Photoshop Tutorial: What Are Layers?

Welcome to the first blog post of 2014! Besides continuing to blog about my client sessions, the business of being in business, and the art and craft of photography, I will begin to intermix posts related to Photoshop and some of the amazing tools at our disposal. But I must start out with a caveat.

I owe it to my clients to be the best photographer that I can be, which means being competent with the camera, lighting, and posing. As a minimum. I believe that in this era of digital photography, we have a tendency to rely too heavily on tools like Photoshop to correct basic problems caused by our own haste, laziness, or lack of knowledge. 

As a family portrait photographer continuously honing my craft, I attempt to get everything correct in the camera as much as possible. Ideally, I shouldn't be relying on post-production editing tools like Photoshop to fix exposure problems, color balance, composition, etc. This is just one of the many ways that I strive to separate myself from many other photographers competing for the same clients.

Not saying I'm perfect, far from it.  When I return to my computer after a photo session and pull pictures off the camera, occasionally I realize that I didn't get something correct and I need to rely on the tools to fix a problem.  As a part of honing my craft, then, I make a great big mental note about how to keep that from happening in future client sessions, and learn from the experience. If I pay attention to those big mental notes, I won't make the same mistake as often in the future. It's a journey.

How Photoshop Fits In

Besides occasionally helping cover my butt, post production tools have a great place in my routine workflow.

My ultimate goal is to 1) get everything correct in the camera and 2) limit my Photoshop work to exploring creative treatments to the perfect pictures that we captured during a photo session. The more frequently that things work out as planned, the better I know I'm becoming as a family portrait photographer.

So, to answer the question of where Photoshop fits in: it is simply a tool.  A big, complex, sometimes overwhelming tool, but a tool nonetheless.

Applying some wildly creative treatments to images that would be difficult otherwise, that's where the power comes in. And that's where the motivation to continue growing, to master the tool, has kept me driven.

To position myself as a portrait photographer that creates fine art, therefore, I rely on tools like Photoshop to deliver high-end finished products to my clients. And because I've invested time and effort to learn the tools, I can use Photoshop as yet another way to distance myself from other photographers. Finished artwork like my hand-painted portraits is a unique offering that most of my competition cannot offer.

Photoshop Is Overwhelming. Where Do I Begin?

I believe that the single most important feature to understand about Photoshop is the concept of layers. Almost everything within Photoshop, regardless of how basic or advanced the concepts or tools, builds on layers.

Future blog posts will build on the basic knowledge you'll gain today about layers.  We will learn to use layers and other tools within Photoshop eventually.  I want this post, however, to lay some basic groundwork, to get us on even footing. We won't launch Photoshop today, just talk a bit more conceptually.  The next post in this series will be the place where we get our feet wet and our keyboards dirty.

A Simple Real-World Visualization
The easiest way to describe layers is through a simple visualization: imagine laying a photograph on the table, face up so you can see the image.  We will call this photograph our "background" layer.  Now imagine what it would look like if you placed a clear sheet of plastic over the photograph. We can see the background layer through this "transparent" layer, no obstruction to our view.

Now imagine drawing or marking on the clear plastic with a crayon, paint brush, masking tape, or any other tool to cover part of the photograph. Some of the photograph will appear unchanged, while other parts will be covered with new ink when viewing it through the two layers.

If you decide that the new treatment you gave to the photograph is not what you really wanted to do, you can go back to the original photograph simply by removing the layer of clear plastic. Photoshop calls this feature "non-destructive" because you are not writing directly on the original, so you can always go back to the original before it was destroyed.

Next, let's stack another clear layer over our previous two layers. This new layer might receive a different treatment, perhaps some paper cutouts of snowflakes or flags or birthday cakes.  You get the idea.

You have the flexibility of returning to the original photo, or you can use either or both of the new layers on top of the photo.  You may even get a different effect by rearranging the order in which the two new layers are placed on top of the photo.

Not all of the clear plastic sheets that you are stacking up need to be, well, clear. 

• If one of the sheets was a colored cellophane for example, everything below that layer would be colored to match the cellophane. But the colored cellophane would not affect anything placed on top of it.
• If a layer was covered entirely in paint, you could use an eraser to remove some of the paint and expose parts of the picture below. How much you erased, would impact how much below is exposed.
• A layer could be another copy of the original photograph. Then as you erased parts of it, you would begin to see the layers we've piled up below.

Things Not Possible In The Real World
Since all of this is stored electronically in the computer, there are visual effects that can be applied to layers that defy the physical laws we're bound by here on earth.

• For example, in Photoshop you can change the transparency of a layer, from 100% solid to completely faded away. Somewhere in between solid and non-existent is a ghostly like state of transparency. This would be difficult to perform in our physical world, but in the computer it's fairly easy stuff.
• Without much difficulty at all, you can dip a paint brush into the photograph and pick up some color. In the real world, the photograph sitting on the table is dry and not easy to load up a brush with color from that image.  In Photoshop, you can even load up the brush with a blend of colors created when you sample the same location through several layers. I know, an abstract concept.
• Speaking of paint brushes, in the real world we have some limitations on the type, size, and behavior of brushes.  But in the computer, our brushes can take on all kinds of characteristics, shapes, and behaviors that would be difficult to mimic in real life.
• And erasers can get just as funky as brushes.

These will all be topics for future posts. For now, sticking to our primer on layers, just know that almost every action you take in Photoshop, and every tool you use within Photoshop, is designed to manipulate one or more layers.

Having a basic understanding of how layers stack up on each other and interact with each other is at the cornerstone of understanding Photoshop. 

In our next post, we will launch Photoshop and begin exploring the basics of how layers behave.


Questions about layers? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.  Have a better way to explain how layers behave and interact with one another?  I welcome hearing your perspective as well.