Photoshop Tutorial for Elements 9

Photoshop Tutorialfor Elements 9A guide to some of the basic techniques using Photoshop Elements 9

By Candice Foers-Bates

Photoshop Tutorialfor Elements 9Part 8

Working with Layers

Working with LayersGo to ‘View’ > ‘Rulers’. You can drag a guideline over your image from these rulers and use them as a guide when making selections, etc.

Working with LayersHere the guides have been used to set a marquee area.

Working with LayersGo to ‘Edit’ > ‘Copy’

Working with LayersGo to ‘Edit’ > ‘Paste’

Working with LayersThe area which was selected now has a copy pasted into a new layer.

Working with LayersClick on the new layer and alter its opacity.

Working with LayersYou can’t see that this layer is paler because the background layer can be seen through it.

Working with LayersSo we need to make an opaque mask. Go to ‘Layer’ > ‘New layer’

Working with LayersMake the same marquee selection and fill it with white. Pull this layer below the first one in the layers palette. You can make each layer invisible by hitting the eye icon.

Working with LayersAdd some text. All the layers are visible now to see the final image.

It’s important to know when working with layers that if you want to retain the separate layers to work on again, you will need to save your file as a PSD file format which is a Photoshop file.

If you save as a jpeg your layers will be lost and only the visible layers will be merged into the jpeg file.

Working with LayersYou can rename your layers by double-clicking on the layer name.

Working with LayersHold down the ‘control’ key to select non-consecutive layers. Link these layers using the icon on the layers palette.

Working with LayersThese linked layers will now do everything together – whatever you do to one will automatically happen to the other linked layer/s. Here they’re being moved together.

Working with LayersHere they’ve been ‘skewed’ together.

I hope that was of some help.