Essential Blend Modes

As we've seen in some of the previous videos, the use of blend modes can be really powerful. They can be an excellent way to get one layer to blend with another layer underneath it. So let's take a look for a moment at the two layers in the document. Here we have the watch layer that is photographed on a white background. And then I've just created this thick black stripe and this thick white stripe around it. So none of that is transparent. It's actually all either black, white, or different shades of gray. And then of course, the watch. Now if I toggle the visibility of that layer by clicking on the Eye icon, we can see that underneath it.
I have a little layer of just a photograph of the beach. So just want to make sure that we see that there's obviously two layers here. The first way you might think about blending layers together is simply by changing the opacity. And we can certainly do that I change the opacity of the layer, I can start to see through the watch layer to the beach layer below. But we can also use all of these different blend modes. And Photoshop has over 25 blend modes, or different ways, different mathematical algorithms that you can blend the layer that you have selected with the layer below it or with all of the layers below it.
They're broken into categories and we're just going to select maybe three or four to take a look at. I want to make sure that we look at the Multiply, the Screen and Overlay and Soft Light blend modes, because I think those are the ones that you'll probably use most often. But, I will tell you why they're categorized the way they are. This first group right here are always going to take the darker values from the images being blended together. So if I select Multiply, we will see that I retain a lot of the dark information. So I'll retain this black edge and I'll retain the darker areas in the watch. So we'll select that.
And sure enough we retain that information but we don't retain the light. It's almost like putting one negative on top of another and then projecting them. So we're going to get a darker image. In addition, each blend mode actually has a neutral color or a color that disappears, and when you use the multiply blend mode or any of the blend modes in that group. White is going to disappear. Let's move down to the next group. But, before we do, we'll set this back to normal.
Just because I want to show you when we select screen, we're going to be retaining the lighter values here. It's really like projecting two images on a screen so the images will get lighter. And there's also a neutral color here, and that color is black. So any of these Blend modes here, if you select them, black will just be removed from the image. So sure enough, we're missing that black stripe right here. And we can see through to the layer underneath.
And then, we're seeing blending within those darker values of the watch, where it's actually taking on the lighter value from the layer underneath it. We'll set this back to Normal again, just so we can see what it would look like. And then I'm going to switch down to this blend mode grouping right here. Now what happens with all of these is that Photoshop splits the dynamic range of the image in half. And on the darker side, it's going to take the darker colors, and on the lighter side it's going to take the lighter colors. So you'll always notice that you're adding contrast when you select any of these blend modes in this group.
The least amount of contrast that you can achieve is with this soft light option. And then you can see as I change to Overlay, there's more contrast. And as we go down through the list, like hard light, we see more and more contrast in all of these other options. And there is a neutral value here, as well, and that is middle gray. So, 50% gray, just disappears when you select one of those blend modes in the third group.
There are some additional blend modes down at the bottom that we've actually taken a look at in some of the other videos. The color blend mode just gives a color overlay. It's really great if you're trying to hand color something. Or luminosity will only give us the grayscale values of the layer on top that we are blending, but you can see through and you're actually getting a bit of color from the layer or layers below. Now instead of selecting each one from the list and toggling through it, we can use a keyboard shortcut.
Before I use the keyboard shortcut, I need to make sure I have one of these top tools selected. I need any tool that does not have a blend mode for the tool. So I can't select the paint tool because we have a blend mode for the Paint tool. So I'll just tap the V key, that gives me the Move tool, and then I'll use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Plus to go down through the blend modes. Or I can use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Minus to go back up through the different blend modes.
And if you try that shortcut and you're not getting what you expected, you probably do have a tool selected that has a blend mode option. So there we go, a quick overview of the power of blend modes in Photoshop.

Type Essentials

Photoshop has a powerful text engine that makes adding type to a document, quick and intuitive. In this lesson we're going to learn how to add point text, and then refine it by using the options bar, and the character panel. To create our headline, I'll select the type tool and by clicking it on the tool pallet or by taping the t key. Then we can choose our options, such as the font as well as the size, in the menu bar. In this case, I'm going to select Myriad Pro Regular, but you can select any typeface that you want.
I'll also increase the point size to at least 24 points. Then I'll click in my image and start typing the word revive. If I want to change the size of the type without committing to the type I can hold down the command key, or the control key on Windows, and start dragging in order to resize this. If I add the shift key then I can stain the proportions of the font. If I want to reposition the type, again with out committing to the type.
I just move my cursor away from the type and then click and drag in order to reposition it. Once I'm satisfied with the type and I want to commit to it, I can either click the check icon, or use the keyboard shortcut command return, or control return to commit to the type. As you can see on the layers panel, I have new type layer and that layers name the same thing that I just typed in. One of the things about type in Photoshop is always re editable, and because is vector based we don't lose any quality, even if I use free transform to transform it.
If I want to make a change to the type, and I still have the type tool selected, all I need to do is click and drag over the letters or the characters that I want to change. If I want to change all of the text, I could do a quick command A. Or control A on windows, in order to select all. In this case, I want to change it so that it's semi bold. Then I'll click the check mark in order to apply that change. Another way to make changes to an entire text layer without actually having to click and swipe to select the text, is to simply have the text layer selected on the layers panel.
Then, if I want to change the color, for instance, I can click in the color swatch and either change the color using the color picker. Or I can position the cursor on top of the image and select a color from the photograph itself. Once I'm satisfied with the color, I'll click OK in order to apply that. Now in order to add a little bit of separation between the text and the background, I'll use the effects icon in order to add an outer glow. I'll change the color of the grow from yellow to white by clicking on the color swatch and selecting it in the color picker.
I might want to make this a little more opaque and increase the size. When I click OK, we can toggle on an off the auto glow to see how now there's a little bit more separation between the type and the background. Now, I want to add some more headline text. But instead of typing in, we are going to take advantage of the note that I've saved within the document. In order to access the contents of the note, double click on the note. That will show the notes panel. If the notes panel isn't visible, use the window menu, and then select notes.
If you can't see the entire note, you can use the grabber handle in order to elongate or make the notes panel larger. We can see that by default all of the text in the notes panel is selected. I only want the top portion selected so I'll click to deselect and then click again and swipe in order to select the top portion of text. In order to copy this to the clipboard I'll use the keyboard shortcut command c on Mac or control c on windows.
And then we can go ahead and collapse that panel. Now, when I click with the text tool inside the image area, I can see from the text insertion point that my types going to be very large. So I'll use the options bar to bring that down to around 12 points. Then I'll use the keyboard shortcut command v or control v in order to paste that type. As we can see, the type continues on past the image area because we're using headline type, or point type.
Photoshop doesn't automatically create line breaks. We need to do that manually. So I'll place my text insertion point right before the word fortunately, and then tap the return, or enter key. Now I want to make changes to the entire body of text here, so I'll do a quick command a, or control a on Windows, in order to select all of the characters in my type layer. Of course I can make a number of changes using the options bar but there are additional changes if I show the character panel in order to do this we can go to the window menu and chose character or we can simply click on the character panel.
Now if I wanted to change something like the type size, there are many different ways I can do so using this panel. For example, if I hover my cursor on top of the icon to set the font size, I can then use the scrubby sliders by clicking and dragging to the left to make the size smaller,. Or clicking and dragging to the right to make the size larger. If I know the exact size that I want, I can simply swipe in the text entry area and then enter it in. Or I can select a size from the drop down menu.
If I want to change the spacing between the two lines of type then I'll want to change the leading. In this case i'll use the scrub sliders again. Moving to the left to type up the letting and moving to the right to expand it. Of course if I ever want to reset that back to the default I can use the drop that menu, and then chose auto. If I want to change the spacing between all of the characters then I'll want to use this icon to set the tracking.
If I want to close up the spacing, putting the characters closer together, I'll click and drag to the left, or I can open up the spacing by clicking, and dragging to the right. If I've highlighted the value, I can also use the up arrow keys in order to increase or the down arrow keys in order to decrease the amount of spacing. And if I ever want to reset this, I can simply choose zero from the list. If I only want t change the distance between two characters, I can go ahead and place the text insertion marker.
Between those two characters. And then I would using the kerning option here. I can click and drag to the right in order to add space. Or click and drag to the left in order to decrease spacing. But again that's just the spacing between two characters. I'll go ahead and reset that by choosing optical. Now there are many different ways that I can pick a different type face. But it would be really really useful if I could get a preview of the type face that I'm trying to select. Now if I'm not sure of the font that I want to use, there are a variety of different ways that we can actually preview.
The different type faces in Photoshop. In order to get the largest preview, I'm going to close the character panel, and I'm also going to commit to this type. I'll do that by clicking on the check icon up in the options bar. Now remember, the type layer is still selected. So, when I choose from the list of fonts here, I can actually roll my cursor over any of those different options and we'll get an instant preview in the image area.
This is a great way, if you're not familiar with your fonts, to quickly take a look of them. Now, if you know what font you're looking for, you can go ahead and search for that font. So for example, if I was looking for Helvetica, I could start typing in Helvetica, and it would show me all of the fonts that contain that word. Or if I wanted to do a more general search, I could search for all of the typefaces that include the word bold. Or, I could be more specific and type in bold and italics and I even can include something like Pro as part of the name.
In addition, you might have noticed that in the upper right there is an icon with a T on it and if I click on that it will take me directly to the Typekit website. If you're a subscriber to Creative Cloud Complete or to Photoshop CC the point product, then you have access to hundreds of fonts via Typekit. And you'll notice that when we landed on this page, it's automatically going to search for those type faces that I can use on my desktop. I can refine that search, for example if I'm looking for a script font, I can select script, and then scroll through until I find a font that I like.
In order to install this font. I simply click use fonts. And then sync selected fonts. Those fonts will automatically be installed via the Creative Cloud desktop app. So that when I return back to Photoshop. And we select the type menu. If I type in A-L-E-X we can see there's the Alexa font that I just installed. One last thing to just point out here if I remove my search criteria.
And just click this filter icon. We can immediately see all of the different type kit fonts that I have installed. Alright, let's go ahead and release that feature and then I'm going to type in myriad. And select the semi bold version, and then apply that to the type that I have selected. I also want to add a simple drop shadow, so I'll click the effects icon, and choose drop shadow, I'll move that out of the way so that I can see it. And I'll go ahead and decrease the distance to about three pixels, as well as the size.
And click okay just so we get a little bit of separation between that text and the background photograph. Then let's go ahead and save this document. I'm going to use the keyboard shortcut cmd + shift + s or ctrl + shift + s in order to save this. I'll add an 01 at the end and save it back into the original folder. I want to make sure that I maximize the compatibility and then I want to close this file so that I can show you one last shortcut. If you don't have any documents open and you change the type attributes these attributes will become your new defaults.
So for example, if I want to use Myriad Pro, but I want to use the regular version as my default, and I want to set that to 12 points and maybe make sure that I have black as my default color because I don't have any documents open the nest time I open a document these will be my type settings. So there you go. An introduction to point type. Otherwise known as headline type. Just don't forget, if you only want to change a portion of the text.
Be sure to select what you want to affect first. And then make your changes.

Basic Shape Layers

In this lesson we're going to take a look at some of the different Shape tools that we have in Photoshop. Now, similar to the Text tools the Shape tools are vector based. And that means they're resolution is independent, so you never to worry about resizing them after you draw them, you can transform them at any time you won't lose any quality. So to select these Shape tools ,you can either click on the Shape tool icon in the Tool bar or you can tap the U key. Now, to make sure that we're all starting in the same place, if you're on the Mac, if you'll Ctrl click on the icon here in the upper left, and then choose Reset tool.
Or, if you're on Windows, just right mouse click and choose Reset tool. Now, as soon as I click and drag out a rectangle in my image area, the Properties panel appears and you'll notice that there are a lot of these same options on the Properties panel as there are in the menu across the top. So, it really doesn't matter which one you use, it's whichever one you feel more comfortable with. We'll take a look at the Properties panel first because I want to show you that Photoshop has the ability to create rounded rectangles and their dynamics. So, these are live shapes meaning that if I save this file and I come back to this file next week or next year, these shapes can still be modified. And the way that you would modify the corners is either by entering in your own pixel values here, or you could enter them in down here, or I think it's much easier just to click on one of the icons next to the corner. And you'll see that you'll get your scrubby sliders, and you can click and drag in order to change the radius of that edge. Now, they all changed in tandem and that's because they're all linked together right now.
If I wanted to unlink them, I would click on the link icon, and then I could drag one independently of the others. The interesting thing is if I do drag one independently, and then I decide to link them again, and I click and drag, you can see that if I add say, 20 pixels to this corner the other pixels also get 20 pixels added to them. So, if I wanted to just reset them all very quickly, the easiest way is to just to swipe in the area above and just type in 0 px for pixels and tap Enter or Return.
Now, that they're linked, if I drag one, again they'll all drag in tandem. So, that's how you would work with the live shape properties. Now, every time that I drag out a shape that contains these live shape properties, the Properties panel is going to flyout automatically. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to click where it says Properties and I'm just going to dock it with my other panels. In fact, I'll nest it with the Color and Swatches panel over here on the right side. Now, I won't need my adjustments or my styles, so I'm going to double-click on the Word Adjustments, in order to just collapse that.
So that I get a little bit more space that I can see the entire Properties panel. All right. You can see that when I clicked and dragged out this initial rectangle, it actually created a Shape layer on the Layers panel. If I don't want this rectangle, I can just tap the Delete key. And it will delete that entire layer. We also do have a Rounded Rectangle tool that you can use. Again, you just click and drag out, and then we can see all the live shapes properties over here in the Properties panel. We can also see the options across the top.
Now say, for example, you didn't have the Properties panel showing and you just want to change the fill or the stroke, we can click in the Color Swatch and then change the color, maybe right here. If I want to select a color for my image, I can't position the cursor on top of my image area. Instead, I need to click on this swatch for the color picker. And now, certainly, I can position my cursor anywhere, and select a color from the image, so that when I click OK, Photoshop will fill the rectangle with that. One of the nice things that this little dialogue does is it keeps track of my recently used colors, which I really appreciate.
And of course, I don't have to fill with a solid color. I could choose to fill with a gradient or I could choose to fill with a pattern. Or I could choose not to fill with anything. We'll take a look at that in a minute. For now, I'll go ahead and fill it with this light blue, and then we'll move over and look at the stroke attributes. So, by clicking on the Stroke Swatch here, again I can choose from stroking my image with a solid color, with a gradient, or with a pattern. We'll move back to the solid color for a moment. And then, I'll show you to the right of that.
Not only can we set the width of the stroke, I can also change other attributes. So, if I wanted this to be a dash line, or a dotted line, I can select from the presets here. All of the aligament options are right below, so if I wanted to actually stroke this outside of the rectangle, I can choose to do that. Then, I can choose the different caps. So, instead of a dotted line, I want a square. I can go ahead and choose that, and I can choose more options here, so we can actually customize the dash and the gap for our dash lines here.
And then, when we do create things that we like, of course, we can save those. Once we save them, they'll appear not only in the preset list here, but they'll also appear right here. Excellent. If I want to change the width and height without actually going into free transform, I can do so by just clicking on the width and height here. So I can enter in specific numeric values if i want to. I can also link them together and use my scrubbie sliders, moving to the right would make these larger, moving the the left would make it smaller. Alright, let's select another one of the Shape tools.
I'm going to move down the the Ellipse tool, we can clip and drag out with this. Of course, if I hold down the Shift key, we can constrain it to a perfect circle, and you'll notice that it has the exact same attributes as the rectangle did. So, when you enter in the different attributes in the Options bar, you're actually changing them for the currently selected Shape layer. And you're also setting them as your defaults for the next shape that you draw. Let's go ahead and just remove the stroke for now. And I don't need the ellipse, so let's tap the Delete key to remove that layer.
But did you notice when I deleted that circle, because the Rounded Rectangle layer is selected, we're back to having a stroke here. So, if I want to set these options in my Option bar different for the next shape that I draw, I'll just click here on my Layers panel, so that the rounded rectangle Shape layer is not selected. Now, you can see that the stroke is no longer there. So, when I select the Polygon tool and I click and drag. All I'm going to get is the default fill and stroke. Every time I have drawn one of these shapes so far, I was actually clicking and dragging out my cursor.
If I want to tell Photoshop to please draw a shape at a specific size, then all I need to do is just click in my image area. And now, I can enter the width and height. So, this works for the polygon. It also works for the Ellipse, and the Rounded and Regular Rectangle tools as well. So, let's just type in maybe 400 by 400, and let's make it an octagon, so I'll tap in 8. And we can create smooth corners, we can create a star if you want to, we can indent the sides as long as I turn on the Star option right here. But I'm going to leave those off for now.
Click OK, and there is our octagon. Now, if I click and drag right now to try to move this, I'm actually going to draw another shape. So, don't forget, when you are working with the Shape tools, just tap the V key to get the Move tool. And then, you can reposition the shapes in your image. Now, I want to show you what happens when you combine two Shape layers together because here I've got the two polygon Shape layers. I'm going to change the attributes for the layer on top. This one over here. So, I'll tap the U key again to get the Shape layer.
Then, I'll just add a quick stroke. Let's say, we add a yellow stroke. Tap Enter or Return to dismiss that dialog. And now, on the Layers panel, I'm going to select both of these layers. So, I'll hold down the Cmd key on Mac or the Ctrl key on Windows to select both of these. And then I'm going to choose Merge Down. So, from the Layer menu, I will merge the shapes. Now, watch what happens. You can see that the second polygon took on the same attributes. So, it's important to know that when you're working with Shape layers and you're merging them together, that the layer on top, the attributes of that layer, will be the ones that are saved.
Because when you prop multiple shapes on the same Shape layer they all to have the same attribute. You can't have one shape with a dotted line and another one with a dash line if they're going to be on the same Shape layer. You can always make a separate Shape layer like we happen, I just wanted show you that in case you ever wanted to merge your Shape layers. If I double-click on the thumbnail for this Shape layer, you can see I get the solid color picker. And if I wanted to change the color of these, maybe to a green color or a blue color, we can do that and click OK.
Alright, so let's go ahead and delete this, I'm going to tap the Delete key. I'm also going to delete the rounded rectangle. And this time, I'm going to return back, and we're just going to take a look at the Line tool for a minute. The Line tool, when you use it, it can be confusing initially because I tend to see people try to change the stroke on the Line tool in order to change the weight of the line. But we actually have an option for the Line tool right over here. So, if I wanted a heavier weight line, like let's say 25 pixels, I would enter it in there. And then, we can draw our line.
But a lot people ask me about making call outs. They want to make like a little arrow pointing to something. So, let's tap the Delete key to delete that Shape layer. And now, I'll select the Gear icon right here. And when I choose the Gear icon, I can now tell Photoshop. If I want an arrowhead at either the start or the end or both ends of the line. Tap Return or Enter. And then, I can click and drag out my arrow. In this case, it's a double headed arrow. We could of course always modify that, but a lot of people don't find those arrowheads.
But they're right there, underneath the Gear icon. And of course, you can change the width and the length and the concavity as well. Alright, we'll tap Return or Enter in order to dismiss that dialog. And I'll tap the Delete key one more time. So, I just want to show you maybe a really quick way that I could clip a portion of this ice image within a rectangle. So, I'm going to return back to the Rectangle tool. And I'll click and drag out a rectangle over here on the right. It's a solid rectangle and that's fine for now. I will also want to add a small stroke, but we'll do that in a minute.
What I'll do is I'll click on the Ice layer in the Layers panel. And I'll use a keyboard shortcut Cmd+J to duplicate that. And you'll notice that it became a lot darker. That's because the initial layer, this Ice layer right here is said to Multiply at a lower opacity. So, when I made a copy of it I'm multiplying this copy with it, so that's why I got a lot darker. I'll go ahead and change that just to normal. And I'm going to change the opacity all the way up to 100%. But I only want this copy to appear in the rectangle, so I'll reposition it changing the stacking order on the Layers panel.
And then, I'm gong to clip it by choosing Layer > Create Clipping Mask. So now, the copy of the ice is only going to appear where the rectangle is. The nice thing about this is that it's very flexible. If I select the Rectangle layer, and I decide I want to make it larger or smaller. For example, I might wannato make the width a little smaller, I can just click and drag. And as it updates the rectangle, it also updates what area or what part of the ice is being shown.
But the ice is exactly the same on top. Plus, it's really hard to kind of see the edge of the rectangle. So, while the rectangle is still selected. I'm going to choose to add a black stroke. But I'm going to change the stroke width here. And I'm going to actually add in 0.25 and tap Enter or Return. So, that's a very thin stroke. And at 50% we're barely able to see that. Because there's actually the line that goes around the Shape layer. If I want to hide that, I can use the keyboard shortcut Cmd+H.
Now, when you're on the Mac, Cmd + H typically is a system level keyboard shortcut that people use to hide an application. So, the first time you use this in Photoshop. Photoshop is going to ask you if you want to hide Photoshop, or Hide Extras. In this case, I'm going to say Hide Extras. That way, we're hiding the path that is creating the Shape layer. And now, I can see this stroke. If it's really hard to see because this is a video that's been compressed, maybe it would be smarter for me to make that 0.5 instead. So, I'll just take off the 0.25 add 0.5.
And now, it's a little bit thicker. One last thing that I want to do is I want to add an effect. I want to add a simple drop shadow. So I'll select that. Move the layer style out of the way. Increase the size a little bit of my drop shadow, maybe increase the distance a little bit. And then, click OK. And the reason that I added this is because I want to show you that if I now change the size of the rectangle again, if we come up here to the width of the rectangle and I increase this maybe to 500 pixels wide, when I tap Enter or Return Photoshop's going to increase the size of the shape.
And, of course, it will redraw that drop shadow for me. Now, I do want to just do one more thing to the ice and that is I want to transform it. So, I'll choose Edit. And then, Transform. And I'm just going to flip it horizontally, so that the ice that's contained in here isn't an exact duplicate of the background. Excellent, so that wraps up the overview of Shape layers in Photoshop.

Essential Layer Effects and Styles

Photoshop has a number of build in, non destructive effects like the Drop Shadow which can be applied to a variety of different kinds of layers. So first, we are going to add a drop shadow to this photograph and in order to do that we need to scale the photograph smaller, or add Canvas Size around it. In this case we'll just scale it a little bit smaller. To do so I need to convert the background into a layer. Now, if I want to rename the layer I could double-click "Background" and rename it but if I just simply need to unlock it I can click on the lock icon.
Now that it's a layer instead of a background I'll choose "Edit" and then "Free Transform" or I could have used the keyboard shortcut cmd + t or ctrl + t. In order to constrain the proportions I'll hold down the shift key and I'll also hold down the option key on the Mac or the alt key on Windows in order to scale this from the center. When I've got it the size I like, I'll tab "return" or "enter." Now to add a drop shadow from the bottom of the Layers panel I'll click on the effects icon and then select "Drop Shadow." You can see that the layer-style dialogue is actually divided into two areas.
On the left hand side we have the name of the different effects and then as soon as you select one of those effects, we can see the options on the right hand side. So, in this case, if I wanted to change the angle or the distance, I could use the slider here to choose the distance and I could use the dial here in order to change the angle. Now I'm not sure if you can see that drop shadow, so I'm going to increase the opacity of it. Now, instead of changing the angle on the distance again this time what I'll do is I'll just move my cursor into the image area.
You can see that I can move the drop shadow around by just dragging it. In the dialogue you'll notice that both the angle and the distance are changing. If I wanted to soften this a little bit I could increase the size of the drop shadow. When I click on "Outer Glow," you'll notice that all the options swap out. If I had just selected to toggle on the Outer Glow by clicking on this check-box right here, then we wouldn't actually get the options for the Outer Glow because Drop Shadow would still be selected and we are seeing all the Drop Shadow options.
So you have to make sure that you actually click on the effect that you want in order to see those options. If I don't want to apply an outer glow, I simply un-check it. I do want to add a stroke around here, however, so I'll click where it says "Stroke," that applies it, meaning that it enables it and turns on the check and gives me all the options to the right hand side. Now I want to increase the size of the stroke because I want to show you the difference here between putting the position on the inside of the stroke versus the outside of the stroke.
You'll notice that when it's on the outside, it always has a rounded corner here, so I prefer to put the position on the inside of the stoke. And I'm going to change the size to three by just tapping the "3" on the keyboard. If these are the settings that you want to apply all the time, like over and over, you might want to make this the new default, by clicking "Make Default." I'll go ahead and apply these two effects, which would also be called a Layer Style, by clicking "OK." Now, if I wanted to turn off or hide all the effects but not remove them, I can click on the eye icon next to the word "Effects." In order to show them again, I'll click to the left of "Effects" in order to toggle back the eye icon.
If I only want to hide one effect I'll just click on the eye next to that effect. To show it again, click in the blank area. If I wanted to hide all of these effects or minimize the space that they take up on the Layers Panel then I can click on the upward facing triangle to the right of the word "Effects." If I want to reveal them, I'll click again. If I wanted to edit one of the effects I simply double-click on the name of the effect and then make my change. When I'm finished, I click "OK." Now, lets go ahead and add some type to this image.
In order to apply an effect to a different layer other than a pixel based photo-layer I'll tab the "t" key that gives me the Type Tool. Now I don't know what settings you have in your Type Tool, so I'm going to right mouse-click and choose "Reset Tools," if you don't have a two button mouse just hold down the control key and click on the "t" to reset the tool. Now I'll start typing in the word "California." If I want to scale this, I can hold down the command key and then start dragging any of the anchor points.
Then I'll add the shift key in order to constrain the proportions of the type. If I position my cursor away from the type, you'll notice that it switches to the "Move" tool and I can actually re-position the type before committing to it. Once I like the type I'll go ahead and tap "enter" or "return." And now I want to add the same layer effect, with the same two styles, to the text. However, if I click on the word "Effects" and just drag it up to "California" on my Layers Panel it actually removes it from layer zero, or the photo, and positions it on the text.
So we'll undo that and this time I'll hold down the "option" key or the "alt" key, and drag the word "Effects" to the California layer. So you see, now we have a duplicate of that Layer Effect on both layers. However it is important for me to point out that just because I duplicated the effects, they are not linked together. Meaning that, lets say for example on the text I didn't want the stroke, I could hide the stroke or I could even throw the stroke away in the trash can but the effects on layer zero still remain.
Likewise, if I double-click on the word "Drop Shadow" and I change the opacity of the drop shadow on the text you'll notice that the opacity on the photo layer does not change. However you'll notice that there is an exception and that is when I change the angle. And that's because of this option right here to "Use Global Light." If I want to cast a shadow on one layer in a different direction than in another layer I need to un-check that. Now I can move them independently.
Alright, when I'm satisfied I'll click "OK." However, I'm not fond of the drop shadow angle on this photo layer, so let's just double-click on that and I will un-check "Global Light." I want to make sure that the drop shadow is in the lower right here. Alright, one last thing that I want to show you and this is a great feature if you have to apply a layer style to multiple groups. What I'll do is I'll select my "Custom Shape Tool" and then I'll right mouse-click on the icon for the shape and select "Reset Tools." If you're on the Mac you can "control" click and then reset this tool.
From the "Shape Picker" I'm going to select just the third arrow here from the default shapes. Then I'll click and drag out an arrow across the bottom here, maybe about that large. Now, I want to add four additional arrows, so I'm going to use the keyboard shortcut cmd + j in order to create my first copy, second, third and fourth. Now I'll use the Move Tool in order to move the most recently created shape, that's the shape one, copy four, over here to the right and you can see if I use my Smart Guides I want those in alignment.
I can also just hold down the shift key to make sure that they stay in alignment on the horizontal axis. Alright once I have got that positioned where I want it, I want to distribute all of these. So on the layers panel I've got the Top Shape Layer selected, I hold down the shift key and select "Shape 1" Then we can use the distribute icons here in the Options Bar in order to distribute these based on their centers. The reason we did this was to make sure I had lost of different layers that I could put into a group.
So I'll use the keyboard shortcut cmd + g our you can go to "Layer" and then "Group Layers." Once they are in a group we can rename that by double-clicking on it and I'll call it "Arrow." Then, in order to add an effect to all of the arrows at one time, instead of selecting a single arrow I'll make sure that I'm actually selecting the group and then at the bottom of the Layers Panel I'll select the effects, I'll add a stroke, in this case I'll change the color of the stroke to something that we can see, like white.
Click "OK" and "OK" again. So this is a very convenient way when you have a lot of different shapes and you want to apply the same effect. Especially because if you want to make a change to this, instead of having to change all the individual effects I can simply double-click on the word "Stroke," change it, maybe decrease the size down to two pixels, and click "OK." But the one thing to be aware of is that if you move one of these shapes outside of the group then it will loose that layer effect.
So I'll go ahead and choose "Edit" and then "Undo Layer Order" in order to put that last shape layer back in the group. One last keyboard shortcut; if you want to collapse of the layer styles in your Layer Panel, meaning that you don't want to see all the individual effects here, if you hold down the option key on Mac or the alt key on windows and just click on that triangle it will collapse them all at one time. Excellent, that wraps up this overview of Layer Effects and the layer styles in Photoshop!