What is Layer in Photoshop?

Layers are like stacked, transparent sheets of glass on which you can paint images. You can see through the transparent areas of a layer to the layers below. You can work on each layer independently, experimenting to create the effect you want. Each layer remains independent until you combine (merge) the layers. The bottommost layer in the Layers panel, the Background layer, is always locked (protected), meaning you cannot change its stacking order, blending mode, or opacity (unless you convert it into a regular layer).

About the Layers panel

The Layers panel (Window > Layers) lists all layers in an image, from the top layer to the Background layer at the bottom. In Expert mode, if you are working in the Custom Workspace, you can drag the Layers panel out and tab it with other panels.

The active layer, or the layer that you are working on, is highlighted for easy identification. As you work in an image, it’s a good idea to check which layer is active to make sure that the adjustments and edits you perform affect the correct layer. For example, if you choose a command and nothing seems to happen, check to make sure that you’re looking at the active layer.

Using the icons in the panel, you can accomplish many tasks—such as creating, hiding, linking, locking, and deleting layers. With some exceptions, your changes affect only the selected, or active, layer, which is highlighted.

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Retrodots - Photoshop Plugins

Photoshop plugins (or plug-ins) are add-on programs aimed at providing additional image effects or performing tasks that are impossible or hard to fulfill using Adobe Photoshop alone. Plugins can be opened from within Photoshop and several other image editing programs (compatible with the appropriate Adobe specifications) and act like mini-editors that modify the image.

Retrodots is a simple plugin that generates dot grids which can be based on selections. Download Retrodots here (128kb, requires win32 and a photoshop compatible host v3.0+). There is no Mac version!

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Photoshop Hidden Tips & Secrets

1. Press Tab will hide tool bar and palette, Shift+Tab will hide only palette.

2. Hold Shift + click the top blue bar for toolbar and pallette will move them to the nearest edge.

3. Double click the top blue bar for any pallette window will minimize it.

4. Double click the grey background will bring up open file option, Hold Shift+double click will open up the browser.

5. Sick of the default grey background around your image? select paint bucket, hold shift and click on the grey background will change to whatever color you have in your foreground color box.

6. In photoshop, all "Cancel" button in a window can be changed to "Reset" button by holding Alt.

7. Caps lock will switch you cursor for accuracy.

8. Press F button will switch between 3 different screen mode give you more working area.

9. To draw a straight line, click then move to the end point and hold shift + click.

10. Hold Ctrl will temporary make any tool into move tool until you release Ctrl.

11. Ctrl + Alt and click drag the image will make an duplication of the current image over lay on top.

12. Hold Space bar will make any tool into "Hand Tool" until you release Space bar.

13. While in Zoom Tool, Ctrl+space = zoom in, alt+space = zoom out.

14. Hold Ctrl and press "+" or "-" will change the % for image in navigator window.

15. When Using eyedropper tool to capture foreground color, hold Alt and click will instantly capture the color for background.

16. With Measure Tool, draw a line then hold Alt and draw another line from the end of the first line will measure the angle.

17. Ctrl+Alt+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z will go back and forth in the history.

18. Alt+Backspace and Ctrl+Backspace will fill in whole screen with foreground color or background color, Shift+backspace will bring up option windown, Alt+Shift+Backspace and Ctrl+Shift+Backspace will fill the image with foreground or background color but will leave the alpha transparent area alone.

19. When free transform with Ctrl+T, hold Alt to keep the origial image and transform an duplicated layer of it. Ctrl+Shift+T to repeat whatever you did in the last transform.

20. To make sure you Crop is on the edge of the image, hold Ctrl while croping.

21. Ctrl+J will duplicated the current layer.

22. Ctrl+Shift+E will merge all visible layers to one layer, Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E will make copy of the original and merge all visible layers.

23. While using Marquee Tools, hold Alt will make the starting point as a center of the selection.

24. Ctrl + D to deselect, Ctrl+Shift+D to reselect what you deselected.

25. While selecting with Marquee tool, press space bar can allow you to move the selection.

26. Hold Shift and press "+" or "-" will switch between the layer mode:

N = Normal
I = Dissolve
M = Multiply
S = Screen
O = Overlay
F = Soft Light
H = Hard Light
D = Color Dodge
B = Color Burn
K = Darken
G = Lighten
E = Difference
X = Exclusion
U = Hue
T = Saturation
C = Color
Y = Luminosity
Q = Behind 1
L = Threshold 2
R = Clear 3
W = Shadow 4
V = Midtones 4
Z = Highlights 4

***The shortcut works even for following situation:

***Alpha turned off, Indexed Mode, Line tool, Bucket Tools, Dodge and Burn Tools

27. While using Brush or any other tools, change the opacity by type the number.

*** type one number for % of it's ten times [4=40%]

*** type two number for exact % [press 7 then 2 will get 72%]

28. Hold Alt while clicking on the eye icon beside the layer will hide all other layers.

29. Hold Alt while clicking the pen icon beside the layer will unchain this layer from all layers.

30. Select a layer, hold Alt and click the top edge of another layer will group them.

31. Hold Alt and click the button "Create a new layer", will create a new adjustment layer.

32. Select a layer and hold Alt, then click on the garbage can button will instantly delete the layer, marquee where you want alpha and Ctrl+click the "Create new channel" button will create a alpha only on the area you marqueed.

33. File> Automate > Contact Sheet: this can create a small thumbnail for every file, this can save you some time from searching.

34. When Move Tool is selected, two box on top can be useful from time to time, those are "Auto select layer" and "Show bounding box".

35. While Move Tool is selected, hold Shift (Alt+Shift+Right click) can allow rather or not make current layer chain with upper layer.

36. With grid on, click the top left corner of the grid and drag to anywhere on the image to set the pivot, double click ont he icon again can reset the pivot.

37. After draw a path on the image with pen tool, Ctrl+shift+H can hide/show it.

38. Control Navigator with keyboard sometimes can be more time efficient than mouse.

***

Home = move to top left corner
End = move to right bottom corner
PageUp = move up one page
PageDown = move down one page
Ctrl+PageUp = move left one page
Ctrl+PageDown = move right one page
Shift+PageUp = move up 10 pixel
Shift+PageDown = move down 10 pixel
Ctrl+Shift+PageUp = move left 10 pixel
Ctrl+Shift+PageDown = move right 10 pixel

39. Ctrl+Tab allow you switch between different image files you are working at.

40. F12 = Revert to how the file is like the last time you saved it.

41. Shortcuts for Channel: RGB, CMYK, indexed color...

***

Ctrl+"~" = RGB
Ctrl+1 = red
Ctrl+2 = green
Ctrl+3 = blue
Ctrl+4 = other path
Ctrl+9 = other path
Ctrl+"~" = CMYK
Ctrl+1 = light green
Ctrl+2 = pink red
Ctrl+3 = yellow
Ctrl+4 = black
Ctrl+5 = other path
Ctrl+9 = other path
Ctrl+1 = Indexed
Ctrl+2 = other path
Ctrl+9 = other path

42. hold Ctrl then you can draw a red box in the Navigator thumbnail for viewing.

43. Hold Alt and click on any of the history step, that step will be copied and become the most recent one.

44. Alt drag a step from a serial action can copy it to another action.

45. Alt-click the flare preview thumb, and you can fill in numerical coordinaates for lens flare.

46. (not 45 because mlkdesign already added one) Holding Shift + Alt while transforming a object will do it proportunatly and from the center.

47. If you have the move tool selected and you want something duplicated just hold the alt key and move the image, holding the shift + alt while doing this will move it along one axis.

48. If you want to make a image straight that is crooked (maybe from scanning). Click on the eyedropper tool or it the I key 3 times to get the ruler. Click on the left side of the straight edge, then the right side of the straight (but crooked) edge. The choose Image> Rotate Canvas> Arbitrary. PS will give you the degress of rotation you just click ok.

49. If you create something in Illustrator copy it, and paste it in PS it will ask you if you want this to be a pixel, path, or shape layer.

50. If you have a mask on a layer and you want to place a image in there and keep the mask, simply open the image say copy, and then ctrl click on the layer to select the mask and it Shift + Ctrl + V to paste it into the mask which will also put it on a new layer as well.

51. To center a image, ctrl + a , ctrl + x, ctrl + v, I think it also puts that image on a new layer.

52. Ctrl+E will merge the highlighted layer down to the next

53. When you have a brush selected, using [ or ] will scroll up or down that brush list.

54. double clicking the zoom tool will make the image 100%, double clicking the hand tool will fit the image to your screen resolution.

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Collection: Design By: JCT Students

CTEVT Annex JCT Program

Bhim Higher Secondary School
Dolakha, Suntopar

Design Collection

 

 

Design : Anita Subedi - 2069

Design : Dashrath Giri - 2069

Design : Pujan Shrestha - 2069

Design : Salin Shrestha - 2069

Design : Saneeta Shrestha - 2069


All design are creation of JCT Student - 2069 using Graphics Application Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign

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Adobe Illustrator vs. Photoshop vs. InDesign

InDesign is mainly used to organize text/images and design layouts like you see on magazine pages, newsletters, etc.

Illustrator is usually used for "vector" graphics where you create shapes or text (usually of solid color or with gradients) that don't lose quality when you enlarge or shrink the image. It is best for making logos or graphics.

Photoshop can also create vector images, but not nearly as well as illustrator. Photoshop is usually used for editing "pixel" based images such as a photo or a scanned image, which illustrator cannot do. Unlike vector graphics, enlarging and shrinking a photo will reduce the quality of the photo.

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Photoshop Tips & Tricks That You Should Know About

Photoshop is a heck of an amazing software. You can do all kinds of things with images and go as far as your imagination can take you. Once you are past the beginner level and understand what the various options are for and how they work, then you are ready for Photoshop tips and tricks like the ones that are the topic of this 2 part article.
They will help you in getting things done quickly, save you a lot of headache and steps and overall inflate your Photoshop-fu! So here we go:

Change Brush Size On The Fly

If you are even the slightest bit serious about Photoshop or you have used the Brush tool a couple of times, this single tip is worth at least a dozen alone. While you are using the brush tool you do not have to go back to the options palette to change the brush size or softness. Left bracket key ‘[' decreases the brush size and Right bracket key ']‘ increases the brush size. Similarly Shift + [ decrease hardness (makes the brush soft) and Shift + ] increases the hardness of the brush.

Create Guides Easily

Guides can help you align objects in your composition. You can quickly create guides using rulers that appear at the top and the side of the document window. Click on the ruler and drag to create a guide. Release the mouse button where you want to create the guide. Once created you can quickly show/hide guides using Ctrl + ; 

Don’t Cancel Just Reset

 

Photoshop can be pretty tough to get and even harder to master. Moreover, the nature of work dictates that you must experiment and things don’t always go the way you anticipate while experimentation. So if you are inside curves, or hue saturation or perhaps levels and you make a series of adjustments that didn’t turn out the way you wanted, you would want to start over again.
But wait don’t hit cancel just yet. Instead hold down the Alt key and see how the cancel button changes to Reset. Now click reset and the adjustments you made will be undone while sparing you the round trip to open the same dialog again.

Scrub The Input Boxes

There are a lot of controls in Photoshop that let you enter a value using the keyboard. Font size, brush size, opacity and who knows how many others. Well a peculiar thing about these input boxes is that you can increase or decrease the value that’s in them by just scrubbing with the mouse pointer. As you move close to any such control the mouse pointer changes to something like the one shown above. Now just click and drag in the direction you want to change the value. Generally dragging towards the right side increases the value and towards left side decreases the value.

Adjust Opacity Quickly

The opacity controls can be manipulated even faster! Just hit a number from 0-9 and opacity will be adjusted in increments of 10. This means that 1 would set the opacity to 10%, 7 will set it to 70% and 0 will set it to 100%. If you are looking for a definite value say 57% you can quickly type 5 followed by 7 to set the opacity to 57%. The trick works with layer opacity as well as for any tool that has an opacity setting.

Change Intensity Of Filters Without Dialog Boxes

Say you just applied the Unsharpen Mask filter to sharpen your photo. If you find you went a bit too far you can take back some of it by using Shift + Ctrl + F. If you would like to intensify the effect further you can use Ctrl + F to do so. Remember these would work just after you have applied the filter. If you performed other operations after applying the filter, these might not work as expected.

Unlock Background Layer

You might have noticed that the background layer has a little lock icon besides it. This indicates that the layer is locked. You can quickly unlock the background layer by double clicking on it, or Alt + clicking on the background layer or simply catch hold of the lock and drag it to the bin at the bottom of the layers palette.

Duplicate A Layer

Duplicating a layer can be very useful when saving selections or when you are unsure about the sequence of adjustments that you will be making. You can drag any layer onto the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to duplicate the layer or you can select the layer and press Ctrl + J.

Duplicate Layer Styles

More often than not, you want to apply the same layer styles to two or more layers. You can remember the settings or trust your eye and go on applying layer styles one by one or you can hold down the Alt key, click and drag the “fx” icon onto the layer you want to duplicate the layer style on and you are done!

Multiple Undo(s)

So what is the universal shortcut for Undo?  Ctrl + Z. Yeah right, and you would expect that hitting Ctrl + Z multiple times would take you back interatively. Only it works a little different in Photoshop. Ctrl + Z toggles between undo(ing) and redo(ing) the most recent operation. So if you want multiple undo(es) use Ctrl + Alt + Z. Similarly for multiple redo(s) you can use Shift + Ctrl + Z
Oh, I remember a few more. However, let’s just save them for another time in part two of our series. Meanwhile let us know if you have any Photoshop tips & tricks of your own!

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