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Adobe Photoshop CS5 Tutorials
Working with Layers / Getting Started with Layer Styles
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Subtitles of the Movie (Adobe Photoshop CS5 / Working with Layers / Getting Started with Layer Styles)
Well, you know, I hope you're enjoying and I hope you're having fun here creating this, sort of this composite image that you and I are building together. You know, I got to show you something else though, something called Layer Styles and I think you're really going to enjoy this because this tends to delve into more of the special effects side of Photoshop, which is of course a lot of fun. So what exactly is a Layer Style? Well, you can think of it as a special effect or some kind of an effect that would be applied to an individual layer and of course, I think once I actually show you this it'll make a heck of a lot more sense but imagine things like drop shadows or overlays in terms of colors or gradients or, you know, special effects, this, this type of thing. So what I'm going to do here, what I'm going to attempt anyway is I want to set it up in such a way so that the statue here has a white outline all the way around the outside and we'll see how this matches up. So hopefully it'll kind of match up with the white stripe that I have here. So maybe I should zoom in just a little bit here so we can see what we have. Alright, now to get started here what I'm going to do is I'm going to head down to the statue layer inside the Layers Palette and what I'll do is I'll double click on this layer but instead of double clicking over top of the text as if we were going to rename this Statue Layer, what I'm going to do is I'm going to double click more towards the right-hand side of the layer, over towards this side and when I do so, I wind up inside the Layer Style Dialog Box. Now, inside the Layer Style Dialog Box, by the way, it's a huge dialog box, a lot of options in here. But running down the left-hand side of the dialog box we see all of our effects. So for example, drop shadow as I mentioned. Inner shadow, out glow, inner glow, bevel and emboss, which is a personal favorite, satin, color overlay and on and on and on,,,,, right? So here's the cool thing. Let's say for example I want to try Bevel and Emboss. Well, all I do is I put a check mark beside Bevel and Emboss and I move my dialog box out of the way and now I see this weird, wacky effect taking shape inside my image. Now, what's really cool is it goes even further than that. If I actually click on Bevel and Emboss on the left-hand side of the dialog box, I'm now presented with a huge Array of options. So it's kind of a two-step process. You turn on the effect and then click on the effect and that'll bring you into the settings for that effect. And, you know, there really isn't any sort of science to this. It's really more just messing around in terms of it's really more of an artistic process I suppose you could say so I have a Depth Slider here so I can make this emboss effect even deeper, crank up the size, you know, something like this. Boy, you can really do some crazy things here. And by the way, I'm giving you really just sort of the very, very basics here in terms of just getting yourself started with Layer Styles. All through the different settings here, shading and so on, what's even crazier is I can apply more than one effect to my layer and of course this is only affecting the selected layer, the Statue Layerright? So maybe for example I come along and I say alright, we'll, let's throw a drop shadow on this as well. So we'll turn on drop shadow and then of course now I have my drop shadow settings because I actually clicked on the text there drop shadow and that put a checkmark beside it and it gave me the settings. So of course I have my slider here, opacity and angle and distance and spread and size and all the rest of it and it's really just a matter of coming in, messing around with the settings, messing around with the options and having funright? Alright, so let's say I'm looking at this and I'm thinking to myself yeah, this looks awesome, I'm happy with it. I'm going to go ahead and click on OK to commit those changes. Now, all along I've been saying that I like to work in a non-destructive way inside Photoshop so I've gone and I've piled on some special effects onto my Statue Layer but what I love so much about Layer Styles is they're non-destructive and they're fully editable. So have a look at your Layers Palette. There's our Statue Layer. Notice the icon here, the FX, the Effects Icon there indicating that we have a layer style applied to this layer and I can see my layer styles. There is a drop shadow and there is a bevel and emboss. Now here's the cool part. I sit here and I go, you know, maybe going with the drop shadow was a bit much. Let's see how it looks without the drop shadow effect. So I'm going to click on the Eye Icon right beside the drop shadow item, turn it off or turn off Bevel and Emboss, turn the drop shadow back on or I go you know what? Let's turn these buys back on but maybe I want to adjust my bevel and emboss so I'll double click on Bevel and Emboss and that brings me back into the Layer Style Dialog Box, back into the Bevel and Emboss Settings here and I can continue messing around with my settings here until I get this looking exactly the way I want, right? Which is awesome. It's fantastic. Alright, now next up what I'll do is I'll show you how to remove a layer style and then perhaps apply a new one. So at this point what I'll do is I'll click on OK to commit my new changes and next up, as I say, I'll show you how to remove a layer style and then apply a new one and of course what I'm thinking is that outline, that white outline that I had mentioned previously.
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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