Some more on Layers and other stuff...

Following up on my previous article I thought I could just throw in a little bit more about layers and one or two other things.

Let's start with the other things.

Remember this screen here:

This was what a bog-standard Photoshop CS2 screen looked like when you opened it. So not much happened until you opened an image...

This now begins to look like business. Now you can work with this image as is or you can maximize it. If you work with more than one image at a time (such as building a collage or designing a business card) it does make life easier to be able to see where the others are without having to minimise, maximise and restore down all the time.

Also, note the rulers around the image. Essential. To switch them on, go here:

Please note that the little tick present shows that Rulers are already switched on. Also note the keyboard shortcut shown. Magic stuff.

Now, these rulers can be made to show different units and there are lots and lots of more goodies with which we can tweak Photoshop to suit our needs.

PLEASE PLEASE...HUGE DISCLAIMER HERE...let your individual PC skills be your guide as to how far you want to push this tweaking exercise. It is generally not easy to mess things up completely as long as we pay attention to the pop-up warnings but one step too far without paying attention and things can go south spectacularly...personal experience speaking here folks.

Now then, here is one of the first places to go to start modifying Photoshop. Please proceed with caution and at your own risk. Tried, tested and necessary things will be shown in these articles from time to time and will also be explained in detail so you can decide for yourself if you want to give it a go or not.

Here it is:

So I fluffed it a bit...the "Units & Rulers" should have been highlighted in blue because that is where you should have clicked to see this pop-up dialogue window here:

Now those out there with more PC skills than myself...you are the vast majority, promise... will immediately spot the drag-down menu taking you to other options inside the "Preferences" menu. Also, the "Prev" and "Next" buttons top right should give it away so you don't need to keep entering the menu system should you wish to perform multiple transactions in one go.

The important thing here for now is to look at the top block labeled "Units" In the white drag-down field labeled "Rulers" there are the following options which appear when you click on the little black triangle.

I tend to leave untouched that which I don't understand. It is way too much effort to reinstall Photoshop and lose all my other tweaks if I mess things up beyond the point of return.

What is very interesting is the default settings in the "New Document Preset Resolutions" block. You WILL see this material again.

And what about more on layers I hear you ask...

Have a look at this:

This is a screen grab of the Layers Palette of a quick and easy business card design I did yesterday. It consists of a scanned textured paper for a background, five different text layers and a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer to boost the background colours.

Simple, quick and not nearly as complicated as it looks, trust me. As a point of interest, those layers can be dragged up and down for visibility effects although none will be visible here but we will return to that point in future articles.

And the image resulting from these layers? here it is:

Not quite the final product yet but getting there.

Oh, and one more thing, when we start working with layers and we need to close the image before it is complete done, simply save the image as a .PSD file.

Simple, like so:

Go to the File menu system as shown below and click on "Save As"  Did you spot the keyboard shortcut there? This one will save you truckloads of time in the long run.

now be sure to save your work in the correct file type

 Simply select the "Photoshop (*.PSD.*PDD) option as shown above and save as always where you want it with the layers preserved for next time.

So there we have it. We have now seen how to start tweaking the inner workings of the beast and we had a sneak preview of things layered to come. Many many more to follow.

As for the little hidden gem of the article, please remember the following: Always view images in magnification percentages divisable by 5. What the heck?

Simple really, look here:

And here:

Using the zoom tool to increase or decrease the size of the displayed image will alternate between zoom percentages divisible by 5 (12.5, 25, 50 etc) and percentages divisible by 3 (33, 67 etc)

This might have changed in later versions but in mine, for some reason images might (and DO) display very jagged on zoom percentages divisible by 3. Simple really, avoid those percentages and stick with the fivers.

Until next time!