photo.art

AJ · Site Admin Joined: 04 Jul 2008 Posts: 585

A s requested by Sarah, here's a Photoshop tutorial. Fortunately this was still on another forum so I just had to copy and paste. It was done with Photoshop CS2 but CS3 is not much different.

Layers are one of the most useful techniques to use in Photoshop. Once you get the hang of it, it's quite easy and can be put to a whole host of uses. For this demonstration, I have used a picture I took in Prague several years ago. As you can see from the picture the foreground and buildings are under exposed and the sky is about right.

The first thing we do is created a duplicate layer. There will be two layers of the picture laid on top of each other.

Next we select Adjustments and Levels

On the "Histogram" alter the levels so that the foreground is exposed to your likeness. You will notice the sky is completely washed out now but don't worry as this will be fixed later.

Next make a layer mask as below.

Now comes the fun, select the brush tool

and the black colour from the colour swatch.

Now ensure the “Opacity” & “Flow” are set to 100% and with the brush set to a suitable size, go over the light area where you want the original sky exposure to come through.

Now should you go over part of the picture where you did not want the bottom layer to come through as in the picture below the yellow arrow, do not despair.

Pick the white colour from the swatch and go over the area in question and it will change back to the way it was.

Here are the original and the altered images for comparison.

This technique can be used for several applications. For instance one layer can be changed to black and white and a colour item made to come through as with this example. The top layer was changed to black & white and the dial from the original brought through.

the neepster · Joined: 06 Jun 2008 Posts: 125 Location: Aberdeenshire

Brilliant - I'm going to have a go at layers later. I've never tried them yet but have got a trial copy of Elements 6 so I assume it's similar.
_________________
My Flickr Pix

AJ · Site Admin Joined: 04 Jul 2008 Posts: 585

SARAH · Joined: 19 Apr 2007 Posts: 2563 Location: SOMERSET UK

Ive only got ps7 but I think all that is on there - will be having a go later - thanks AJ

the neepster · Joined: 06 Jun 2008 Posts: 125 Location: Aberdeenshire

AJ · Site Admin Joined: 04 Jul 2008 Posts: 585

No problem.

If you want to try bringing colour through a black and white picture like the last example. I'd suggest "desaturating" one layer. If you look at the third picture in the example, just go down the choices until you reach "desaturate", it's the ninth choice down.

pipit · Joined: 19 Apr 2007 Posts: 10552 Location: SCOTLAND

for the tut
i shall go & play later

_________________

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS ARE COPYRIGHT

Tony · Joined: 14 May 2008 Posts: 376 Location: Cambs

Layers along with layer masks are perhaps one of the most important aspects of editing photo's.

Create a duplicate layer of your original image and then you can play with it to your hearts delight without destroying the original. If you do make a mistake just revert to the original and start again.
_________________
--
Tony.