Layers are, as the name
suggests, a way to treat a picture as more than just a flat,
two-dimensional image. With Layers, we can really get creative, or
make far more subtle changes than we've so far been able to do.
When using layers (and
you'll need to open up the Layers Window if it doesn't pop up), any
alterations only apply to the layer you're actually working on. Think
of it as another form of selection tool, but it's a lot more too.
You can create layers by
cutting or copying your current selection or by duplicating the whole
image. There are also types of layer that add colours, patterns or
most of the adjustments (Hue/Saturation, brightness/contrast, etc.)
we've already seen. If you want to add text, that's a layer too.
Taking the Magic Wand
selection example and creating a New Layer Via Cut gives these two
layers. The New Layer Via Copy tool would have left the background
layer intact, giving us two versions of the flower to tinker with.
So we can, for example,
enlarge the flower without changing the scale of the foliage, simply
by transforming the layer we just made.
And, if we're editing two
photos at the same time, Photoshop will let us drag and drop a layer
from one to the other.
Remember Holly? I've
dragged the flower into her picture then scaled, rotated, distorted
and adjusted the colour of the new layer to fit the flower behind her
ear.
Eraser
The final detail was a
careful application of the Eraser tool to trim off the lower petals
to let Holly's ear appear to be in front of them.
The Eraser is one of the
most useful things about layers. As detail is erased from one level,
the level underneath becomes visible. It gives you great control over
blending boundaries.
Here comes an extreme
example, involving 7 layers, each from a different original
photograph, taken in full auto at 11 frames per second.
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| Simon Jones, kiteboarding instructor, crashing out of a back roll |
Working left to right, I
cropped the left edge of each picture, close to the subject, then,
dragged, dropped and overlapped the layers onto the first picture. I
used the Eraser tool to trim away anything that was obscuring detail
of the previous layer.
The Wind turbines
provided a perfect guide for accurate positioning of each image. By
erasing the tops of the turbines in one layer, the pylons could
easily be positioned over the same pylon on the previous layer,
making it certain I had the spacing right.
The canvas had to be
resized to make it panoramic and the sea is a composite of each of
the 7 source photographs because this image is more than twice the
width of the first photograph.
Finally, the layers were
merged, the whole image was rotated to level the horizon, cropped to
square off the edges and tweaked for colour, etc.
It was a lot of work but
it produced a striking final image that combines the detail of still
photographs with the sense of movement of a video. The full
resolution version is 28 million pixels so it can be printed pretty
large too.
These are the 7 frames in
the sequence. You can see they're not level and some have a lot less
sky than others. I believe the result is far more appealing than any
of these individual photos.
Here are a few similar editing projects.
 |
| 1/2 a second in the life of a gull. |
 |
| The moon taken at two-night intervals |
 |
| After "Drawing Hands" by M.C. Escher |
This was one of my first experiments with layers, with my previous bridge camera, a Fujifilm S7000. I took three photo's to make my layers. Using a tripod and the ten second timer on the camera allowed me to be my own model. I opted for a monochrome composition because the original lithograph was black and white.
The first photo was just the paper with the drawn bits on it, the second was with my left hand in position and the last was with my right hand in position. The unhanded one was my base layer and the other two were selectively erased with a very soft, large diameter Eraser tool set to about 30% opacity to let me fade details out gently.
The first photo was just the paper with the drawn bits on it, the second was with my left hand in position and the last was with my right hand in position. The unhanded one was my base layer and the other two were selectively erased with a very soft, large diameter Eraser tool set to about 30% opacity to let me fade details out gently.
The next example is black
and white too, because the colours were deeply uninspiring but the
textures were great.
 |
| Splash Point, Rhyl |
This is two photos taken
a day apart and not even from the same spot. The sky in the
photograph was flat grey. That made it easy to select with the Magic
Wand and erase. What was left – the foreground – was then
duplicated to another layer and dragged onto a much more interesting
sky I'd photographed the evening before, from right on the water
line.
I have a folder full of
interesting cloudy skies and sunsets, for just such occasions.
Layers
Window
The Layers Window may pop
up all by itself but if you have to go looking or it, it's probably
in the Window menu. It is essential to have it on the screen when
you're playing with layers because it's how you navigate between one
layer and the next. Anything you do while working on a layer only
happens to that layer, so it's important to know which one you're
actually working on.
In the Layers Window, you
can toggle between layers, turn layers off temporarily, so you can
see the one you're editing more clearly, apply a variety of effects,
duplicate a layer (handy as a backup if you're feeling experimental)
and delete or merge layers together.
It's all pretty obvious
once you see it so I'm not going into it much here, only to mention
text, which is coming up in the next chapter and which uses layers
and the Layer Window a lot.
I hope I've convinced you
to have a play with layers. You can get very creative them and none
of this is really that difficult, just fiddly.
Top
Tip: When you're working with layers, save the image in Photoshop
format (.PSD) then 'save as' a jpeg. The Photoshop format file will
save the separate layers so you can go back and fiddle with it
further. The jpeg format flattens everything down to a single layer.
Panoramas
Panoramic
photography used to require a special camera with a clockwork
turntable. Now, most digital cameras and smart phones include the
functionality. However, the results are generally not at the camera's
full resolution. My HS50 for example gives panoramas that are 1080p
high, which is about a third of the sensor's capacity. It's all down
to the demands of the processing required to splice images together.
If
you really want a full resolution panorama, you have to do it
yourself. Fortunately, Photoshop has a neat tool for doing that.
Here
are 5 shots of the Conwy Estuary. You'll see they overlap by up to
2/3rds of a frame. Actually, about ½ a frame of overlap works best.
You can most likely find
Photoshop's clever panoramic merging tool in the menus at
File/Automate/Photomerge.
Once in the Photomerge
tool, just select your files in sequence and Photoshop will display
them overlapping and it often makes a pretty good guess how they line
up. If it gets the overlapping wrong, you get to move the pictures
around until you're happy with how it looks. The edges are faded to
semi-transparency so you can see exactly how the images overlap.
Don't expect the edges to
line up exactly, because there is a certain amount of distortion in
almost any photograph. I find it helps to pick one landmark to line
up precisely, then preview it. (I also tick the Advanced Merging
box). The result of a little careful positioning of my five pictures
is this:
Only one of the 4 joins had to be tweaked by me. Photoshop got the 1st 3 spot on. Now we get to do all the other tweaks.
After cropping, adjusting
the levels (the photos were far too blue and were masking the pink of
the sunset), Shadow/highlight to lift the left shore out of darkness,
some cloning to remove the chunk of wall in the bottom right corner
and to smooth out just a couple of merging aberrations in the
lower/centre section, Noiseware to shrink the file size... After all
that, I've got a 30 megapixel image and <6MB of file. That's about
10 times the resolution of the camera's built in Panoramic option.
Just for your
information, the Photoshop file (.PSD instead of .JPG) for that
merged image is 202MB. With a file that size, don't be surprised if
the Photomerging process takes your PC a few minutes. Even if it's
not responding, it hasn't crashed, it's just doing a lot of maths. In
fact, the humongous amount of work your PC has to do is precisely why
your camera or your phone doesn't take panoramic pictures this big.
I've included Photomerge
in the Layers chapter because that's how it works, but you never have
to deal directly with those layers because they're merged down to one
layer for you.
Personally, because I
like more control than that, I usually do my own panoramic images,
exactly the same way as I did the time-lapse sequences at the
beginning of this chapter. Either way works.
And I think that's enough
about Layers, except to say that the next chapter is about a
different kind of layer.