Adobe Photoshop Unmasked: The Art and Science of Selections, Layers, and Paths

Chapter 3. Layers

If you’ve used photoshop for more than 5 minutes, you’ve doubtless had some interaction with layers—even if you didn’t know it. These days layers are so fundamental that it’s strange to remember they didn’t exist in early versions of Photoshop. When Adobe introduced layers in version 3, it was like when silent movies became talkies. A whole missing dimension was added, and we all wondered how on earth we ever managed without them. Layers let us manipulate our images in ways big and small, pedestrian and fantastic. Some things wouldn’t be possible without layers, but even those that would, would be a lot harder.

Here’s the lowdown:

• Layers let you assign different parts of your composition to different layers so that you can ...