PhotoShop was originally designed to replace the manual job of photo retouching and manipulation. When pictures were manually edited, if you wanted to put a hat on someones head in the photo lab, you had to cut out a picture of a hat, and manually paste it on a clear piece of plastic. Next you would lay that clear piece of plastic on top of the original photo of your hatless person, and youd move the plastic layer around until you had everything just the way you wanted it. If you were going to add text to your image, the text would go on another plastic layer. You might end up with a whole bunch of layers before you were done.
PhotoShop uses layers, too. Anytime you paste something into the image, youve just added another layer that can be moved and affected independently of the rest of the image. Layers give you the ability to change your mind and experiment without fear.
Layers can sometimes present a problem for beginners, if the beginner forgets they exist. If there are many different layers, you must tell PhotoShop which one youre trying to work with when you do something, otherwise it wouldnt know which layer youre trying to move, color, copy, or delete.
If you remember the simple web design course rule that you must choose a layer selected to affect it, youll do just fine with PhotoShop.
Styles in Photoshop CS4
You have different styles to choose from when you have images with layers. There are different special effects you can use to enhance your image in Photoshop CS4. You would choose the layer in the palette, then choose the Effects button. You will see a layer style dialog box. This is where you will be able to create the special effects for the layer that is open.
When you want to save the effects, you will select “New Style”. You can use some of the same effect later for other layers. To do that, choose the style in the palette and you will have the same ones to use for that layer. To use the Styles palette, select Window, then Show Styles.
Parts of layers that you can see through will have edges. You can also use effects here. If there are not transparent portion, there’s a chance you may not see any changes after the layer effects are applied.
Layers can also be used to put images together. Open two images and with the move tool, move one image on top of the other. The initial image will look like a new layer in the next image. You can also put images together by copying and pasting one image to another image. This can also create a new layer.
If you need to edit your images, you can use adjustable layers to do that. These layers are not only adjustable and editable, they can be used with Levels, Photo Filters, Hue/Saturation and other commands as need.
An adjustment layer is created by using the Layer function. Select New Adjustment Layer and then select one of the menu components. You can choose from Color Balance, Curves, Levels, etc.) Or you can choose the adjustment layer button and get the same menu of components.
If you need to adjust any settings with this, use the dialog box. With the adjustment layer, you can edit any part of it. On the other hand, a regular Levels adjustment is not allowed to be totally edited.
The dialog box will be in the adjustment layer and you can adjust any settings that you need to. You don’t need a lot of lot of memory and the file’s size does not get larger.