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Tutorials » Photoshop » Basics

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People new to Photoshop are often confused as to the purpose of the ‘Layers’ in Photoshop. People migrating from the paper medium as well as those from lesser painting programs encounter this. Well, in this tutorial, I will try to get things in order (okay, bad pun!)

First up, open Photoshop and click File>New. In the dialog box that opens up use the following settings:




Before we take a look at the layer palette let us try to understand the concept of layers. Think of layers as images stacked one on top of another. Let’s take a real world example: Imagine that you have 3 coloured paper cut-outs (in colurs red, green and blue) of the shapes I have shown below:



Now you could arrange these cut-outs in anyway you want. For example, you could have red at the bottom, green in the middle and blue on top. Or you could have it in the reverse order.



Obviously, the cut-outs that you place above will cover up areas of the cut-outs that you place below them. Also note that the way you stack your cut-outs makes a difference as to how your overall design looks. Now, this is exactly how layers work in Photoshop. Think of layers in Photoshop as the cut-outs that we used in our example. Layers that you place ‘above’ (in the layer palette) will cover up areas of the layers ‘below’.

Now, if you are thinking why make things complicated by using layers, why bother at all… think again. Layers offer an amazing range of functionalities. You can easily make complex shapes, create transparencies and even define how a layer behaves to the ones under it. And not just that, Photoshop allows you to style each layer using a comprehensive set of filters available in the Layer effects gallery that will let you make your layers cast shadows, glow, appear beveled and what not!

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Tutorials » Photoshop » Basics