|
7. So what's been going on here then? Well, if you keep on dragging that slider down to zero, the moon will eventually disapppear altogether. Slide it back up to 100% again so we have a big, bright, full moon back (at least the cat will be happy ;-). The opacity slider is one of my favourite tools in PSP. I use it a lot. Have you noticed the watermarks on all of my images? Yep, you guessed it, they were all done with the opacity slider. It's a fantastic tool and is useful for all kinds of things. Want to desaturate the colour of one specific element? You can use the opacity slider. Want to create a little transparency so you can see another object behind something else? Use the opacity slider. Before you move on to the next step, have a good play around with the all the opacity sliders and visibility icons (the eye) for each layer and see what happens.
Tip: Make sure you actually select a layer before you play around with it...just click on the layer on the palette to select it. A common mistake made by newbies (and even more experienced users!) is that people often forget to select the layer they wish to work on. They tweak and they tweak, and then wonder why nothing is happening! It's a common boo-boo a lot of people make, and unfortunately, suprisingly easy to do.
 The above image shows two layers (Cat and Moon layers) with the visibility toggled off. You'll always see a red cross appear through the eye icon when the visibility is off. Click on the eye again and the cross disappears: the layer will become visible again . The Fence layer shows the opacity changed to 56%. Have a good play around with the sliders on each of the layers and see what happens when you change these settings.
Ok, make sure all the sliders are back to where they started (100% visibility) and that none of the eyes have a red cross through them so all the layers are visible again.
8. Well, I'm reasonably happy with the way my picture looks, except I'm not finished with the fence - I want to give it a more realistic look. Click on the Fence layer to select it. It doesn't look bad, but I want to sharpen it up a little. Go to Adjust>Sharpness>Sharpen. Hit OK. Hmmmmmmm........go back to Adjust>Sharpness>Sharpen More. Ahhh, this is a little better. My fence now has some ridges on it to make it look more like a weathered, paling fence. It looks good, but I think it could do with just a tiny bit more tweaking........
9. I want to bring the cat and moon a little closer together, so click on the cat layer to select it. Now click on the Mover tool 
Click on the cat and drag it carefully to the right, along the top of the fence until it's sitting a little closer to the moon. Now click on the Moon layer to select it and click on the Mover tool again, this time dragging the moon across and down a little towards the cat until you can see the cat's head appear on top of the moon (see finished picture, below).
Because the Cat layer is above the Moon layer on the layers palette, I can move the moon pretty much anywhere behind the cat I like. But, what if we'd created the Cat layer underneath the moon? Would we still be able to move her on top of it? Well, the short answer to that is no, not if we don't change the order of the layers on the palette. The good news is though, we can! All we'd need to do would be to click on and drag the Cat layer to the top of the stack (remember we were playing around with moving layers in Part 1 of this tutorial?). This is where the layers palette really comes into its own: moving layers around on the palette is one of its most powerful features. OK, now the black cat stands out much better against the night sky, and her head looks pretty good profiled against the moon. I think that'll do :)
10. By now you should have a pretty good idea of how versatile layers are. Ok, now a brief review of what we've done: we've learnt that to have the ultimate control over the elements you create using PSP, always use layers. By placing each object on its own layer, you can manipulate it completely separately from all the other elements in the same image. This gives you not only a great deal of flexibility, but also offers you a lot of power over how your graphics are created, and they they ultimately will look when finished. Layers will save you a great deal of time and effort. For instance, think of what we've been doing with the Mooncat image; it wouldn't be possible to change each element individually like that if we'd placed them all on just the Background.
11. What I've shown you here is only the tip of the iceberg. Because this is an Absolute Beginners tut, we've only covered a couple of the basics (but very important ones!). The layers palette has many, many more options than we've explored. My advice to you now is to experiment, experiment, experiment - and then experiment some more. Now that you understand the basics of how layers work, go out there and find other tutorials that will take you further. You'll be amazed at what you can accomplish with all the features of the layers palette. Good luck, and have fun creating :)
UPDATE: Since completing this tutorial, I've had a lot of requests for how I created the images in the 'Mooncat' image. So, I've decided to whip up a couple of tutorials on how I created the full moon, and ricketty old paling fence. Whilst, strictly speaking, neither are beginners tuts, I still recommend you give them a try - who knows? You may be more 'advanced' now than you think :)
© Graphic Allusions 2003-2004. |