DECEMBER 2019 PCWorld 121is a layer in the four-color process.
When you open a photograph in
Photoshop, it has only one layer, the
background layer, and it’s called a flattened
image. If you use the Lasso tool to outline
one tulip in a field of many flowers, then cut
and paste that tulip back into that same
photo, Photoshop pastes it in as a new
layer, displays it in the Layers palette, and
names it Layer 1. Right-click this box,
choose Layer Properties, and enter a new
name for this layer.
Each time you cut and paste a flower
from the photo’s field of flowers, Photoshop
creates a new layer so you can edit, recolor,
reshape, resize, add a filter such as
Watercolor, or a style from the Styles palette,
or a dozen other features. Only the
“selected” layer is affected. This way, you
can use different effects and filters on each
separate layer—and a mistake on one layer
doesn’t affect the other layers.
- WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP
YOUR ORIGINAL INTAC T
The number one, most important tip I can
share with you is this: Never edit your
originals. Always make a copy and save
that copy as a layered file, if possible,
because layers can be adjusted and
edited individually.
The best layered formats are PSD
(Photoshop) and TIFF (Tagged Image File
Format). All the popular photo editing
programs will either Save As or Export to
one of these two formats.
Why not save images as JPGs? Because
JPG is a “lossy” format, which means the
image is compressed, which creates smaller
file sizes (to accommodate applications with
limited resources such as email and cell
phones). Each time it’s re-saved, the image
quality degrades a bit, and it does not
support layers.
The remaining image formats, such as
BMP, GIF, PHG, EPS and more, are not
suitable “working” formats. In other words,
they are not appropriate for editing images.
NOTE: RAW and DNG are in a whole
different class of formats, generally used
by professional photographers and not
supported by all phones, cameras, or
programs.- RESIZE PHOTOS
WITHOUT LOSING IMAGE
QUALITY
Resizing down—or making images smaller—
is no problem. It’s resizing up that ruins
everything. When you try to make images
larger, the pixels explode and create fuzzy
halos around everything. This is called photo
compression noise or pixelation.
To avoid this, never enlarge without
adjusting the pixels to compensate. For
example, if you have a 4- by 5-inch photo that’s
600 pixels per inch (or 2400 x 3000 pixels),
you can enlarge the photo to 8 by 10 if you