Photoshop® CS3 Layers Bible

Chapter 16. Creating Personal Projects with Layers

In the previous two chapters, you looked at using Photoshop's layers from the perspectives of a designer and a photographer, but now it's time to investigate some practical applications of layers for day-to-day use. The projects covered here seem simple enough in theory, but are actually quite involved when you get right down to it. You'll be using lots of the techniques covered in the other parts of the book to produce the following:

• An event invitation: You'll create the basic invitation, and then set it up so that it can be printed several times on a single sheet of paper, saving time and paper. You'll also learn how to lay out the invitation so that it's almost impossible to produce a bad design!

• A great poster promoting a party: This quick poster example covers multiple layer techniques to really grab the attention of potential partygoers.

• A simple calendar: Calendars make great personal gifts. In this example, you design the pages of a calendar, and build the monthly calendar element itself.

It can be tempting when working on projects like these to reach immediately for the word processor, but Photoshop's flexibility can produce much more elegant, professional results. You'll learn techniques that you can master quickly to produce designs that will lift your work onto another level.

Note

Each of these three examples comes with a bunch of Photoshop files on the accompanying CD-ROM. You can use these files to work through the examples ...