- [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.
Let's start by creating a new document.
And I'm going to set the width
and height to pixels
and I'm going to change it to 2,600 by 1625.
I want the resolution to be 300 pixels per inch,
RGB color eight bit
and I'll put the background contents to white
and then click Create.
Then I'll use Command tab on Mac
or Alt tab on Windows
to move to bridge
where I'll select both the grapes
as well as the greens layer
and then just use the keyboard shortcut Command + O on Mac
or Control + O on Windows
to open those two images.
So we can see now that I have three documents open,
I have my untitled document,
my grapes,
as well as the greens.
I can click on any of the tabs to view them,
but I can also use Control + Tab
in order to cycle through them
at any point in time.
But I want to see all three of the images at one time
so I'll choose Window
and then Arrange
and then Tile.
Now, if you've been following along with the course,
we set up a custom keyboard shortcut Command Shift + T
so we could use that as well.
Now that I can see all of my different images,
I can click with the Move tool
on any one of these images
to make it the target document.
And if you watch in the layers panel,
we get a preview of the contents of that layer.
So with the greens layer targeted,
I'm going to drag the background
from the layers panel
and drop it onto my untitled document.
If I hold the Shift key
as I drag and drop,
then Photoshop will drop it
right in the center of the document.
Then I can click the greens file to target it
and then use the X in order to close it.
Then I'll click on the grapes document
and again from the layers panel,
I'll drag the background
and drop it into the untitled document,
holding down the Shift key
to center the layer.
I'll close the grapes layer
and now we can see our multilayered document,
the untitled layer
that has layer two and layer one.
I want to rename these layers
so I'm going to double click on the name
and I'll just call this grapes
and then tap Enter to apply that
and then again I'll double click on layer one
and rename it greens,
tapping Enter to apply that.
If you didn't hold down the Shift key,
it's really not a problem
if your images aren't centered,
because you can always target
the layer in the layers panel
and with the Move tool selected,
we could reposition them.
I want to point out there's a difference
between targeting a layer
and hiding and showing the layer,
toggling the visibility of the layer.
If I click the eye icon
that will toggle the visibility,
but I actually need to click on the layer
if I want to target it.
If I hide the visibility for all of the layers,
we can see the checkerboard
that's going to represent transparency
in your Photoshop document.
All right, let's toggle back on
the visibility of the background
and also target it.
So the background layer is unique,
there are three things you can't do.
You can't change the stacking order,
meaning that I can't drag it up in the layers panel
nor can I reposition it.
So with the move tool selected,
if I click and drag,
Photoshop isn't going to reposition the image,
in fact, it has Auto-select on
and it deselected the background layer.
So I need to target that background again,
and the third thing you can't do
is you can't erase to transparency
when you're on a background.
So if I tap the E key to select the eraser tool
or if I select it from the toolbar
and if I start to erase,
well, my background color is white,
so we wouldn't really see visually any difference,
but if I switch this
so that the background color is black
and I tried to erase,
it looks like I'm painting with black
because I'm erasing to that background color.
So I'll undo that using Command + Z on Mac
or Control + Z on Windows.
So in order to change the background into a layer,
the easiest way is to just click on the Lock icon
in the layers panel.
Now I can go ahead
and switch to the Move tool
and I could reposition the background layer.
Again I'll undo that using Command + Z on Mac
or Control + Z on Windows,
I can change the stacking order
so I could reposition it above the greens
so that it would actually hide that greens layer
or I can move it back below the greens layer.
And if I tap the E key again to select the eraser,
now when I erase,
we're actually going to see transparency below this layer,
we're not going to be erasing to the background color.
So again, I'll use Command + Z
or Control + Z to undo that.
All right, let's target the grapes layer
and also make it visible.
Now I want the grapes layer
to only appear in the top portion of the image.
So I'm going to use the View menu
in order to show my rulers
and then I can drag out a guide.
But it would probably be helpful
if I right click
or on Mac you can Control click
and set the guide 2%.
That will make it very easy
for me to drag from the ruler area
down into the image area
and it will snap at 50%
and I know that
because I'm looking at the ruler
on the left side
or you can see with the heads up display
that Y equals 50%.
Then I'll tap the V key to select the move tool
and with that grapes' layers targeted,
I can go ahead
and reposition it in the image area
and I'll reposition it right to about there.
Now, if I only want it to appear
in the upper half of my image,
I need to get rid of this area.
So the first way we will remove content on a layer
is by using the Marquee tool
and then dragging a Marquee
around the area that we want to delete
and simply tapping the Delete key.
Now this is a permanent change
so I've actually gotten rid of that information.
So let's try this again on another layer
and see if we can do it
in a more nondestructive manner.
I'll use the Select menu,
and then de-select the Marquee selection
and then I'll hide this layer for a moment,
I'll make the greens layer visible
and I'll also target it in the layers panel.
This time I'm going to select
the Frame tool from the toolbar
and I'm going to make sure that it's set
to the first icon here,
which will drag out a rectangle.
I'm then going to start
in the upper left hand corner
and drag out a frame
around the area
that I want to keep,
in this case,
the top 50% of the document.
Photoshop will automatically create a frame
and if we look in the layers panel,
I now have two icons.
I have the icon for the frame that I can select
or I have the icon for the image.
If I click on the frame,
which would highlight it,
and we can see that it adds
these transformation handles,
then I can click
and drag any of those handles
to change the size of the frame.
I'll use Command + Z
or Controls + Z the on Windows to undo that.
If I click inside the frame area,
then I can reposition the photograph
or the contents of the layer within that frame.
And if I double click here inside the image,
now we can see on the layers panel
that both the frame
and the image are targeted,
so now if I reposition it,
I'm repositioning the frame
and the contents of that frame as well.
All right, I'll use Command + Z to undo that.
Then on the layers panel
I'm going to target the contents of the layer
and then just reposition that a bit.
Now at this point
we've done enough work on the image
that I would want to save it.
So from the File menu,
I'll choose Save,
I'll rename it harvest,
making sure that I save it as a Photoshop
or as a TIF file,
and I'll save that into the 06 layers folder
with the layers
and click Save.
Now if I scoot back to bridge,
we can see all of the original exercise files
as well as our new Harvest.psd.