(upbeat music)
- We're going to start things off
with a quick introduction to the layers panel.
So if you're new to Photoshop,
or the Layers Panel for that matter,
I'm going to be hitting you with
an awful lot of information here.
However, rest assured, this is the kind of stuff
we'll review over and over again.
All right, so what is the best way to learn
how to use the Layers Panel,
is to rummage through a layered composition
which is what we're going to do right now.
And so this is a composition by the way
that you and I will be creating from scratch.
The only things I'm providing are
the base photographic image, and a vector-based path outline
in the shape of this shark.
All right, so the first step is to make sure
that the Layers Panel is up on screen.
If it's not, you can go up to the Window menu
and choose the Layers command,
but don't choose any one of these commands
if it has a check mark in front of it
because that will actually hide the panel
along with all the other panels inside that group.
Fortunately, you can bring it right back by returning
to the Window menu, and once again, choosing Layers.
And by the way, if the Color Panel is taking up
too much room on screen,
then you can drag this horizontal bar to make it smaller
so that you can see every single one of these five layers.
And notice that each one of the layers has an eyeball
in front of it.
If you click on the eye,
you're going to go ahead and turn that layer off,
which in our case represents the screws right there
inside the shark.
So you can see if I click inside that square
where the eyeball used to be,
then I'll go ahead and bring those screws back like so.
And so in addition to hiding or showing a single layer,
you can hide and show all other layers.
And to show you that, I'll just go ahead and zoom out
by pressing Control+0 or Command+0 on the Mac,
and then you press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac,
and you click an eyeball.
And notice, because I clicked the eye in front of
that base image layer right there,
I went ahead and turned all the Layers in front of it off.
So this is the actual unmodified photographic image,
and then if you want to bring all those layers back,
you once again, press the Alt key or the Option key
on the Mac and click on that eyeball.
And it's worth knowing when you're working inside Photoshop
that the Alt key on the PC, the Option key on the Mac,
often reverses the behavior of an option.
And so as opposed to in our case turning the layer off
when I clicked that eyeball,
and then bringing it back when I click again,
Alt or Option clicking keeps that layer visible
and makes everything else invisible.
All right, I'll go ahead and Alt or Option click
on that eye once again, in order to make it active.
Notice that I've kind of had a named all of my layers
in advance,
so there's a layer right here called sweat.
This one's called cliff.
If a layer name is truncated,
because there's not room for it,
you're going to see a little ..., like so.
In which case you can hover over that layer name
to see the full name,
in this case shark, or in this case screws.
If you want to rename a layer,
they just go ahead and double-click on its name like so,
and I'll call this guy texture,
because that's actually what it is.
It's the texture inside of the shark,
and I'm just going to go ahead and zoom in here,
so you can see what I'm talking about.
I'll turn that texture layer off,
and you can see that we have a flat black shark now.
And then I'll turn it back on, and we've got texture.
All right, notice that these layers are inset,
and they have these little arrows that are going to the left
and then down to the left of the thumbnails.
Those indicate that they are clipped layers,
meaning that this texture layer is now enclosed
inside the shark layer.
And that is how we get the texture inside the shark,
without it leaking out.
If it weren't clipped, if I was to select it
and then go up to the Flyout menu icon,
up here in the top right corner of the Layers Panel,
and I were to choose Release Clipping Mask,
notice that the texture is no longer inset,
we no longer have that little arrow
and the texture is pouring outside of the shark.
I don't want that, so I'll go ahead and press Control+Z,
or Command-Z on the Mac to undo that change.
Notice right here, we've got a vector based shape layer,
and you can tell that's the case
because we can see this little square with points on it
in the bottom right corner of the thumbnail.
Next door we have, what's known as the Layer Mask.
If you want to turn the Layer Mask off,
then you can right-click on it,
and choose Disable Layer Mask.
Don't choose Delete, just choose Disable,
and that will put a red X over the layer mask
and turn it off so that we can see how the shark
is leaking out down into the right.
If you want to turn it back on,
you can right-click once again,
and choose Enable Layer Mask.
Or if you're just in the shortcut, it's Shift+click.
So you can Shift+click in order to turn a Layer Mask off.
You can Shift+click to turn it back on.
Now, everything I'm showing you by the way
is saved along with the file.
So you can have invisible layers or other elements
inside of any layer composition, all right.
Now down here, we have what are known as Layer Effects.
And so I'll go ahead and zoom in a little farther
on the shark right here,
so that you can see the shaded edge right there.
That's the result of this Layer Effect Inner Shadow.
So if I were to turn it off, that shadow goes away.
If I turn it on, it comes back.
(upbeat music)