bisected by the green back of the plaster dinosaur. To make
the text bore through the dinosaur as well, move the dinosaur
into the group. First, to make things easier, in the Layers panel
click the � next to the Elaborate Balloon layer group to twirl it
closed. Then, drag the Me on T layer onto the Knockout Text
folder icon (see Figure 5-62). When you release the mouse but-
ton, Photoshop places Me on T at the back of the group and
knocks the letterforms out of the dino’s hip, as witnessed by
the circled areas below.Figure 5-62. 32. Save your composition. Choose File→Save to update the file on
your hard disk. After all, why bother with File→Save As when
everything is either a mask or a parametric effect?
The beauty of this exercise is that every one of the changes you’ve
made is reversible. You can delete the layer masks that you added
in Steps 5 and 22, unravel the clipping mask from Step 11, modify
the blending options applied in Steps 15 through 19, and bust up
the knockout from Step 29. And the reason the composition is so
exceedingly, wonderfully, downright obscenely flexible is because
you never changed a single pixel on any of the core layers. If only
everything in Photoshop were this flexible—well, the world would
be a happier place, wouldn’t it?
168 Lesson 5: Working with Layers