Working With Photoshop Layers

Working with Photoshop Layers

If you're new to Photoshop, layers can be an intimidating feature to understand. While layers can be difficult at first, once you understand their use you wont know how you lived without them! This tutorial was designed for Adobe Photoshop CS4 but should work well with earlier versions.

Layer Concepts

The basic purpose of layers is to allow you to keep the pieces of your composition separate so that you can work on them individually without disturbing the other layers. Imagine that you have a composition which is comprised of 3 main elements: background, foreground and text. A real world equivalent would be having 3 layers of clear cellophane with the different elements drawn over each other so that they can be moved or altered independently. In Photoshop a layer give you the freedom to make modifications to a specific element in your composition without having to worry about affecting the other elements.

Layer Practice

Now that you understand the basic concepts of layers it's time to practice using layers in Photoshop. First create a new document that is 500 by 500 pixels wide with the background content set to white. If you look at the layers palette you will see that this creates a document that has one layer built in called "background". This new background layer is locked by default, meaning that it can't be moved. You can unlock the layer by simply double clicking on it but that wont be necessary at this time.

Background Layer

Next you will want to create a new layer by selecting [layer-new-layer] from the photoshop menu or by clicking the new layer icon.

Three Photoshop Layers You now have a new layer called "Layer 1" to work with. Now you can add something to this layer, some drawn in random color will be fine for this tutorial. Next you will want to create a new layer the same way the did the last layer. Instead of drawn in color lets create some text. You should now have three layers with background on the bottom, layer 1 in the middle and text on top.

Layer Composition Now that we have our layers created we can begin to demonstrate some of the usefulness that comes from using layers. We will start by simply moving the layers around. To move a layer, first select the layer you want to move by clicking the layer in the layer palette. Next select the move tool and drag the layer around, you will see that it only affects the selected layer.

Besides having the freedom to move individual layers you can apply layer styles, and filters to selected layers. Feel free to experiment. You can use layers to blend photos together, create flyers, magazine covers or anything else your mind can imagine. The next fundamental technique you may want to master will be layer masks which help to blend image components together in a more natural way, however layer masks are beyond the scope of this tutorial. Thanks for reading, come again!

Share |