FREE PHOTOSHOP TUTORIALS

Welcome to Red Pixel Media! In today’s tutorial we will be focusing on layer basics in Adobe Photoshop. If you’re a master at Photoshop then I’d suggest moving towards another article because this starts from the ground up!

Layers are much like the invisible sheets used on overheads. Layer them on top of each other and you may have an image, however, on it’s own it’s nothing. Great example is from the movie Iron Man! Awesome movie! The initial design plans of “Iron Man” was on many different overhead sheets to avoid unwanted attention, however, when Stark piled them on top of each other in the right order, the plans became a full blueprint image!

Layers can be found at the bottom left quadrant of your screen:

On our screen we have made one arrow, one square and one circle on separate layers.

(create new layers by clicking the small button next to the trash can):

Note: Objects can only be drawn on the layer you selected.

Layers play an essential role in today’s graphic designs! (believe it or not!) For example, you can compare the above image to one that simply moves the objects over each other and add a drop shadow under each object:

Layer effect:

Layer effects are powerful options for each individual layer. Simply double click your layer and a pop-up box with tons of options will show up:

Along the left you will see many easy layer effects that will add great depth to your design concepts. Now, after clicking on an effect you can see more details which can all be edited. Many will have blend mode changes, colors, opacity changes, ect. I suggest just playing around with these options because there is never one “right way” when dealing with photoshop. Many website buttons have “bevel” affects which may be outlined by “inner/outer glow” or “stroke”.

Blend mode’s can be changed on an entire layer also, found just above your list of layers. You can read about any of these modes here.

Opacity is a powerful option when dealing with layers. We can quickly and easily add more effects just by changing the opacity of our top layers:

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Remember that when you are finished your Photoshop project; in order to preserve your layers, you MUST save in a .psd file format. The popular format of .jpg will compress EVERY layer into a single image which is PERMANENTLY lost! ALWAYS make sure you have a .psd copy in order to make future changes.

Note: Layers can be merged by selecting the layers you wish to merge, right click and selecting merge layers.