Figure 5-29.Figure 5-30.Drag that file directly from the desktop, the Finder, or the Ex-
plorer window to your Photoshop composition. Magically, the
new file becomes its own layer in your Photoshop document.
The layer arrives with handles for easy repositioning, but it’s
centered exactly where we want it, so press Enter (Return) to ac-
cept the size and position. You can see the results in Figure 5-29.
If you didn’t set your Preferences as suggested in the Preface,
your Light & Splash layer may have been placed as a smart ob-
ject, indicated by the icon in the lower-right corner of the layer
thumbnail (see the Pearl of Wisdom to the right). To convert it
to a normal layer, right-click the layer in the Layers panel and
choose Rasterize Layer from the contextual menu.PeaRl Of WISDOm
By default, Preferences are set so that all dragged-
and-dropped raster files (such as photographs)
come in as smart objects. Smart objects are a
terrifically useful tool that you’ll learn more about
in Lesson 7. But for many projects, having them
appear automatically is probably overkill. You can
change the default behavior, as suggested in the
Preface, by pressing Ctrl+K (�-K) to bring up the
Preferences dialog box. In the General tab, turn
off the Place or Drag Raster Images as Smart
Objects check box, and click OK.- Set the blend mode to Screen. Change the blend
mode of your new layer to Screen, so that the glass-
ware is unobscured by the darker parts of the Light
& Splash layer. - Create a gradient shadow to make the text more
legible. To make sure that the name of our illustri-
ous guest at the bottom of this image is immediately
legible to visitors to the Web site, we’ll darken the
bottom of the image with a gradient fill.
- First press the D key to establish the default
foreground and background colors. - Then Alt-click (Option-click) the icon at the
bottom of the Layers panel and choose Gradi-
ent. Because you held down the Alt (Option)
key, you will be presented with the New Layer
dialog box, as shown in Figure 5-30.
Using Blend Modes and Specialty Layers 149