Intro to Adobe Photoshop | What are layers?
Intro to Photoshop layers…let's imagine a sandwich.
Like a big sandwich.
Now, imagine that you are looking down on your sandwich from the very top (it's on the table and you're standing over top of it looking down), you can only see the bread, right?
Remove the bread…now you see the lettuce…remove the lettuce, not you see the tomato….
That's basically how layers work in Photoshop except, well, they're not quite as yummy, ha!
Alright, let's get into the meat and potatoes of it – ha, I must be crazy hungry today as I write this post.
#hangry
Photoshop is based almost entirely around the use of layers so you need to be super familiar with them.
This is the layers palette…
If you were to not be able to see that, just go to “window > layers” and it'll pop up (it may be in a different place than mine, that's fine – put it where you like it).
Alright, now each element in your design should have it's own layer so that you can independently change or move it and you can drag and drop any layers within the palette to another location in the palette.
Some things you need to remember:
- The top layer in the layers palette is what will be seen first, then the 2nd layer from the top and so on.
- If a layer encompasses the entire size of the document you're working with, you will not be able to see the layers underneath it.
You can use the “eye' right next to each layer to turn off or on layers without deleting them (see image to the right).
That's really the basics of layers inside of Photoshop – if you're ready for the video version of this post, you can view it below…it actually goes a bit more in-depth because this is easier to explain by showing you exactly what I mean.
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