And lo on Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:52:47 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> Warp wrote:
>
>>   You wouldn't believe the sheer amount of layers a graphics  
>> professional
>> uses when creating images. We are talking about hundreds.
>>   Every single minuscule thing is usually put into its own layers.
>
> Wow. Just... wow.

Most I've worked with is about 20 layers at a time, I've had files in with  
around 100.

> And to think I still work on bitmaps using only 1 layer... (But then, if  
> you take a photograph of something, it's all one layer, and there's not  
> too much you can do about that.)

As Ben said you can copy and paste items into a new layer and indeed PSP  
has a Paste as New Layer option

>>   If I'm not completely mistaken, you can group several layers in  
>> Photoshop
>> into one entity which then works as if it was a single layer. This way
>> you can eg. move a part of the image, which in itself is composed of  
>> many
>> layers, as if it was just one layer.
>
> I can easily see that if *I* ever attempted to do something like this,  
> I'd end up putting two things into the same layer and then being  
> completely stumped later on because those things need to be in seperate  
> layers.

Yeah that's easy to do, it's also fun to mark out an area on layer 1 copy  
it to layer 2 and find you haven't got everything you thought you had  
because some of the image you can see is contained on layer 0. Likewise,  
as has been mentioned, brushing something out on layer 1 and finding  
you're really on layer 0 and need to undo.

>>   A layer mask is basically an alpha channel for a layer. That is,
>> besides having a full rgba color layer, the layer can have an  
>> additional,
>> separate alpha channel (called layer mask) which is applied to the layer
>> as well.
>>   This is handy when you want to show/hide parts of a layer, without
>> actually modifying the contents of that layer. And the other way around
>> is useful too: You can edit the contents of the layer without modifying
>> the layer mask, which means that your edits will never "bleed" outside
>> boundaries.
>>    The layer mask is not a bitmask, but a full alpha mask. This means
>> that parts of the layer can partially visible, not just on/off.
>
> Right. So... there's a channel that controls how opaque a layer is, and  
> another channel that controls how much you can draw on it?

Yeah sort of in PSP I can set a graduated mask for the alpha transparency  
on a layer, but then make that entire layer 50% opaque too. If you've got  
a copy of Paint Shop Pro it's well worth spending the time to fiddle I  
still find things that I hadn't realised it did, and it's cheaper then  
Photoshop.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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