the elements of your picture together. To do so, you would select the two layers that you wanted to combine. You can select more than one layer, by the way, by holding the ‘Shift’ key down as you click them one at a time. Once you have your layers selected, you can right-‐click to bring up a menu. In this menu, you’ll find that you have a number of options. They include: •
Duplicate Layers
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Delete Layers
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Convert to Smart Object
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Link Layers
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Rasterize Type
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Rasterize Layer Style
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Etc.
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There are some cases where it would make sense to rasterize the type. For instance, you may need to edit the shape of the type, rather than the font itself. However, you should know that if you rasterize the type in your image, it will no longer be editable. The options listed above are just the ones that you get when you right mouse click on the selected layers. There is a button just above the ‘Layers Pallet’ that looks like a page with lines. If you click on this, another menu of options will appear. These options are shown in the picture above. Some of these options were included in the last menu, but a lot of them are different. There are new options to be found here too, such as ‘New Group’ and ‘New Group from Layers’. These options also give you the ability to: •
Merge Layers
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Merge Visible
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Flatten Image
In the case study, the ‘New Group from Layers’ option was selected. When you select this option, a window appeared. This window allows you to name the group and assign a color to it. The color application is just a method of organizing your layers, by the way. The group was titled ‘Love Text’, by the way. When you name a group, just name it something that will help you differentiate it, but keep it short and simple. So, what’s the advantage of grouping these layers? Once you group two layers together like this, everything that is in the group folder is locked together. In this case, the text layer and the box layer is grouped together in a folder, which means you can now click on the box to move it and the text will move with it. Any edits that you make will affect the whole group as well at this point. Now, if you wanted to edit a specific layer in this group, you still could. Just click on the down arrow in the group layer to open this folder up and then choose the layer that you wish to work within. Grouping your layers in this way can help to keep you organized and it helps you to make your workspace easier to manage. For instance, designing a book cover is a pretty big job, and you can very quickly windup with a very long list of layers because a book cover can contain a large number of different elements. In a case such as this, you might want to create different groups for each segment of your cover and even color code these groups to organize them. So, you might create a group for the front color, one for the back cover, and one for the spine, and each group would contain content for that specific part of the cover. Aside from keeping you well organized, these groups make things simpler because you can turn them off. So, in keeping with the book cover example, if you wanted to just concentrate on the
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back of the book cover you are working on, then you could turn off the group for the spine and the group for the front cover. In the picture below, you can see that the text box and the text have disappeared from the picture. That is because the ‘Love Text’ group has been turned off. They are still there and will reappear when you turn this group back on. However, for now they are neatly tucked away so that you can concentrate on other elements of your creation.
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Working with Adjustment Layers, Alpha Channels, and Layer Masks
This portion of the lesson contains more information about layers and working with type. There are a lot of features available to you when you work with layers that you probably don’t know much about yet. You can be assured that these options will open up a world of opportunities to you. In the picture above, you can see that a bible verse has been pasted into the image. This is such a long verse that the text doesn’t even fit inside of the picture as-‐is. So, obviously this text is going to have to be edited and reorganized so that it looks presentable. This will be taken a step further, in fact, because this verse will be broken up to be used in combination with the “Love Never Fails!” message that was added in the last section. The first thing that you would need to do to achieve something like this is break this bible verse into different sections of text in a logical manner. You’ll also want to do your best to keep the portions of the text as equal in length as possible. It may make it a little bit easier for you to see what you are doing if you turn off the background layer. That, of course, is up to you.
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You can see that the text is now broken up in the picture above. The lines are also nicely spaced. A value of ‘72’ was entered into the ‘Spacing’ field to achieve this. In the case study, the “Love Never Fails!” message was recreated. The same spacing was used, but the font was changed to ‘Satisfaction’. You may or may not have this font in your own collection. If you don’t, you can likely find a font that is styled similarly. Once this text was created, it was resized to ‘120’ and the spacing was set to ‘160’. Then, the color of it was changed from black to green. If you look at the picture below, you can see that this text is under the other type. This was simply done by shifting the stacking order of the layers. You can simply click and drag a layer beneath another one to reorder them like this, and doing so affects the way that their content appears.
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Next, the blend mode was changed from ‘Normal’ to ‘Multiply’, and the ‘Opacity’ was changed to ‘35%’. At this point, you might want to play around with the different types of blend modes. In this case, if you tried ‘Screen’, the text in the background would look quite a bit darker. On the other hand, if you chose ‘Hard Light’, the text would appear much greener. Another one you might try is ‘Overlay’; it usually brings about a pretty nice effect. In fact, this was what was ultimately applied in the case study. In the case study, the font of the bible verse was changed to ‘Italic’. Then the last line of the text, which says “Love Never Fails” was changed into a bold italic. It was also changed into a darker green, instead of black like the rest. You can see the result of this overall process in the screenshot below.
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There is a lot of ways that you could handle this design. This is just one way of handling it. Another thing that you could use to better create something like this is a layer mask. This hasn’t really been covered by the training yet, but you will have the chance to learn a little bit about them now. Let’s say that you wanted to create another box for the text much like the one presented in the last lesson. A new path was created in the case study. It was colored a light gold color, and the corners were rounded a bit. Then, the ‘Opacity’ of the box was changed to ‘40%’. The ‘Width’ was then changed to ‘2,700’, and the ‘Move’ tool was selected in order to move this box over a bit so that it overlapped the heart a little. Down at the bottom of the screen there is an ‘FX’ icon. Right next to this icon is a rectangle with a circle inside. When you click this icon, a mask will be added to the layer that is currently selected. Once this mask is added to your layer, then you can draw on this mask to add to your design. Anything painted in black will make anything that you are masking disappear, and anything that is painted in white will end up looking solid on the layer. Furthermore, any variation in grayscale between black and white will determine the opacity of what has been drawn. When you use the mask, the first thing that you’ll want to do is make sure that the mask is selected. After that, you’ll want to select a brush. Then, you’ll want to make sure that the foreground color is either set to black or white. You might want to zoom into your picture a bit
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before you begin painting as well. Then, you can begin painting. When you have black selected as the foreground color, anything that you paint over that is in the layer will disappear. This can come in handy in many different scenarios. In the case study, the mask was used to paint over the yellow box so that the heart pendant looked as though it were lying on top instead of behind the box. You can see this demonstrated in the picture below.
One of the great things about working with a mask is that if you make a mistake as you are drawing, you can fix it easily. For instance, if you accidently paint in a spot you didn’t intend to, you can switch the foreground color to white and fill this spot back in. You always have the ability to go in and edit the masks that you create, which you can’t always do using the eraser tool and many other tools in the program. With the mask, you can simply move back and forth between the white and the black to get things just as precise as you need them to be. Now, let’s say that you wanted to change the color of the background without affecting the image within it. Right next to the ‘Mask’ icon at the bottom of the screen is another tool that you can use for this. This is for the ‘Adjustment Layers’, and whenever you click on this icon, a number of option appear. They include: •
Solid Color
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Gradient
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Pattern
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•
Brightness/Contrast
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Curves
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Exposture
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Vibrance
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Hue/Saturation
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Color Balance
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Black & White
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Photo Filter
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Channel Mixer
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Color Lookup
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Invert Posterize
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Threshold
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Gradient Map
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Selective Color
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Most of these should sound familiar because they are tools that are available through other options. With layers, they work a little bit differently. Since you want to shift the color, you would choose ‘Hue/Saturation’. When you do, the window shown above will appear. As you can see, these are your typical hue and saturation options. You may also notice that there is a ‘Hue/Saturation’ layer mask in the ‘Layers Pallet’ now. When you turn this off, you can see that the original image still remains intact, and since the color was changed on a layer mask, you can actually paint on the mask to let the original color show through in certain places. So, you can mask out the effect that this color shift has had on the pendant. Also, take note that this adjustment layer will only affect the layers beneath it. In the case study, for example, the only layer that was affected was the ‘Background’ layer because it was the only one under the adjustment layer. If the layer with the rectangular box were beneath the mask, it would have been affected too. Using the ‘Adjustment Layers’ option is yet another way that you can edit certain areas without affecting others. Hopefully, you can see how this can give you a great deal of control over the outcome of your picture. It is recommended that you experiment with these options in order to better understand the different things that you can do with them. You can use masking with type as well. In the picture below, the adjustment layer was turned off and so were all of the layers that contained type. Next, new words were added and moved onto the text box. As you can see in the picture below, these words were ‘Love’ and ‘Never’. Each word was on its own layer, by the way.
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You’ll notice that in the picture above, these words are positioned so that part of the letter ‘N’ is going into the loop of the ‘L’. Also, you may notice that the color of the word ‘Love’ is green and the word ‘Never’ is brown. This was done just to give each of them more definition. However, what if this was your picture, and you wanted it to appear as though one word was wrapping around another? You could do so quite easily with a layer mask. You could essentially select either layer to do this, but in the case study, the ‘Never’ layer was selected first. After that, the layer mask icon was clicked and a layer mask was added to this layer. Then, the word ‘Love’ was selected. To do this, all you would have to do is press ‘Cmd’ or ‘Ctrl’ and click on the layer that the word is in. You’d also want to make sure that the mask for ‘Never’ was also selected. Next, you would need to select a brush. For something like this, you would need to choose a pretty small one since you would be editing a very small area. You might even want to zoom in a bit. Finally, you can simply paint away part of the overlapping loop to make it look like one word is intertwined with the other. This is demonstrated below. Do you see how the loop in the ‘L’ now looks like it overlaps part of the ‘N’ and then loops back underneath it? This is yet another way that you can use layer masks effectively.
You could also apply more to the type such as drop shadows and other effects. The best way to do this would probably be through the ‘Layer Style’ window. If you achieve a look you like, don’t forget that you can use a layer style again and again by right-‐clicking on the layer and choosing ‘Copy Layer Style’. After that you can choose a layer to apply it to, right-‐click on it,
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and then choose ‘Paste Layer Style’. This was done in the case study as well. In the case study, the same drop shadow settings were applied to both words, and again, this was done quickly and easily because the settings for the first layer were simply applied to the second. Aside from making the process easier, this can also help you to maintain consistency throughout your work. Now, let’s say that you are happy with your picture, and you are ready to upload it to the Internet. The problem with that is that you have all of these layers. So, you will eventually have to combine these layers, but first you’ll want to save it as a Photoshop document so that you can go back and edit these layers at any point in time in the future. To do this, simply click on ‘File’ and choose ‘Save As’. When the ‘Save As’ window appears, name your work and then check to be sure that ‘Photoshop’ is selected for the ‘Format’. You can double check this by making sure that your doc has a ‘.psd’ extension to it. Once you have an editable Photoshop document saved, you can flatten these layers into a single document by clicking on the menu just above the ‘Layers Pallet’. When the menu pops up, you will see that one of the options is ‘Flatten Image’. Choose this to combine all of the layers and create a single layer. When you click on this option a window will appear asking whether or not you want to discard the hidden layers. You shouldn’t have any hidden layers in this case, but normally you would want to, so click ‘OK’. Once this is done, everything should be compressed. So, you can choose ‘File’ and ‘Save As’ at this point to save it as an image to use elsewhere. In most cases you would want to save it as a JPEG, but again, that depends on what you are planning on doing with it. When you hit ‘Save’ another window will appear, and in this window you will have the option to save the ‘Quality’. A quality of ‘8’ is usually good enough. Since this is the default setting, you can usually just click ‘OK’. Now, let’s say that there were still portions of your picture that you wanted to work on, but you were done with the majority of your product. One thing that you can do is merge the layers that you are done with. So, for instance, if you were done with the first four layers in your ‘Layers Pallet’. You can select multiple layers by holding down the ‘Shift’ key while you click the layers that you want to merge. Then, you would just right mouse click, and then choose ‘Merge Layers’. All the layers that you selected would then be combined into one. Take note that when this was done in the case study the masks no longer were applied. So, you want to be careful whenever you do this because the only way to fix it would be to back up in your history. This wouldn’t work if you had already saved your document though. You don’t have to be scared of using this option; just give it some thought before applying it. 26
