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Adobe Photoshop CS5 Tutorials
Working with Layers / Rearranging & Renaming Layers
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS5 / Working with Layers / Rearranging & Renaming Layers)
So this is where I find myself. I have a Layer 1 inside the Layers Palette. That's our clouds of course and then below that we have our background layer which contains statue. Now, what I want to do is I want to be able to rearrange my layers. Obviously I don't want the clouds on top of the statue. I want the clouds behind the statue. We're going to do kind of a bit of compositing here if you will. So check this out. This is how to convert a background layer into a regular, normal, Photoshop layer. You'll recall from earlier on I said that a background layer was uneditable as indicated by this little lock icon that we see there so I can't do anything to my statue layer at this point. Instead what I'm going to do though is I'm going to convert this guy to a regular Photoshop layer and I'm going to do so simply by double clicking on the background layer. That's all there is to it. Just double clicking. And when I double click, I get this New Layer Dialog Box coming up. Now, you know, in the real world when I double click on my background layer, I simply click on OK and that's all there is to it and now I have instead of a background layer, I now have Layer 0. So what I can do now and this is sort of the moment that I've been trying to get you to is rearrange my layers. For example, I can take Layer 0, he's selected here inside my Layers Palette and I can click and drag him up inside the Layers Palette and drop him above the clouds layer. Now, this is an important thing to remember. Layers that appear at the top of the Layers Palette appear at the front of my image. Layers that appear towards the bottom of my Layers Palette appear at the back of the image. Does that make sense? So in other words, my clouds now are behind the statue and you know, in the real world a lot of my files have tons of layers. We can have lots and lots of layers inside our Photoshop files. Obviously here we only have two but that's really the idea here. So I can grab my layers, I can drag them above or below the other layers that we have inside the Layers Palette and you know, I'm keeping it really simple here for you at first because I want to make sure that you really get the fundamentals of layers but that's really all there is to it. So to recap, you can convert a normal background layer into a regular old Photoshop Layer just by double clicking on it and then clicking on OK inside the dialog box that shows up. Now, that said, it isn't very helpful to have Layer 1 and Layer 0 inside my Layers Palette, especially if I have ten or 15 other layers inside my Photoshop file so what I always try to do is I try to name my layers as I go and you can always rename your layers. So here's what I'll do. Where we have Layer 1 there inside the Layers Palette, what I'll do is I'll simply double click on that text and that opens up the text and now I can give this guy a proper name. I think I'll call this guy Clouds. Now, OK, there we go. And same thing with Layer 0. I'll double click on that guy and simply call him Statue. Perfect. Alright, so there you go. There's rearranging your layers and also renaming your layers. Now, before we continue, just to make sure that your Layer Palette is set up exactly the way mine is; Statue on top, the Clouds on the bottom.
Tutorial Information
| Course: | Adobe Photoshop CS5 |
| Author: | Geoff Blake |
| SKU: | 34150 |
| ISBN: | 1-936334-46-1 |
| Release Date: | 2010-08-06 |
| Duration: | 7.5 hrs / 95 lessons |
| Work Files: |
Yes |
| Captions: | No |
| Compatibility: |
Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux QuickTime 7, Flash 8 |
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