How to Create Flexible Documents in Photoshop CS2
Date: Sep 16, 2005
I'm sure you know by now that there are anywhere from three to six different ways to do things in Photoshop, and some methods are faster and more accurate than others. But more importantly, some techniques offer a lot more flexibility, and these methods are the ones you should consider—particularly if you're going to be doing a lot of editing after the fact.
Here's a simple example: You want to lighten a portion of a photograph, so you make a feathered selection and then use the Levels command (Command-L [PC: Control-L]) to lighten the image. Finally, you Deselect (Command-D [PC: Control-D]) and save the document. Although there's nothing "wrong" with this method, it does have a significant drawback: The change is permanent.
In this case, there's really no possibility of changing your mind—you saved the document after lightening the selected area. If you decide that it's too light or you selected the wrong area, it's too late to make an adjustment. Instead, why not use a Levels adjustment layer? (Simply select Levels from the Create New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette) to lighten the selected area.) Then, even after saving the document, you can make further adjustments to the Levels and you can use the layer mask to adjust the affected area. This simple change in approach makes a huge difference in the amount of flexibility you can have in your work.
Here's a detailed example of a method that creates the desired effect but is not very flexible compared with the flexible way of achieving the same finished product. The result we're going for is to create the look of a color snapshot on top of a black and white photo.
Destructive Editing Method
- Make a rectangular selection of the area that you want to be in color.
- Choose Select > Transform Selection to angle the selection. From the Select menu, choose Inverse.
- From the Image menu, choose Adjustments > Desaturate. Press Shift-Command-I (PC: Shift-Control-I) to get back to your original selection.
- From the Edit menu, choose Stroke. Enter 12 for the amount and change the Position to Inside.
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You created the look of a color snapshot on top of a black and white photo. But now you want to do some tweaking. If you take a look at the Layers palette, you'll see that once you've saved and closed, it is next to impossible to change anything because you worked directly on the Background layer, altering the pixels. (This is often referred to as destructive editing.)
Nondestructive Editing Method
The alternate approach is a nondestructive, extremely flexible method that often takes a couple of extra steps to complete, but saves precious time if you need to make changes later. Here's how it works in this example:
- Press the letter M to use the Rectangular Marquee tool to make a rectangular selection of the area that you want to be in color.
- Angle the selection by choosing Select > Transform Selection and grab the corners to rotate it.
- Click on the Create New Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers palette and fill the selection with any color other than white.
- From the Layers palette, use the Layer Style pop-up menu to add a Stroke. Enter 12 points for the Width and change the Position to Inside. While still in that dialog box, add a Drop Shadow.
- In the Layers palette, lower the Fill percentage to 0. (This will keep the layer effects visible but remove the fill color—that's why the color was unimportant.)
- Hold down Command (PC: Control) and click on the layer thumbnail to load the original selection. From the Create New Adjustment Layer pop-up menu, choose Hue/Saturation.
- In the Hue/Saturation dialog box, lower the saturation to –100 and change the lightness to around 16 (it will vary with the image). Click OK. Initially, the image will be the opposite of what you want—the snapshot will be black and white and the remainder will be color—but you'll fix that next.
- Press Command-I (PC: Control-I) to invert the layer mask and make the effects of the adjustment layer affect only the areas outside the "snapshot."
- Hold down Shift and select both the Frame layer and the Adjustment layer.
Using the Move tool, reposition the two layers while preserving the effect.
You can even use Free Transform (Command-T [PC: Control-T]) to rotate or scale the original frame to change the effect.
Now, compare this Layers palette with the first method: This time, the Background layer is untouched, and the other layers offer as much flexibility as we will ever need. In this example, we took advantage of the following methods:
- Used layer effects to add the stroke (rather than using Edit > Stroke).
- Lowered the Fill percentage to allow only the layer effects to show.
- Added an Adjustment layer to "temporarily" change the look of the photo.
By using these effects, we can do the following:
- Decide to abandon the whole idea because the Background was left untouched.
- Adjust the angle, location, or size of the snapshot.
- Change the size or color of the stroke and the look of the drop shadow.
- Alter the look of the image. For example, giving it a slight amount of color as opposed to completely gray.
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Conclusion
The main purpose of this exercise was to demonstrate that using a nondestructive approach sometimes takes a step or two longer, but rewards you with greater flexibility, avoiding potential problems.