Inside Photoshop® CS

Customizing Layers

Layers are Photoshop's most powerful feature, and if there's any one thing you need to learn about Photoshop, learn all about layers and especially how to customize them.

The technique for leveraging layers in your work is a topic covered in future chapters. For now, we're just going to show you how to manage them because, after all, this is the reference section of this book.

Photoshop is most decidedly “layer-centric”—if you're working efficiently (in other words, if you read this book!). You will find layers indispensable, and almost every editing move (or perhaps every other editing move) somehow involves using layers.

Take out the icons.psd image from the Examples\Chap03 folder on the companion CD. You're going to learn ...