From the course: Photoshop 2023 Essential Training

Exploring layer basics - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2023 Essential Training

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Exploring layer basics

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- [Instructor] Photoshop's ability to work with layers is definitely one of my favorite features, so let's take a look at how we can master the Layers panel in order to easily work with multiple images in a single document. I'm going to start by creating a new file. I want it to be 4,000 pixels by 2500 at 300 pixels per inch. I'm going to open it in RGB in eight bit and then choose to create. Then, I'll use Command tab in order to move to Bridge. Select the Layers folder. Select the Greens.jpg and the Pears.jpg. And I'll use Command + O on Mac, Control + O on Windows in order to open them both into Photoshop. We can see all three of these documents are opened. We have the Untitled, the Greens, and the Pears. In order to quickly see all three of them, I can choose Window, Arrange, and then use the Tile command. Now, in order to combine the documents, I'm going to tap the V key in order to select the Move tool. And I'll start by clicking on the tab for the Greens file. Then, in the Layers panel, I'll drag the background layer and I'll hold down the Shift key, and then I'll drop it into Untitled 1. And the reason I was holding down the Shift key was so that it would drop right into the center of that document. Then, I no longer need the Greens file open, so let's close that by clicking on the check. I'll select the Pears.jpg image by clicking on its tab. And, again, using the Layers panel, I'll drag and drop the background, holding down the Shift key into Untitled 1. All right, let's close the Pears.jpg. And now we're left with one document open, the Untitled document. It has the background, Layer 1 and Layer 2. If I want to rename the layers in order to keep track of them, I can double-click on the name. I'll call this Pears. And I'll do the same for Layer 1, double-clicking and calling it Greens. Now, to toggle the visibility of a layer, we can click on the eye icon next to the layer. It's important to point out that just toggling the visibility isn't the same as targeting a layer. To target a layer, you actually need to click on the layer in the Layers panel. So while I can have the Greens layer targeted, I can toggle the visibility of another layer, like the Pears layer. All right, let's toggle off the visibility for the Pears and the Greens, because we need to talk about the background layer. So the background layer is unique, and there are several things that you can't do because it's locked. So for example, you can't change the stacking order. I can't drag this above one of the other layers in my Layers panel, and I can't reposition its location in the canvas area. So even if I were to select the Move tool, I can't reposition it. It also can't have transparency. So if I tap the E key in order to select the eraser, I can't erase on the background layer. However, it's really easy to fix this. I can convert the background into a layer by simply clicking on the lock icon. Now, I could change the stacking order by dragging and dropping it in the Layers panel. I could use the Move tool if I wanted to reposition it. And if I tap the E key again to select the eraser, we can see that I can now erase to transparency. All right, I'll use the Edit menu and undo the eraser. Then, I'm going to make the Greens layer visible and I'm going to target it in the Layers panel. I only want the Greens layer to appear in the upper portion of the document, so I'm going to use the View menu and choose to show my rulers. We can also use Command + R on Mac or Control + R on Windows. Then, I'm going to right-click in the ruler area and change the unit of measurements to percent, so that I can quickly click in the ruler area and drag out a guide to the 50% mark. I could also use the View menu and choose Guides, and I could add a new guide by entering in the orientation, as well as the position. But since we already have one, I'll choose Cancel. I'll select the Move tool because I want to reposition the Greens layer. So with it targeted in the Layers panel, I'll click and drag upwards a bit. But I don't want this area showing, so I'm going to select the marquee tool, and I will drag out a selection starting at that guide at the 50% mark. Then, I'm going to delete this area of the Greens file by choosing Edit and then Clear. Then, I'll choose Select and Deselect in order to deselect that. So we've deleted the bottom half of the Greens, and that is actually a permanent change. So let's take a look at a way that we could do this in a more flexible manner. With the Pears layer, I'll target it in the Layers panel and make it visible. And then, I'll select the Frame tool. The Frame tool has two options, either a circle or a rectangle. So let's choose the rectangle. And I'm going to drag from the top left corner of the canvas down until it meets the guide on the right-hand side. When I release the cursor, we can see the pears only in the area where I dragged the frame. On the Layers panel, we now have two icons. On the left, we have the frame. And on the right, we have the image. If I click on the frame icon, then I could reposition the frame. And we can see that the area of the pear photograph still exists beyond the frame. I'll go ahead and move that back. If I want to reposition the pears within the frame, then I can click on the thumbnail for the pears in the layers panel, and I can reposition it. If I want to move them both, I can either hold down the Shift key and select both icons in the Layers panel, or we can just double-click within the frame in order to select them both. And now, the frame and the contents move together. All right, at this point, we've done enough work on the image that I would want to save it. So I'll choose the File menu and select Save As. I want to save it to my computer. I'll go ahead and give it a name, Harvest, saving it to the 07 Layers folder as a Photoshop document. I'll click Save. And if we scoot back over to Bridge, we can see our newly created Harvest PSD file.

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