Layers
Layers serve many purposes and can contain many different kinds of content. Over the years, Photoshop has gained various kinds of layers to hold that content. Some, like text layers, are somewhat obvious. Others are more challenging to master. The most powerful—Smart Objects—have an entire section of this chapter dedicated to them.
The concept of layers is often compared to the process of making animated movies in the 1930s. A background image (a castle, for example) would be painted on glass. The characters to be animated (like Snow White) were drawn and painted on clear sheets of celluloid (“cels”), a number of which could be layered above the background to be photographed as a complete frame for the movie. Like those cels, layers can ...
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