Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Not quite your standard layer cake

The Bug brought up a subject which has been woefully neglected here. Layers. Both Photoshop and Paintshop Pro use layers and the basics are the same in both programs.

A sketch/template 160 from Pencil Line Sketches with all layers showing (and some changes made by me. Mostly I flipped the layers so it looks like everything is backwards). It helps if you think of layers as transparency sheets. Each layer will have one or more objects on it.



If you chose your move tool as I have done here, then click and hold on a visible object on your template (you can see that I have my cursor over one of the back papers), then you can move what is on that layer.



And you can see that I have moved that back paper. I did a control z to move the paper back since I like where it was to begin with.



This template had one photo which I wanted for three with one large one in the title paper. I'm not going to go into the wherefores and how-tos on how to do that, yet.



The main thing though, it that I wanted them over to the right more. If you don't have a ruler on the top and to the left of your image go to View>Rulers (or control alt r on keyboard). You should always have your rulers visible.



If you know where your guideline should be placed, place your cursor over the grey line on the ruler next to the guideline, then left click.



A dialogue box for the guide properties will pop up and you can input the guide position there.



Now comes the fun part. On my layers palette (and you should have a layers palette, if not: View>Palettes>Layers should be checked) I have chosen one of the three photo templates. At the top of the layers palette is the opacity bar, the layers link toggle, blend mode, Layer Effects Visibility Toggle and Lock Transparency lock.



It is the layers link toggle that we are going to use. I'm going to click on it so that I get a chain and the number 1.

Then I will move down to the next two photo templates, one at time, and do the same thing. Setting the layers link toggle to 1.



Now when I move one, all 3 move together



Layers in Photoshop and Paintshop Pro work just like paper scrapping, if you think about it. The bottom layer is going to be your background paper. Everything above will be your elements and photos.

Template from Pencil Line Sketches; "Spring Breeze" (c)Gotta Pixel Designers; Fonts: Century Gothic, Cooper Black

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