Chapter 5: Working with Layers

Overview

To give you a good foundation in Photoshop's use and treatment of layers, it's useful to take a look back at Photoshop's history. When layers debuted in Version 3, they were little more than their name implied ” sheets of pixels that you could edit and transform independently of each other. Since then, layers have become increasingly sophisticated and complicated. Photoshop 4 forced you create a new layer every time you imported an image; but it also rewarded you with floating adjustment layers that corrected colors without permanently affecting a single pixel (see Chapter 11). Photoshop 5 witnessed the birth of layer effects, included editable drop shadows, glows , and edge bevels (see Chapter 7). Photoshop 6 enabled you to bundle and color -code layers into logical clusters (this chapter), turn layers into floating holes(Chapter 6), and even add vector-based lines and shapes (Chapter 7). Photoshop 7 let you adjust the fill opacity from the Layers palette but otherwise maintained the status quo.

Photoshop continues to improve the way you work with layers by introducing layer comps (new in Photoshop CS), which are discussed at the end of this chapter. It's a fairly helpful new feature, but there's still room for improvement. For example, one day it would be nice to see Photoshop integrate parametric effects, in which filters such as Unsharp Mask and Motion Blur are fully editable, interactive, and interchangeable, on the order of Adobe's motion graphics powerhouse, After Effects. But in the meantime, Photoshop's layers still provide us with a rewarding amount of freedom and flexibility. Other improvements, new in Photoshop CS2, include new linking, transformation, and alignment tools and techniques. These, too, are discussed later in this chapter.