Gulbins - Mastering photoshop layers a photographers guide

Mastering Photoshop Layers

A Photographers Guide

Juergen Gulbins

Editor: Joan Dixon

Project Editor: Maggie Yates

Proofreader: Jeanne Hansen

Layout and Type: Juergen Gulbins

Cover Design: Helmut Kraus, www.exclam.de

Translator: Jeremy Cloot

Printer: Everbest Printing Co. Ltd through Four Colour Print Group, Louisville, Kentucky

Printed in China

ISBN 978-1-937538-27-9

1st Edition 2013 by Juergen Gulbins

Rocky Nook Inc.

802 East Cota St., 3rd Floor

Santa Barbara, CA 93103

www.rockynook.com

First published under the title Photoshop Ebenentechniken fr Fotografen dpunkt.verlag GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gulbins, Jrgen.
Mastering Photoshop layers : a photographers guide / by Juergen Gulbins.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-937538-27-9 (pbk.)
1. Adobe Photoshop. 2. Layers (Computer graphics) 3. Photography--Digital techniques. I. Title.
TR267.5.A3G85 2013
006.696--dc23
2013027184

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Graphic designers build up complex images layer by layer, starting with the background and gradually adding individual elements and special effects until the image is complete. Many photographers use a similar approach when composing an image, viewing the foreground, the middle distance, and the background as separate zones, be it with regard to focus, lighting, or formal and color-based composition.

The second phase of digital image creation involves processing the images you have captured and often entails optimizing individual image layers separately from one another. For example, a background that has been deliberately blurred requires much less sharpening than the main subject, which will usually be portrayed with maximum contrast. Tonal values, too, often require a layer-based processing approach, with shadows being treated differently from transitions or other elements within the frame. Colors can also be processed in separate zones, with some requiring desaturation while others are intensified. Such processing steps can also be applied with differing strengths from zone to zone to enhance the effect of an image and steer the viewers gaze within an image.

However, even if you dont use layers or zones of focus in your basic composition, there is a multitude of other reasons to use layer techniques during image processing, and you will get to know many of them in the course of this book.

The CS in Photoshop CS stands for Creative Suite and indicates that the version in question is a component of the multi-part Adobe Creative Suite.

The enormous range of tools available for processing digital images can be confusing, even for experts. To keep things clear, this book uses only Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CC (the Creative Cloud version, aka Photoshop 14) and refers to equivalent functionality in other versions if necessary. Photoshops Layers functionality has remained largely unchanged over the course of the past few releases, so most of the tools and techniques described here can be applied to earlier versions of the program as well as to current versions of Photoshops sister program, Photoshop Elements.

Photoshop CS5 is sometimes referred to as Photoshop 12 and CS6 as Photoshop 13. While this book was being writing, Photoshop Creative Cloud was introduced, also called Photoshop CC or Photoshop 14.

We will show you how to load images for processing from Adobe Bridge and Lightroom, although most other data management systems and Raw converters allow to you to open images in Photoshop using the same basic techniques. Images can also be loaded and opened directly from the Photoshop interface using Mini Bridge or the Image Browser, which has been part of Photoshop since the release of CS5.

In the course of the book we will also be using a few additional tools that perform functions covered by Photoshop in either a more detailed or more sophisticated way, or are simply more user friendly. Most of these tools and plug-ins are available as free trial versions, so try them out before you make a purchase.

Digital photography is an art and a skill with enormous potential, and it is quickly replacing conventional analog photo techniques. The speed of development of digital camera and processing technology in the last few years has been breathtaking, and the quality of the resulting images is constantly improving. This book aims to give you a comprehensive introduction to the subject and will help you to quickly familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of the medium, providing a fun way to save time and effort processing your own digital images.

Depending on your knowledge level, you can skip the parts of the text that describe techniques you are already familiar with and take more time to study those that interest you most. We assume that you are already familiar with the basic principles of working with Photoshop and recommend that you begin with , where the basics of layer techniques are described in detail. This chapter may seem like tough going in places, but it makes a great starting point and reference point for future adventures.

To enable you to follow our examples and hone your own processing techniques, you can download most of the images used in this book from www.rockynook.com/PSL

The chapters that follow sometimes press ahead rapidly, but they always clearly demonstrate the specific techniques they describe. You will also find that we describe these techniques in more detail later in the book to assist us with other processing challenges along the way.

At the end of each chapter we summarize what we have learned and provide a few useful keyboard shortcuts and program settings. If you use Photoshop a lot, you will find that learning and using selected shortcuts will significantly speed up your workflow.