How to Use Layers in Photoshop Elements 15 - Part 1 - Introduction to Layers

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During this Photoshop Elements 15 tutorial video, we will introduce you to the basics of layers. We will take a look at the layers panel and show you how to build up layers.

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Hello again and welcome back to our course on PSE 15.
It’s now time to start to look at Layers. If you’ve used layers before in a relatively recent version of PSE you can probably skip this and the next few sections, although one section, the section on Layer Grouping and Color Coding, does include some new features which have been introduced in PSE 15. So you may want to check out that section in particular.

I have mentioned layers a few times. In fact we’ve used them once or twice. I mentioned I was using them once or twice. We used them perhaps without you realizing it.
Learning about layers and how to use them can greatly expand your capabilities with PSE. And if eventually you’re going to become a user of full Photoshop learning about layers is a really essential part of getting to grips with Photoshop and being able to use its full power.

In this and the next couple of sections I’m going to cover the basics of layers. There’s quite a lot to learn. And then we’ll look at some more specialized features in a couple of sections after that. There’s quite a lot more to do in the Editor in later sections of the course and quite a few of those things are going to use layers. So this and the next few sections are really important.

The first thing to do then is to take a look at the Layers panel. So I’m going to click on Layers and up comes the Layers panel.
Each layer will be one sort of tile on the right hand side here. And at the moment I have a single layer. Its name is Background. Generally speaking every image has a background layer. And for a photographic image this starts out as the photo itself. In this case I’ve opened a JPG and what’s in that JPG basically is what’s in my background layer.

When you work on an image in PSE, particularly when you’re working in Expert Mode but in other situations as well what tends to happen is that you build up layers. And when you’re looking at the image you’re sort of looking down from the top of a pile of layers. At the moment this only has one layer so we’re looking at the background layer. And the background layer is visible. There’s a little eye symbol there and that indicates that that layer is visible.

Now when I start working on an image and particularly if I’m doing something that requires the use of layers the first thing I do, usually, is to make a safe keeping copy of the background layer so that if I accidentally damage it I can always go back to the original. Let me right click on the background layer and one of the options is Duplicate layer. When I do that I get by default a layer called Background Copy. I’m going to click on OK and my background copy layer is now part of my image. My image now comprises two layers.

When I’m looking at this image I’m looking at it down from the top through the layers. And at the moment what I can see is the Background Copy layer. It is currently 100% opaque. If I made it less than 100% opaque I would see through it to some extent. But in seeing through it I would only see the background. So it would make no visible difference to what I could see. However if I make the background invisible by clicking on the Layer Visibility icon there and now go to the Background Copy layer and reduce the opacity I start to make that layer semitransparent.

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