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Using Layers in Adobe Photoshop 2020

Lesson 19 from: Adobe Photoshop: The Complete Guide Bootcamp

Ben Willmore

Using Layers in Adobe Photoshop 2020

Lesson 19 from: Adobe Photoshop: The Complete Guide Bootcamp

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

19. Using Layers in Adobe Photoshop 2020

Next Lesson: Align Active Layers

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Introduction To Adobe Photoshop

04:05
2

Bridge vs. Lightroom

06:39
3

Tour of Photoshop Interface

18:21
4

Overview of Bridge Workspace

07:42
5

Overview of Lightroom Workspace

11:21
6

Lightroom Preferences - Saving Documents

08:19
7

How To Use Camera Raw in Adobe Photoshop 2020

05:10
8

Overview of Basic Adjustment Sliders

13:09
9

Developing Raw Images

30:33
10

Editing with the Effects and HLS Tabs

09:12
11

How to Save Images

03:37
12

Using the Transform Tool

04:48
13

Making Selections in Adobe Photoshop 2020

06:03
14

Selection Tools

05:55
15

Combining Selection Tools

07:37
16

Using Automated Selection Tools

17:34
17

Quick Mask Mode

05:07
18

Select Menu Essentials

21:28
19

Using Layers in Adobe Photoshop 2020

13:00
20

Align Active Layers

07:29
21

Creating a New Layer

06:15
22

Creating a Clipping Mask

03:02
23

Using Effects on Layers

11:24
24

Using Adjustment Layers

16:44
25

Using the Shape Tool

04:39
26

Create a Layer Mask Using the Selection Tool

04:39
27

Masking Multiple Images Together

15:15
28

Using Layer Masks to Remove People

10:50
29

Using Layer Masks to Replace Sky

10:04
30

Adding Texture to Images

09:11
31

Layering to Create Realistic Depth

05:35
32

Adjustment Layers in Adobe Photoshop 2020

05:29
33

Optimizing Grayscale with Levels

10:59
34

Adjusting Levels with a Histogram

03:37
35

Understanding Curves

06:18
36

Editing an Image Using Curves

18:41
37

Editing with Shadows/Highlights Adjustment

07:19
38

Dodge and Burn Using Quick Mask Mode

07:14
39

Editing with Blending Modes

08:04
40

Color Theory

05:59
41

Curves for Color

16:52
42

Hue and Saturation Adjustments

08:59
43

Isolating Colors Using Hue/Saturation Adjustment

13:33
44

Match Colors Using Numbers

16:59
45

Adjusting Skin Tones

05:25
46

Retouching Essentials In Adobe Camera Raw

10:52
47

Retouching with the Spot Healing Brush

07:53
48

Retouching with the Clone Stamp

06:51
49

Retouching with the Healing Brush

04:34
50

Retouching Using Multiple Retouching Tools

13:07
51

Extending an Edge with Content Aware

03:42
52

Clone Between Documents

13:19
53

Crop Tool

10:07
54

Frame Tool

02:59
55

Eye Dropper and Color Sampler Tools

08:14
56

Paint Brush Tools

13:33
57

History Brush Tool

06:27
58

Eraser and Gradient Tools

03:06
59

Brush Flow and Opacity Settings

04:17
60

Blur and Shape Tools

11:06
61

Dissolve Mode

09:24
62

Multiply Mode

15:29
63

Screen Mode

14:08
64

Hard Light Mode

14:54
65

Hue, Saturation, and Color Modes

11:31
66

Smart Filters

11:32
67

High Pass Filter

13:40
68

Blur Filter

05:59
69

Filter Gallery

07:42
70

Adaptive Wide Angle Filter

04:43
71

Combing Filters and Features

04:45
72

Select and Mask

20:04
73

Manually Select and Mask

08:08
74

Creating a Clean Background

21:19
75

Changing the Background

13:34
76

Smart Object Overview

08:37
77

Nested Smart Objects

09:55
78

Scale and Warp Smart Objects

09:08
79

Replace Contents

06:55
80

Raw Smart Objects

10:20
81

Multiple Instances of a Smart Object

12:59
82

Creating a Mockup Using Smart Objects

05:42
83

Panoramas

13:15
84

HDR

11:20
85

Focus Stacking

04:02
86

Time-lapse

11:18
87

Light Painting Composite

08:05
88

Remove Moire Patterns

06:11
89

Remove Similar Objects At Once

09:52
90

Remove Objects Across an Entire Image

05:46
91

Replace a Repeating Pattern

06:50
92

Clone from Multiple Areas Using the Clone Source Panel

10:27
93

Remove an Object with a Complex Background

07:49
94

Frequency Separation to Remove Staining and Blemishes

12:27
95

Warping

11:03
96

Liquify

14:02
97

Puppet Warp

12:52
98

Displacement Map

10:36
99

Polar Coordinates

07:19
100

Organize Your Layers

11:02
101

Layer Styles: Bevel and Emboss

02:59
102

Layer Style: Knockout Deep

12:34
103

Blending Options: Blend if

13:18
104

Blending Options: Colorize Black and White Image

06:27
105

Layer Comps

08:30
106

Black-Only Shadows

06:07
107

Create a Content Aware Fill Action

08:46
108

Create a Desaturate Edges Action

07:42
109

Create an Antique Color Action

13:52
110

Create a Contour Map Action

10:20
111

Faux Sunset Action

07:20
112

Photo Credit Action

05:54
113

Create Sharable Actions

07:31
114

Common Troubleshooting Issues Part 1

10:23
115

Common Troubleshooting Issues Part 2

07:57
116

Image Compatibility with Lightroom

03:29
117

Scratch Disk Is Full

06:02
118

Preview Thumbnail

02:10

Lesson Info

Using Layers in Adobe Photoshop 2020

And now it's time to turn our attention to layers layers of one of the fundamental features and photo shop where if you don't know layers, you really don't know Futter shop. And so let's jump into photo shop and look at the essentials for layers. If you end up getting the full complete guide, we'll eventually have another session, which will be on advanced layers, and that's well get in even deeper. But for now, let's look at the basics of layers in Photoshopped. I'm gonna start by creating a brand new empty document to start to construct a more complex image from I'll go to the file menu and choose new, and I'll go over here to a print preview or a preset, and I think I'll make this maybe about seven by five inch image. Choose, create, and then we'll just zoom up so it fills the majority of our screen. When you first start out in the Layers panel, which is on the left side of my screen at the moment, you're going to start off with a background layer, and it's only the things that appe...

ar above the background layer that are actually considered to be layers. The background itself is not truly a layer I can control how large the thumbnail images will be in the layers panel by right clicking in this empty area below the layers. So right now, if I press my right mouse button Warren Mac, if you don't have to must buttons control click in this area, you can choose how large these are going to be. So I'm gonna choose large just to make these easier for you to see. And you could do that any time you like by right clicking in this empty area or going to the side menu of the layers panel and you'll also find it here under panel options. Then I'm gonna go to bridge and let's look at various ways where I can get an image into a layer in photo shop. So I'm gonna open an image here, starting in bridge, just double clicking. The first thing I could do is copy this image. Now, copy will be grayed out because it doesn't know how much of the image I want a copy. So we'll first go to the select menu and select all. Then I can come up here and copy this when I copy it. The entirety of what had selected is being held in what's known as the clipboard. And so I can close this original image. And now I'm back into the document we had before, and I'm just gonna paste it when I paste. Watch what happens in the layers panel. There's our first layer now. The size of the document is based on the size of the original document. It looks at the width and height of the image in pixels, and then it puts that many pixels into this document. And if this document happened to have, ah, skinnier with or a shorter height, it'll filmore than the document itself. But let's look at other methods we could use for getting images into this document. I'll return to bridge and open another picture. This time, I'm going to use the move tool the move to us what you used to reposition layers. It's the top tool in our layers panel, and I'm just gonna click anywhere within this document. Then, with my mouse button held down, I'm gonna move my mouse over to the other tab. The tab for the document I created earlier. And then I'm gonna move my mouse into this document before I let go. A lot of people will end up messing up and letting go where their mouth is still on top of the tab for this document, and then nothing will happen. But I'm gonna let go right now. And so now we've moved that second image over here, so so far, we could copy and paste, or we could drag and drop. I'm gonna close the other document, the one that I just dragged over. It's the second tab that's here. We'll just hit the little X that's there to get rid of it. Let's go back to bridge. Now. There are other ways where it could be very useful to get images between bridge and photo shop. And that is I'm gonna click on the top edge of the bridge window and just pull it down like this so I can see what's behind bridge. Then I'll make my thumbnails in here a little smaller. And now if I want to get one of these images over to the other document, I'm just going to click on it here in drag up there to the Photoshopped document I can see behind Let go now. When I do that, it's does a couple things differently. The first thing it does is it scales down the image to make sure it fits within this document. And if I wanted to be even smaller than that, I can grab these corner handles in, pull a man to decide exactly how big it like that image to be. I can click within the image itself and reposition it. And then when it's the right size in the right position, I press the returner in Tricky. Now, if I want to get the other images to be sized and positioned, all I need to do is go over here in my layers panel, click on a different layer and then go to the edit menu in about halfway down. The menu is a choice called free transform. When I choose free transform, I get little handles on the corners of my picture, and if that picture extends beyond the edge of this document, I might need to scroll down to actually see ah, the handles. But there's a trick. There's a keyboard shortcut that usually means fit within window and it usually would cause the entire document you're working on to fit within your screen. But when you're transforming something, it thinks about the transformation you're performing. So if I come up here to my view menu and choose fit on screen or I take command zero, which is what I usually do, controls their own windows, it will scale it down until I can see those transformation handles. And then I can scale this down in reposition at now if I typed command zero. It's thinking about the document because the picture fits within it, and I'm just going to scale this until it's about approximately the same height as the other layer. Then to finish, I'm gonna press returner enter on my keyboard. I'll go to the next layer down again. I could go to the edit menu and choose for you. Transform where That's something I used so often that I usually use the keyboard shortcut, which is command t for transform control tm windows. So I'm gonna type that command t again. This image is taller than the document that I'm working with, so if I want to zoom out until I can see the little handles to pull on Aiken Type command zero that's controls their own windows. And when I move this around commands or to zoom up on the document, if I get this to line up with something else in the document, you'll see some pink lines appearing. And it's showing me what's lining up in this case, the bottom of this image or this layer with the images to left of it. If I move it up now, it's vertically centered on both images that it go, it's to the left of it. And if I get up here, it's now lining up with the top edges of them. Then I'll grab the corner here in Recife. But what if I want to get a bunch of images into this document? Well, then I can come over here to bridge and just select more than one that won't select all these, and then just drag all of them over there. And if we try to do that, the first time brings in one image. And since I dragged and dropped it, it makes sure that that image fits within this document, so there's no need to type command zero to zoom out. I can reposition this wherever I find it useful. And then I press returner entered indicate I'm done in. Since I dragged more than one image over it instantly switches to the second image so I can start working with it. And I'm going to start a new row of pictures down here near the bottom of my screen. Press returner enter. And the next image comes in help make that fill the middle of my screen returner enter and the next one comes in F ever decide that I don't want to continue bringing mawr images in. Maybe I accidentally selected 200 pictures. Then I could always press the escape key and that would cancel. But here I want all these images so I will just allow them to be placed and scaled down. I wish it would show me guides when I'm transforming to let me know that this picture is the same height as the others. But that doesn't usually happen to squirrel around here. I have a track pad built into my laptop and I'm using two fingers on my track pad to scroll around. Looks like we have Hopefully, this is the last image. Otherwise, I'll end up hitting escape because I don't need Mawr images than this. All right, that was the last image, all right, so we have a bunch of layers now. You should know that the layers that I dragged over from Bridge, you remember that it automatically transformed them in automatically made sure it fit within the document was working on. But it also did one other thing. And that is, if you look at my layers panel, you'll see a bunch of layers here. But some of them have a special icon in the lower right, This icon here, that's something we're going to talk about. If you watch another lesson, I'm going to record. That's on advanced layers, and that indicates that that layer is special. It's what's known as a smart object, but that's beyond the scope of this particular class. Just know that when you drag from bridge, it does do one other thing, and it does something related to what's known as a smart object. All right, now let's organize these images in here. If I come in here and just click on an image I make that layer active, then I can use the move Tool the tool. Me very top of my tool panel to reposition things. Uh, and with default settings and Photoshopped, it's going to automatically switch which layer is active at the time I click. So watch my layers panel. I noticed the top most layer is currently active, and when I click right here, notice it changed and it changed the layer that contained the picture that was underneath my mouse. If I click on the next image the left, it'll automatically switch to layer that is contained within, and so I can very quickly switch between layers. For me personally, I do not like that. It does that. That's a change that Adobe made to Futter shop recently. And it's something where it messes me up quite a bit, because oftentimes I can have a layer that might contain a tiny object that I want to move. And I don't wanna have to click exactly where that object resides to prevent it from switching to a different layer. And so I wanted to not automatically switch layers unless I do something to tell it to switch layers. So let me show you how to make that change, and so therefore, you can have your photo shop set up similarly to mind. Ah, when the move tool is active, will come up to the top of my screen to the options bar. There's a check box right here called Auto Select in four decades in Photoshop that was turned off. But then recently well, not all that recently. A few years ago, Adobe decided to change the default, and they defaulted it to being turned on. So I'm gonna have that turned off when I used photo shop. And what that means when it's off is that it doesn't matter where I click on my screen. It will not change which layer is currently active. So if you look in my layers panel, you'll see that the layer that is currently active is a layer that is located near the upper left of the document. It happens to be the one that contains this picture, and it doesn't matter where I click on my screen. That's the layer that's active. And if I want a different layer to be active, I need to manually change it here in the layers panel. I'll show you ways of automatically changing which layer is active. And I think it will be very convenient for you. But the main thing is it will never change layers unexpectedly on you.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Lessons 1 - 6 - Handbook 1: Introduction to Adobe Photoshop
Lessons 7 - 12 - Handbook 2: How to Use Camera Raw
Lessons 13 - 18 - Handbook 3: Making Selections
Lessons 19 - 24 - Handbook 4: Using Layers
Lessons 25 - 30 - Handbook 5: Using Layer Masks
Lessons 31 - 38 - Handbook 6: Using Adjustment Layers
Lessons 39 - 44 - Handbook 7: Color Theory
Lessons 45 - 51 - Handbook 8: Retouching Essentials
Lessons 52 - 59 - Handbook 9: Tools Panel
Lessons 60 - 64 - Handbook 10: Layer Blending Modes
Lessons 65 - 70 - Handbook 11: How to Use Filters
Lessons 71 - 74 - Handbook 12: Advanced Masks
Lessons 75 - 81 - Handbook 13: Using Smart Objects
Lessons 82 - 86 - Handbook 14: Photography for Photoshop
Lessons 87 - 93 - Handbook 15: Advanced Photo Retouching
Lessons 94 - 98 - Handbook 16: Warp, Blend, Liquify
Lessons 99 - 105 - Handbook 17: Advanced Layers
Lessons 106 - 112 - Handbook 18: Actions
Lessons 113 - 117 - Handbook 19: Troubleshooting Issues
Practice Images 1: Introduction to Adobe Photoshop
Practice Images 2: How to Use Camera Raw
Practice Images 3: Making Selections
Practice Images 4: Using Layers
Practice Images 5: Using Layer Masks
Practice Images 6: Using Adjustment Layers
Practice Images 7: Color Theory
Practice Images 8: Retouching Essentials
Practice Images 9: Tools Panel
Practice Images 10: Layer Blending Modes
Practice Images 11: How to Use Filters
Practice Images 12: Advanced Masks
Practice Images 13: Using Smart Objects
Practice Images 14: Photography for Photoshop
Practice Images 15: Advanced Photo Retouching
Practice Images 16: Warp, Blend, Liquify
Practice Images 17: Advanced Layers
Practice Images 18: Actions
Practice Images 19: Troubleshooting Issues

Ratings and Reviews

Noel Ice
 

I am an avid reader of photoshop books, and an avid watcher of photoshop tutorials. I have attended (internet) several hundred of presentations. In the course of this endeavor, I have found my own favorite photoshop websites and instructors. Creative Live is probably the bargain out there as well as among the top three internet course sites. I have to say with great enthusiasm that the best Photoshop instructor is Ben Willmore. There are many great ones, but truly, he is the best I have come across, and, as indicated above, I have watched literally 100s of tutorials on Photoshop. I have seen all of Ben's courses, I think, and among them, this one is the best by far, and that is saying a lot, because that makes this course the best course on Photoshop to be found anywhere. I am going back and watching it twice. Not only is it comprehensive, but Ben is so familiar with his subject that he is able to explain it like no other. This is crème de la crème of Photoshop classes. I have been wanting to write this review for some time because I have been so thoroughly impressed with everything about this class!

ford smith
 

Highly recommended if you want to take your Photoshop skills to the next level. Ben Willmore is clear, concise, and professional. He also has a good speaking voice that is not distracting but also keeps you engaged. Lastly, I would recommend that as you become more advanced, increasing the speed of the video (one of the options given on the menu)...especially if you've gone through the course once before and maybe want to watch it again. The double speed is very efficient as you become more advanced in Photoshop. Thanks for the help Ben!

a Creativelive Student
 

Wow. I cannot communicate the value of this course!! The true value in this course is how the instructor identifies workflows you'll need before you'll ever realize it, repeats important information without it becoming annoying, and explains the "why" behind the techniques so well that even if you forget the exact method, you can figure it out via the principles learned. Excellent value, excellent material, excellent instructor!!!

Student Work

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