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[ 55 ]this to a few layers outside of your layer group? Select those layers,
plus the layer group, and put them all into another layer group. Then
mask that group, rinse, repeat, continue.
- QUICKLY ZOOM INTO A LAYER’S BOUNDARY
If you Option-click (PC: Alt-click) on a layer thumbnail in the Layers
panel, the canvas will zoom in on the bounds of the pixels on that layer.
This is a new, quick way to jump to a specific object on a layer. - USE UPDATED EXPORT AS DIALOG
WITH 2-UP TO COMPARE QUALITIES
After many years, Adobe has updated the Export As dialog
(File>Export>Export As). The new 2-Up view allows you to compare
the compression that happens to your image with JPG and PNG files.
You can zoom in to 100% and compare it against your original image
to more finely tune in your save options. - CUSTOMIZE GRADIENTS FOR SOLID COLOR
IMAGE FOOTERS
This trick is all about editing your gradients so they don’t actually
graduate. This will work with either a Gradient Overlay layer style or a
Gradient fill layer. We’ll show you how to do it with a Gradient Overlay.
Double-click on the layer to open the Layer Style dialog, and click
on Gradient Overlay in the list of Styles on the left. Set the Blend
Mode to Normal, Opacity to 100%, and Angle to 90°.
Click on the Gradient preview thumbnail to open the Gradient
Editor, and select the first preset, the Foreground to Background
gradient. Click on the far right transparency stop above the gradient
ramp and set its Opacity to 0%. Drag the color stop below the gradi-
ent ramp on the right away from the ramp to delete it. Double-click
on the color stop on the left to open the Color Picker, set it to the
color that you want to use for your block footer, and click OK to close
the color picker.
Align all the stops on the gradient ramp at the same position using
the Location field to create a solid, no-blend, footer. Adjust the Location
of the stops to adjust the size of the gradient. The size doesn’t have to
be perfect at this point, because after you click OK to close the Gradient
Editor, you can also use the Scale slider in the Layer Style dialog to
adjust its size. In this example, I also added a Stroke around the image.- SMART OBJECT STACK MODES
CAN GIVE YOU MORE CONTROL
Smart Object Stack Modes can be used for such things as removing
people and noise from images. In this example, we set a camera on a
tripod and took five shots of the same guitar at the same exposure in a
low-light, high-noise environment. Once you have your images, go to
File>Scripts>Load Files into Stack. In the dialog that appears, select the
images, turn on Create Smart Object after Loading Layers, and click OK.
Once the layers are loaded and stacked as one smart object layer, go to
Layer>Smart Objects>Stack Mode to try the different rendering modes.
For high-noise images, set the rendering mode to Median and watch
the greatest noise reduction you’ve ever seen in an image!
In the image shown here, the bottom wedge is a single image
shot at ISO 20,000. The top wedge is a layer stack of nine shots at
the same exposure at ISO 20,000 that have been blended using the
Median Stack Mode.
ALL IMAGES THIS SPREAD BY MARK HEAPS