SAMS Teach Yourself Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 in 24 Hours

Working with Multiple Layers

You have seen how to create, move, and remove layers, but the hour still hasn't really addressed the question of what they're good for. You will use layers in many situations. Whenever you are combining two or more images (in Photoshop terms, compositing), the elements you paste or drag in from another document over the background image are added on separate layers. You can use the Layers palette to control precisely how these elements are combined. You can control the opacity of objects you paste onto a layer or paint that you apply to it. (The layer itself is transparent, even if you set the paint on it to 100% opacity.) You can also control the blending modes that affect how one layer appears on top of another, ...