Lessons

Lesson Info

Using Effects on Layers

Now, I'd like to add a little more flair to this image. What I'd like to do is at a drop shadow underneath the text and add drop shadows underneath each photograph so there feels like some separation between them and what's behind them. So I'll start by working on a photograph here. I'll just click on a layer, and if you're not sure which layer this is what part of the document it is, you can always turn off the eyeball icon for that layer that will temporarily hide the layer and then just click where the icon used to be in. It'll come back. Therefore, I can tell exactly what's in that layer. Go to the bottom of the layers panel, and that's where I'll find the letters F X, and that's where I can add a layer effect. And I want to use the one called Drop Shadow. When I choose drop shadow, a screen is gonna open full of options, and let's take a look what it takes to make a drop shadow. As long as this is open, you can click within your document in drag and you'll reposition your shadow i...

n all its doing as you're dragging is it's changing two settings in here. If you look on the right side of my screen, it all those settings. Look at the little circle that's in there, that's his angle. And as a drag, you'll see that's telling me the angle that I dragged. Then there's another setting called distance, and that's how far I dragged in that particular direction. And so if you don't feel like clicking and dragging within your document, you could have just as easily done that with the angle and distance settings. The other side is that are important. Here are size watch what happens to the shadows. They bring it up. That's gonna cost the edge to become softer or chrismer. And so that's gonna determine house softness is the softer it is, the more it'll feel like its floating. Finally, there's a setting called opacity, and that determines how much can I see through that layer. And so, if you want a darker shadow, bring it higher. If you want a lighter one, bring it lower. So it's a matter of fine tuning all of those settings to get a shadow that I like, do something about like that, then I'll click. OK, remember the way that I added that in the first place is I went to the bottom of my layers panel. I found the letters F X and I chose drop shadow. And that's how I can go in to change the settings for it as well. If I decide I wanted to be a softer edge later on, all I have to do is choose that once again when the layer that I've applied that to is active. If you look in my layers panel and you look closely at the lair I was working on your now going to see it says it has effects and the effect that has applied its drop shadow. You see a little eyeball icon. If I turn that off by clicking on it, watch the drop shadow over here and it goes away. The one next to the word effects would do the same thing. And the only difference between these two is effects is a category, and I could go down to the letters FX and add an additional effect like right now we just have a drop shadow. I could come in and choose something called a stroke a stroke withdraw line around the edge of the image, and I'll bring up the size setting a little bit, so it's easier for you to see that. So now if you look in the layers, panel effects means all of these things. So if I turn off the eyeball next to effects, not only with the drop shadow disappeared, but show so with the stroke or line that goes around here. If I turn off the eyeball next to these two, though, it will turn off the individual effects of the stroke in the drop shadow or, collectively, all the effects. Once you've added effects like that, if you don't want to see them in the layers panel, you can go to the right edge of the layer where you find the letters FX to indicate you have effects applied and there's a little triangle there. If you click on it, it will collapse it down. So there for only the letters FX here indicate that this layer has anything attached to see which effects are attached. Click on that triangle and you see the list. If you want to get rid of one of these effects. You could drag the effect to the trash can at the bottom of the layers panel. But the other thing you can do is drag it to a different layer. I want to put this stroke on my text, so I'm gonna click on the word stroke, and I'm going to drag it right up here to the layer that contains the text and then let go, and I just moved it. I might also want a drop shadow on the word Barcelona. So here I already have a drop showed on one layer. The problem is, if I just drag it up to the taxed, it will remove it from the layer was on before I wanted on both layers to get it on both layers. When you drag, hold down the option key. That's all time windows, so I'll click on the word drop shadow. Ah, hold down option and I'll drag to a different layer and let's see it didn't do it, so I'll have to hold it down before I click and then try. There you go. I had held it down after clicking the mouse, and I needed it. Hold it down beforehand so if I want to put a drop shot on a bunch of these layers, I just hold down the option key Alta windows before I click on the word drop Shadow and I drag it to another layer and I could do that. Dragon it to as many layers as I would like. That's weird. Why don't put too? Oh, I was holding on Command wasn't looking at the keyboard, but that's kind of ineffective. To put it on, let's say a dozen layers, because it's gonna be a dozen times that you end up dragging that. So there is another way that you can get this drop shadow to be on the other layers. If you right click on it. There's a choice that is called copy layer style, and those effects that are applied collectively are known as layer styles in after right clicking on it in choosing copy layer style. Then I could select all the layers that I want, and I'm gonna select here everything except for the text, and then you can right click on any one of the layers. It shouldn't really matter which one, and you're gonna find a choice within this menu. called paste layer style, and that should apply it to the other layers that are currently selected. So now I have drop shadows on all of those layers. Now, once I've done that in my layers panel, my layers are starting to look pretty busy. And that's where I might want to collapse down the little triangle next to the letters that fact. So I don't have to see that on every single one of my layers. Now there is a trick even use, and that is, you can show or hide all of the effects by holding on the option key Alton windows when you click on that little triangle and that will either expand all of them or collapse them all, Adobe did at a different feature. That's getting in the way, though. Did you notice that it zoomed up on my picture when I did that? If you option, click on the name of a layer, it'll zoom up to fill whatever is in that layer, have it fill your screen, and Adobe hasn't changed that to make it so, it ignores the little triangle. It's on the right. So when I option click to expand or collapse. All of those it happened to zoom up as well. Anyway, Now we have all sorts of layers going on in our layers pale, and we have what's known as either layer styles or layer effects, which are drop shadow and our stroke. And the only thing I think I'd like to do now, Yes, I want to change the color of the stroke because I use the default color. Uh, and I'd like to start adjusting or pictures. So to change the color of the stroke, I first need to figure out where it is in my layers panel. Well, I know it's on the text and I can see the text right here. So a click of a little triangle to the right of that to expand it. And there I see. I have a drop shadow and a stroke to get back into the settings for any of thes. Just double click on their names. Not the eyeball, but the name. So if I double click on the word stroke, it brings me right back into the settings for it. Here I can see a setting called Color, and I see a black rectangle. If I click within that I get a color picker. And then while the color picker is open, I can actually move my mouse onto my image and click within it to pick colors right out of the picture. Click OK to indicate him done. But now that white background is really glaring at me, and I'd like it to be more interesting than that. So I'm gonna go find another image from bridge to uses a background before I do that. Look in my layers panel at the layer that's currently active and realize that, as the text in that text has something special going on directly above it. And that is, there's a photograph up there, and if you look at that layer above, you see a down pointing arrow indicating that it's clipped to the layer that's below so that it's on Lee showing up where the text is Well, right now, if I drag over another picture, the picture is usually going to show up directly above the layer. I'm working on because that's how layers work. It always creates new layers directly above the one you're working on, and so let's see what happens when I go over here to bridge. I choose a background text read like you do to use and drag it over. Then I'm gonna resize it, just making sure that it fits the entirety of this document and I'll press returner entered a indicate. I'm done notice that it broke what I had set up before. Now this layer that contains the photograph that used to be clipped to some text is now clipped to this background texture, and that means this only shows up where the background texture is. Well, the background texture fills the entire image, so this shows up wherever it usually would. So sometimes you'll end up breaking certain effects that were in there. So let's click on that photo that's above, and I'm gonna click on its name and move it again. So it's right above the text. It didn't keep that down. 20 narrow, though, so I need to figure out how to put it back in. I'll go to the layer menu, and there's a choice called create clipping mask. That's what I use the very first time we got that photograph to show up inside the text. That's what gets that down pointing arrow to appear. It's our deceit that is clipped to the text because we have something else on top of it that's covering up our entire document. Because the way layers work is if you're standing at the top of the layers panel looking down, and whatever the top most thing is is what you're seeing. First, even if it fills your entire document, it's obscuring your view of everything that's under it. So I either need to turn off the eyeball for that to hide it. Or in my case, I want to re position where it is in the layers panel. So click on its name and I'll drag it way down here. Now we have a nice little backdrop.