Photoshop 6 for Windows Bible- P20

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Photoshop 6 for Windows Bible- P20:If you are reading this foreword, it probably means that you’ve purchased a copy of Adobe Photoshop 6.0, and for that I and the rest of the Photoshop team at Adobe thank you. If you own a previous edition of the Photoshop Bible, you probably know what to expect. If not, then get ready for an interesting trip.

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Chapter 11 ✦ Full-Court Filtering 539 Although Liquify certainly gives you plenty of ways to reconstruct distortions, pre- dicting the outcome of your drags with the reconstruct tool can be difficult. So if you don’t get the results you want after your first few tries, you may find it just as easy to revert the whole image and start from scratch. Wrapping an Image around a 3D Shape I’ve long maintained that three-dimensional drawing programs would catch on bet- ter if they were sold as plug-in utilities for Photoshop. Imagine being able to import DXF objects, add a line or two of text, move the objects around in 3D space, apply surface textures, and then render the piece directly to independent Photoshop lay- ers. After that, you could change the stacking order of the layers, edit the pixels right there on the spot, or maybe even double-click a layer to edit it in 3D space. Virtually every digital artist working in 3D visits Photoshop somewhere during the process, so why not do the whole process in Photoshop and save everyone a few steps? Experienced artists would love it and novices would take to 3D in droves. Frankly, my little fantasy isn’t likely to take form any time soon. Photoshop would have to modify its plug-in specifications, and some brave programming team would have to spend a lot of time and money producing an aggressive suite of plug-ins. Even so, Adobe seems to share my dream. Filter ➪ Render ➪ 3D Transform lets you wrap an image around a three-dimensional shape. Although the drawing tools are rudimentary, the spatial controls are barely adequate, and the filter lacks any kind of lighting controls, 3D Transform is a first tentative step in the right direction. Figure 11-43 shows exactly what 3D Transform can do. In each case, I started with the brick image shown in the upper-left corner of the figure. Then I wrapped the image around the three basic kinds of primitives permitted by the 3D Transform fil- ter — a cube, a sphere, and a cylinder. 3D Transform lets you add points to the side of a cylinder, as I did to get the hourglass shape. You can also mix and match primi- tives, as the final example in Figure 11-43 illustrates. Notice that in each case, 3D Transform merely distorts the image. It has no affect on the brightness values of the pixels, nor does it make any attempt to light the shapes (which is why I’d prefer to see it under the Distort submenu as opposed to Render). I added the shadows using Layer ➪ Layer Style ➪ Drop Shadow. Note To be perfectly fair, 3D Transform is not the first three-dimensional plug-in for Photoshop. That honor went out years ago to the Series 2: Three-D Filter from Andromeda (www.andromeda.com). Even now, Series 2 offers features that Photoshop’s 3D Transform plug-in lacks, including a wider range of numerical controls and lighting functions — but 3D Transform is easier to use.
540 Part III ✦ Selections, Masks, and Filters Original image Cylinder Cube Hourglass Sphere Mixed primitives Figure 11-43: The 3D Transform filter lets you wrap an image (upper left) around each of three basic primitives (cube, sphere, and cylinder), a modified cylinder (hourglass), or several shapes mixed together. Using the 3D Transform filter Choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ 3D Transform to bring up the window shown in Figure 11-44. Less a dialog box than a separate editing environment, the 3D Transform window contains a wealth of tools and a preview area in which you can draw and
Chapter 11 ✦ Full-Court Filtering 541 evaluate the effect. There are a dozen tools in all, but they make a bit more sense if you regard them as members of five basic categories, itemized in the following sec- tions. Like Photoshop’s standard tools, you can select the 3D Transform tools from the keyboard (assuming that you have any headroom left to memorize the short- cuts). Shortcut keys are listed in parentheses. Tools Preview area Primitive Camera controls Figure 11-44: The 3D Transform dialog box contains a dozen tools that permit you to draw and edit three-dimensional shapes. Primitive shape tools Use one of the primitive shape tools to draw a basic 3D shape in the preview area. This is the shape around which 3D Transform will wrap the selected image. Cube ( M ): Use this tool to draw a six-sided box. Adobe selected M as the shortcut to match Illustrator, which uses M for its rectangle tool. And that M is based in turn on Photoshop’s marquee tool. Sphere ( N ): This tool creates a perfect sphere. Again, the shortcut comes from Illustrator, this time from the ellipse tool. Just remember, N follows M. (Ironically, S goes unused. Ain’t cross-application consistency a pain in the neck?) Cylinder ( C ): This cylinder tool draws your basic, everyday, dowel-like cylinders. But you can edit them to make lots of other shapes, as I explain in the upcoming “Cylinder editors.” Thankfully, Illustrator offers no equivalent for the cylinder tool, so we get a sensible shortcut, C.
542 Part III ✦ Selections, Masks, and Filters Basic edit tools The two arrow tools — the black select tool and the white direct select tool — enable you to change a shape by dragging it around or moving the points. Both tools work just like their counterparts in Illustrator: Select ( V ): Drag a shape with the black arrow tool to move the whole shape. If you know Illustrator, you already know about the weird V-key shortcut. If not, think of Photoshop’s own move tool. Direct select ( A ): Use the white arrow to move individual points. Dragging a point in a sphere resizes it. Dragging a point in a cube or a cylinder stretches or rotates the shape. Experiment and you’ll quickly see how it works. (Unlike paths, dragged points have no control handles. All you have to work with are anchor points.) Tip You can switch between the black and white arrow tools by pressing Ctrl+Tab. But really, there’s no point. The white arrow does everything the black arrow does — just drag a segment to move the entire shape. In fact, there’s just one keyboard trick you need to remember: press Ctrl to temporarily get the white arrow tool when any other tool is active. If you know that, the other keys are redundant. Cylinder editors The three path-edit tools are applicable exclusively to cylinders. Why? Because cylinders can be modified to create a whole family of tubular shapes. Throw the cylinder on the lathe and you can make an hourglass, a goblet, a cone — in short, any shape with radial symmetry and a flat top or bottom. To make these shapes, you use the following tools: Insert point (+): Click the right side of the cylinder — unless you turn it upside-down, in which case you click the left side — to add a point. Then drag the point with the white arrow tool to move both sides symmetrically. It’s a virtual potter’s wheel. Remove point (–): Click a point you’ve added with the insert point tool to remove it. Don’t click any of the square points that Photoshop put in there or the program will whine at you. Convert point: The insert point tool adds circular smooth points that create continuous arcs in the side of the cylinder. To change the point to a sharp corner, click it with the convert point tool. Click again to change the point back to a smooth point. Moving in 3D space The next two tools are the most powerful and the hardest to use. They permit you to move the object in 3D space. When you switch to one of these tools, Photoshop
Chapter 11 ✦ Full-Court Filtering 543 renders the preview so you can see the image wrapped around the shape, as in Figure 11-45. Pan camera ( E ): Drag the image to move it up, down, left, or right. How is this different than moving the primitive with the arrow tool? This time, you’re moving the image in 3D space across your field of vision. (To be more precise, you’re moving the camera — which is your window into the image — while the object remains still.) As you move the image to the left, you see more of its right side. Move it up, and you see its bottom. Trackball ( R ): The trackball rotates the image in 3D space. Meanwhile, it’s ultimately a 2D control — you can’t move your cursor into or out of the screen; just up, down, and side to side — making it difficult to predict the outcome of a drag. Tip Inevitably, you’ll end up exposing the back, empty side of a shape. When this happens, spin the shape by dragging against the grain. To spin the shape head over heels, for example, drag directly up or down. To spin the shape side- ways, drag horizontally. Don’t fret too much about moving through the 3D world; just watch how the program behaves when you move your mouse from one location to another. In time, you’ll see some very simple patterns that you can exploit to your advantage. Rendered preview Figure 11-45: When you select either the pan camera or the trackball tool, Photoshop renders the image inside the preview area.
544 Part III ✦ Selections, Masks, and Filters The camera controls When you select the pan camera or trackball tool, Photoshop offers two Camera options on the right side of the dialog box. At first, the two options seem to do the same thing. A low value moves you in; a high value takes you out. But, in truth, they produce subtly different effects. Think of the Field of View option as a wide-angle lens and the Dolly option as a zoom lens, with both operating at the same time. A low Field of View with a high Dolly results in shallow shapes. A high Field of View with a low Dolly shrinks you to the size of a bug so that the depth is really coming at you. Basic navigation The last two tools in the 3D Transform dialog box are the standard hand and magnify- ing glass. They work just like their counterparts outside the 3D Transform dialog box: Hand ( H ): Drag the image to move it around inside the preview area. You can press either H or the spacebar to get this tool. Zoom ( Z ): Click with this tool to zoom in, Alt-click to zoom out. When any other tool is selected, Ctrl+spacebar-click and Alt+spacebar-click to zoom in and out. Layer before you apply When you press Enter, Photoshop merges your new 3D shape with the original image. Because the 3D Transform filter provides no lighting controls, the shape may be virtually indistinguishable from its background, as Figure 11-46 makes abundantly clear. And that, dear friends, is a giant drag. Figure 11-46: By default, the 3D Transform filter merges the 3D image into the original image, making for an extraordinarily subtle effect.
Chapter 11 ✦ Full-Court Filtering 545 Tip Luckily, you can force Photoshop to deliver the 3D shape on a separate layer. Here’s what you do. First copy the image to a separate layer by dragging it onto the page icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. Then choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ 3D Trans- form and click the Options button inside the dialog box. Turn off the Display Background check box, spotlighted in Figure 11-47, and press Enter. Figure 11-47: Copy the image to a separate layer and turn off the Display Background check box to make the area outside the 3D shape transparent. Not only will the 3D Transform filter restrict its efforts to the active layer, it will also make the area outside the 3D shape transparent, as in the first example of Figure 11-48. Then you can apply layer effects or other lighting techniques to distinguish the 3D shape from its background, as in the second example. Figure 11-48: After applying the 3D shape to a separate layer (shown by itself at left), I used the Drop Shadow and Inner Bevel effects to add some fake volumetric lighting to my goblet (right).
546 Part III ✦ Selections, Masks, and Filters Color Plates 11-8 and 11-9 demonstrate some of the fun you can have with 3D Transform. In Color Plate 11-8, I relied entirely on the Drop Shadow and Inner Bevel layer styles to light the layered 3D goblet. I also added a bit of red to the goblet using Image ➪ Adjust ➪ Hue/Saturation to distinguish the layer from its sandy background. Color Plate 11-9 illustrates the merits of manual lighting techniques. After setting the goblet against a different background, I applied the drop shadow and haloing tech- niques that I discuss in the section “Selecting the Contents of Layers” in Chapter 12. I also applied the airbrush tool set alternatively to the Multiply and Screen brush modes to hand-brush some natural tinting. Finally, I darkened the top of the goblet with the help of the elliptical marquee tool. After drawing my initial marquee, I chose Select ➪ Transform to rotate and scale it into position, pressed Ctrl+J to send the selection to a separate layer, and applied the Multiply blend mode set to a low opac- ity. Admittedly, the finished effect involved a lot of effort, but it looks significantly more realistic than anything Photoshop can approximate automatically. Adding Clouds and Spotlights The remaining five filters in the Render submenu produce lighting effects. You can use Clouds and Difference Clouds to create a layer of haze over an image. Lens Flare creates light flashes and reflections (as I mentioned earlier). Lighting Effects lights an image as if it were hanging on a gallery wall. You can even use the unremarkable Texture Fill to add an embossed texture to a piece embellished with the Lighting Effects filter. Creating clouds The Clouds filter creates an abstract and random haze between the foreground and background colors. Difference Clouds works exactly like layering the image, apply- ing the Clouds filter, and selecting the Difference blend mode in the Layers palette. Why on earth should Difference Clouds make special provisions for a single blend mode? Because you can create cumulative effects. Try this: Select blue as the fore- ground color and then choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ Clouds. Ah, just like a real sky, huh? Now choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ Difference Clouds. It’s like some kind of weird Halloween motif, all blacks and oranges. Press Ctrl+F to repeat the filter. Back to the blue sky. Keep pressing Ctrl+F over and over and notice the results. A pink cancer starts invading the blue sky; a green cancer invades the orange one. Multiple appli- cations of the Difference Clouds filter generate organic oil-on-water effects. Tip To strengthen the colors created by the Clouds filter, press Shift when choosing the command. This same technique works when using the Difference Clouds filter as well. In fact, I don’t know of any reason not to press Shift while choosing one of these commands, unless you have some specific need for washed-out effects.
Chapter 11 ✦ Full-Court Filtering 547 Color Plate 11-10 shows some entertaining applications of the Clouds filters. With the foreground and background colors set to blue and orange, respectively, I applied the Clouds filter to a layered copy of the rose image. For maximum effect, I pressed Shift and chose the filter to create the top-left image in the color plate. I then pressed Shift and chose the Difference Clouds filter to create the purple mon- tage in the figure, and pressed Ctrl+F ten times to achieve the top-right image. Looks to me like I definitely have something growing in my petri dish. Yeah, so really groovy stuff, right? Shades of “Purple Haze” and all that. But now that I’ve created this murky mess, what the heck do I do with it? Composite it, of course. The bottom row of Color Plate 11-10 shows examples of mixing each of the images from the top row with the original rose. In the example on the left, I chose the Overlay option from the Layers palette. In the example in the middle, I chose the Screen mode. And in the last example, I chose Hue. This last one is particularly exciting, completely transforming the colors in the rose while leaving the gray (and therefore unsaturated) background untouched. Without a mask, without anything but a rectangular marquee, I’ve managed to precisely color the interior of the rose. Lighting an image Photoshop ventures further into 3D drawing territory with the Lighting Effects filter. This very complex function enables you to shine lights on an image, color the lights, position them, focus them, specify the reflectivity of the surface, and even create a surface map. In many ways, it’s a direct lift from MetaCreations’ Painter. But whereas Painter provides predefined paper textures and light refraction effects that bolster the capabilities of its excellent tool, Photoshop offers better controls and more light- ing options. Caution The Lighting Effects filter is applicable exclusively to RGB images. Also, don’t expect to be able to apply 3D lighting to shapes created with the 3D Transform filter. Sadly, the two filters share no common elements that would permit them to work directly with each other. When you choose Filter ➪ Render ➪ Lighting Effects, Photoshop displays what is easily its most complex dialog box, as shown in Figure 11-49. The dialog box has two halves: one in which you actually position light with respect to a thumbnail of the selected image, and one that contains about a billion intimidating options. No bones about it, this dialog box is a bear. The easiest way to apply the filter is to choose one of the predefined lighting effects from the Style pop-up menu at the top of the right side of the dialog box, see how it looks in the preview area, and — if you like it — press Enter to apply the effect. But if you want to create your own effects, you have to work a little harder. Here are the basic steps involved in creating a custom effect.
548 Part III ✦ Selections, Masks, and Filters Preview area Footprint Focus point Hot Spot Color swatches Handles Trash icon Light icon Figure 11-49: The Lighting Effects dialog box enables you to light an image as if it were hanging in a gallery, lying on a floor, or perhaps resting too near a hot flame. STEPS: Lighting an Image 1. Drag from the light icon at the bottom of the dialog box into the preview area to create a new light source. I call this area the stage because it’s as if the image is painted on the floor of a stage and the lights are hanging above it. 2. Select the kind of light you want from the Light Type pop-up menu. It’s just below the Style pop-up menu. You can select from Directional, Omni, and Spotlight: • Directional works like the sun, producing a general, unfocused light that hits a target from an angle. • Omni is a bare light bulb hanging in the middle of the room, shining in all directions from a center point. • Spotlight is a focused beam that is brightest at the source and tapers off gradually.
Chapter 11 ✦ Full-Court Filtering 549 3. Specify the color of the light by clicking the top color swatch. You can also muck about with the Intensity slider bar to control the brightness of the light. If Spotlight is selected, the Focus slider becomes available. Drag the slider toward Narrow to create a bright laser of light; drag toward Wide to diffuse the light and spread it over a larger area. 4. Move the light source by dragging at the focus point (the colored circle in the preview area). When Directional or Spotlight is selected, the focus point represents the spot at which the light is pointing. When Omni is active, the focus point is the actual bulb. (Don’t burn yourself.) 5. If Directional or Spotlight is active, you can change the angle of the light by dragging the hot spot. The hot spot represents the location in the image that’s liable to receive the most light. When you use a Directional light, the hot spot appears as a black square at the end of a line joined to the focus point. The same holds true when you edit a Spotlight; the confusing thing is that there are four black squares altogether. The light source is joined to the focus point by a line; the three handles are not. Tip To make the light brighter, drag the hot spot closer to the focus point. Dragging the hot spot away from the focus point dims the light by increasing the distance that it has to travel. It’s like having a flashlight in the living room when you’re in the garage — the light gets dimmer as you move away from it. 6. With Omni or Spotlight in force, you can edit the elliptical footprint of the light. When Omni is in force, a circle surrounds the focus point. When editing a Spotlight, you see an ellipse. Either way, this shape represents the footprint of the light, which is the approximate area of the image affected by the light. You can change the size of the light by dragging the handles around the foot- print. Enlarging the shape is like raising the light source. When the footprint is small, the light is close to the image so it’s concentrated and very bright. When the footprint is large, the light is high above the image, so it’s more generalized. Tip When editing the footprint of a Spotlight, Shift-drag a handle to adjust the width or height of the ellipse without affecting the angle. To change the angle without affecting the size, Ctrl-drag a handle. 7. Introduce more lights as you see fit. Tip You can use a bunch of different techniques to add and subtract lights on the stage. Press Tab to switch from one light to the next. Duplicate a light in the stage by Alt-dragging its focus point. To delete the active light, just press Backspace. Or if you prefer, you can drag the focus point onto the trash can icon at the bottom of the dialog box. 8. Change the Properties and Texture Channel options as you see fit. I explain these in detail after the steps.
550 Part III ✦ Selections, Masks, and Filters 9. If you want to save your settings for future use, click the Save button. Photoshop invites you to name the setup, which then appears as an option in the Style pop-up menu. If you want to get rid of one of the presets, select it from the pop-up menu and click the Delete button. 10. Press Enter to apply your settings to the image. That’s almost everything. The only parts I left out are the Properties and Texture Channel options. The Properties slider bars control how light reflects off the sur- face of your image: ✦ Gloss: Is the surface dull or shiny? Drag the slider toward Matte to make the surface flat and nonreflective, like dull enamel paint. Drag the slider toward Shiny to make it glossy, as if you had slapped on a coat of lacquer. ✦ Material: This option determines the color of the light that reflects off the image. According to the logic employed by this option, Plastic reflects back the color of the light; Metallic reflects the color of the object itself. If only I had a bright, shiny plastic thing and a bright, shiny metal thing, I could check to see whether this logic holds true in real life (like maybe that matters). ✦ Exposure: I’d like this option better if you could vary it between Sun Block 65 and Melanoma. Unfortunately, the more prosaic titles are Under and Over — exposed, that is. This option controls the brightness of all lights like a big dim- mer switch. You can control a single selected light using the Intensity slider, but the Exposure slider offers the added control of changing all lights in the stage (preview) area and the ambient light (described next) together. ✦ Ambience: The last slider enables you to add ambient light, which is a gen- eral, diffused light that hits all surfaces evenly. First, select the color of the light by clicking the color swatch to the right. Then drag the slider to cast a subtle hue over the stage. Drag toward Positive to tint the image with the color in the swatch; drag toward Negative to tint the stage with the swatch’s opposite. Keep the slider set to 0 — dead in the center — to cast no hue. The Texture Channel options enable you to treat one channel in the image as a texture map, which is a grayscale surface in which white indicates peaks and black indicates valleys. (As long as the White is high check box is selected, that is. If you deselect that option, everything flips, and black becomes the peak.) It’s as if one channel has a surface to it. By selecting a channel from the pop-up menu, you cre- ate an emboss effect, much like that created with the Emboss filter except much better because you can light the surface from many angles at once and it’s in color to boot. Choose a channel to serve as the embossed surface from the pop-up menu. Then change the Height slider to indicate more or less Flat terrain or huge Mountainous cliffs of surface texture.
Chapter 11 ✦ Full-Court Filtering 551 Color Plate 11-11 shows an image lit with a total of five spotlights, two from above and three from below. In the first example, I left the Texture Channel option set to None. In the second example, I selected the green channel as the surface map. And in the third example, I filled a separate mask channel with a bunch of white and black dollops using Filter ➪ Pixelate ➪ Pointillize and then I selected the mask from the Texture Channel pop-up menu in the Lighting Effects dialog box. The result is a wonderfully rough paper texture. ✦ ✦ ✦
Working with Layers 12 C H A P T E R ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ In This Chapter Creating and Layers, Layers Everywhere cloning layers Layers started out as little more than their name implies — Floating the sheets of pixels that you could edit and transform indepen- background layer dently of each other. But over time, layers have become increasingly more sophisticated. Since the feature was intro- Bringing layers duced in Version 3, every major release of Photoshop has forward and witnessed some kind of fantastic, and occasionally frustrating, backward layer enhancement. Photoshop 4 forced you to embrace Using the Matting the feature by creating a new layer every time you imported commands an image; but it also rewarded you with floating adjustment layers that let you correct colors without permanently Merging layers affecting a single pixel (see Chapter 17). Photoshop 5 witnessed the birth of layer effects, which included editable Converting layers drop shadows, glows, and edge bevels (see Chapter 14). to selections Now comes Photoshop 6, which permits you to bundle and Making drop shadows, color-code layers into logical clusters (this chapter), blend halos, and spotlights color channels independently of each other (Chapter 13), and even add vector-based lines and shapes (Chapter 14), not to Combining layers mention object-oriented text (Chapter 15). using links and sets Moving, scaling, In fact, in a long line of layer-boosting champions, Photoshop and rotating layers 6 bears the standard with more gusto than any release since Version 3. Mind you, there’s still room for improvement. For Aligning layers to example, one day I hope to see Photoshop integrate paramet- guides and each other ric effects, in which filters such as Unsharp Mask and Motion Blur are fully editable, interactive, and interchangeable, on Using the measure tool the order of Adobe’s full-motion editor, After Effects. But Selecting the Lock in the meantime, Photoshop 6’s layers provide us with more Transparency option freedom and flexibility than we’ve ever had before. Working with For those of your who are wondering what I’m talking about, layer masks permit me to back up for a moment. The first and foremost benefit of layers is that they add versatility. Because each Creating clipping layer in a composition is altogether independent of other groups layers, you can change your mind on a moment’s notice. Consider Figure 12-1. Here I’ve compiled the ingredients ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦
556 Part IV ✦ Layers, Objects, and Text for a very bad day at the doctor’s office. Each of the bits and pieces of hardware are located on a separate layer, all of which float above the surface of the background X-ray. Although the pixels from the hardware blend with the X-ray and with each other, I can easily reposition and modify them as the mood strikes me. Photoshop automatically reblends the pixels on the fly. Figure 12-1: So that’s what I did with my old SCSI cable! Thanks to the flexibility of layers, you can arrange a bunch of images one way one moment (top) and quite differently the next (bottom). Layers let you modify a composition without sacrificing quality.
Chapter 12 ✦ Working with Layers 557 To show what I mean, I’ve repositioned and transformed every single layer in the second example in Figure 12-1. The MO cartridge is smaller and rotated, the mess of chords hangs up instead of down, and the lock and key are just plain skewed. I can also exchange the order of the layers, merge layers, and adjust their translucency until I keel over from sheer alternative overload. Layers make it harder to make mistakes, they make it easier to make changes, and they expand your range of options. More than anything else, they permit you to restructure a composition and examine how it was put together after you assemble it. Layers can be very challenging to use or relatively simple. But whatever you do, don’t shy away. If a layer might help, there’s no reason not to add one. Sending a Selection to a Layer To its credit, Photoshop lets you establish a new layer in roughly a billion ways. If you want to add a selected portion of one image to another image, the easiest method is to Ctrl-drag the selection and drop it into its new home, as demonstrated in Figure 12-2. Photoshop makes you a new layer, lickety-split. Dropped selection becomes new layer Figure 12-2: Ctrl-drag a selection and drop it into a different image window to introduce the selection as a new layer. As you can see in the Layers palette, the camera becomes a new layer in front of the television.
558 Part IV ✦ Layers, Objects, and Text Caution Be sure to Ctrl-drag or use the move tool. If you merely drag the selection with the marquee, lasso, or wand, you drop an empty selection outline into the new image window. Also, be aware that pressing Ctrl delivers the move tool. But if the pen, arrow, or shape tool is active, you get the arrow tool instead, which won’t work for you. Press M to get the good old marquee tool, and then try Ctrl-dragging again. When you drop the selection, your selection outline disappears. Not to worry, though. Now that the image resides on an independent layer, the selection outline is no longer needed. You can move the layer using the move tool, as you would move a selection. You can even paint inside what was once the selection by selecting the first of the Lock check boxes in the Layers palette. I explain both the move tool and the Lock check boxes in greater detail throughout this chapter. If you want to clone a selection to a new layer inside the same image window — useful when performing complex filter routines and color corrections — choose Layer ➪ New ➪ Layer Via Copy. Or press Ctrl+J, as in Jump. Other ways to make a layer Those are only two of many ways to create a new layer in Photoshop. Here are a few others: ✦ Copy a selection (Ctrl+C) and paste it into another image (Ctrl+V). Photoshop pastes the selection as a new layer. ✦ If you want to relegate a selection exclusively to a new layer, choose Layer ➪ New ➪ Layer Via Cut or press Ctrl+Shift+J. Rather than cloning the selection, Layer Via Cut removes the selection from the background image and places it on its own layer. ✦ To convert a floating selection — one which you’ve moved or cloned — to a new layer, press Ctrl+Shift+J. The Shift key is very important. If you press Ctrl+J without Shift, Photoshop clones the selection and leaves an imprint of the image on the layer below. ✦ To create an empty layer — as when you want to paint a few brushstrokes without harming the original image — choose Layer ➪ New ➪ Layer or press Ctrl+Shift+N. Or click the new layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette (labeled in Figure 12-3). Photoshop ✦ When you create a new layer, Photoshop positions it in front of the active 6 layer. To create a new layer behind the active layer, Ctrl-click the new layer icon. Incidentally, you can also create a new layer by choosing New Layer from the Layers palette menu. But as you can see in Figure 12-3, nearly all the palette com- mands are duplicated in the Layer menu. The only unique palette command is
Chapter 12 ✦ Working with Layers 559 Palette Options, which lets you change the size of the thumbnails in front of the layer names. And you can do that more easily by right-clicking in the empty space below the layer names and choosing an option. Add layer style Delete layer Add layer mark New layer New layer set New adjustment layer Figure 12-3: All but one of the commands in the Layers palette menu are duplicated in the Layer menu. Tip When you choose the Layer Via Copy or Layer Via Cut command or click the new layer icon, Photoshop automatically names the new layer for you. Unfortunately, the automatic names — Layer 1, Layer 2, and so on — are fairly meaningless and don’t help to convey the contents of the layer. I mean, really, what kind of program doesn’t know a camera when it sees one?
560 Part IV ✦ Layers, Objects, and Text If you want to specify a more meaningful name, add the Alt key. Press Ctrl+Alt+J to clone the selection to a layer, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+J to cut the selection, or Alt-click the new layer icon to create a blank layer. In any case, you see the dialog box shown in Figure 12-4. Enter a name for the layer. If you like, you can also assign a color to a layer, which is helpful for identifying a layer name at a glance. Then press Enter. (For now, you can ignore the other options in this dialog box.) When creating a new layer from the keyboard, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+N to bypass the dialog box. Alt works both ways, forcing the dialog box some times and suppressing it others. The only time it produces no effect is when pasting or dropping an image. Too bad — I for one would get a lot of use out of it. Figure 12-4: Press Alt to force the display of the New Layer dialog box, which lets you name the new layer. When renaming a layer, only the Name and Color options appear. Photoshop 6 Renaming a layer used to be as simple as double-clicking on its name in the Layers palette. Now that brings up the large and complex Layer Styles dialog box, so extensive that I cover it in two chapters, 13 and 14. The simple act of renaming a layer is a bit harder to get to but at least you have lots of options. You can choose Layer Options, either from the Layer or Layers palette menu. Better yet, right-click a layer name and choose Layer Properties. Best of all, press Alt and double-click a layer name. Then enter a new name, assign a color if you like, and press Enter. Duplicating a layer To clone the active layer, you can choose Layer ➪ Duplicate Layer. But that’s the sucker’s way. The more convenient way is to drag the layer name you want to clone onto the new layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. To specify a name for the cloned layer or to copy the layer into another image, Alt- drag the layer onto the new layer icon. Always the thoughtful program, Photoshop displays the dialog box shown in Figure 12-5. You can name the cloned layer by entering something in the As option box. To jettison the layer to some other open image, choose the image name from the Document pop-up menu. Or choose New and enter the name for an entirely different image in the Name option box, as the figure shows.