Layer Styles

Layer styles, or in short “Styles” are multiple effects applied to a layer. I told you this in the previous lesson.

In Photoshop, we have quite a few pre-made styles.

To apply a pre-made style to the contents of a layer, first open your “Styles” panel. You select the layer you wish to add a style and you click the icon of a default style that you wish to add.

All pre-made styles are divided into categories. Click the downward-pointing arrow in the title bar of the pane (1), and choose a category from the drop-down menu (2).

In the dialog box, there are many preset styles that come free with the purchase of Photoshop.

Style

If you wish to make your own style, no problem, add some effects to a layer, and turn these effects into a style as we have seen in the previous lesson.

To apply this style, you know what to do, I think. Otherwise, read the previous lesson again.

Transform effect into layer

When you apply an effect to a layer, this effect is applied to all contents of this layer.

In normal circumstances this is what we want, but sometimes we do not want the effect on the entire content, but only on a part of the content.

A solution is, we make our impact into a layer and we do what we want to the layer.
To make an effect into a layer, select the layer with the effect, click the “Layers” in the menu bar, choose “Layer Style” in the drop-down menu and click “Create Layers”.
In the dialog that appears, click the OK button.
As you will see in the layers panel, the effect of the layer is disappeared and instead there is a pixel-based layer containing the former effect.

I’ll just give an example.

I have a picture with two layers, in the top layer we have the madame who looks through a frame that is located in an underlying layer.

As an example, I effect “shadow” into the young lady with the color green, so you can easily see in the image below.

As we know, this effect is applied to the entire content of the layer, in this case the lady.

We do not want the shadow cast on the left side of the madame (1), and of course, we wish to retain only the shadow on the right side (2).

So we make the effect into a layer.

Click the “Layers” in the menu bar, choose “Layer Style” in the drop-down menu, and click “Create Layers”.

As you notice the effect in the layer “Madame” is gone and in its place a pixel image is created in a new layer (1), with the name “Madame’s shadow.”

With the eraser (2) tool, remove the redundant pixels (3).

Featured Courses

• Downloading iPad Apps
• Lesson 1: Introduction to Publisher
• Lesson 65: File Formats