Hands On 2: Layers and Type

Layers greatly increase your power to manage your work. In this Hands On session, I ll put you through the moves of layers and type so that you can apply some of the powerful techniques from Chapter 7, Layering Your Image, and Chapter 8, Working with Type, to an actual project. You will see the advantage of organizing your layers into sets as you apply layer upon layer of digital images to produce a phantasmagoric poster. You will also take a crack at generating type, applying layer styles, and warping text.

Getting Started

Before beginning this Hands On exercise, delete your preferences file. The section titled Modifying Photoshop s Settings in Chapter 5, Setting Up Photoshop, details how to reset your preferences to Photoshop s defaults. After you have launched Photoshop with default preferences, here s how to begin the Hands On project:

1. Insert the Photoshop CS Savvy CD in your CD-ROM drive.

2. Choose File ’ Open; select and open Flying_Women_start.psd in the HO2 folder on the CD.

3. Save the file to your disk as Flying_Women.psd . Figures H2.1 and H2.2 show the beginning and final images.

Figure H2.2: The completed Flying Women poster

Figure H2.1: The beginning Flying Women file showing the content of the poster

Note  

The color section in this book includes a color version of the first and last stages of the Amazing Flying Women poster (Figures C42 and C43).