How to divide a drawing into layers in Photoshop. Working with layers in Photoshop. Create a new layer in Photoshop

Dividing photographs into several parts may be necessary in different situations, from the need to use only one fragment of the photo to creating large compositions (collages).

This lesson will be completely practical. In it we will divide one photo into parts and create something like a collage. We’ll make a collage just to practice processing individual fragments of the photo.

Dividing a photo into parts

1. Open the required photo in Photoshop and create a copy of the background layer. It is this copy that we will cut.

2. Guides will help us cut the photo into four equal parts. To install, for example, vertical line, you need to grab the ruler on the left and pull the guide to the right to the middle of the canvas. The horizontal guide extends from the top ruler.

Adviсe:
If you do not see rulers, you need to enable them using a keyboard shortcut CTRL+R;
In order for the guides to “stick” to the center of the canvas, you need to go to the menu “View – Snap to...” and check all the boxes. You also need to check the box next to the item "Binding";

Hiding guides with a keyboard shortcut CTRL+H.

3. Select a tool "Rectangular area" and select one of the fragments limited by the guides.

4. Press the key combination CTRL+J, copying the selected fragment to a new layer.

5. Since the program automatically activates the newly created layer, we go back to the background copy and repeat the action with the second fragment.

6. We do the same with the remaining fragments. Our layers panel will look like this:

7. Let's delete the fragment that shows only the sky and the top of the tower; it is not suitable for our purposes. Select the layer and click DEL.

8. Go to any layer with a fragment and click CTRL+T by calling the function "Free Transform". Move, rotate and reduce the fragment. When finished, click OK.

9. Apply several styles to the fragment; to do this, double-click on the layer to open the settings window and go to the item "Stroke". Stroke position – inside, color – white, size 8 pixels.

Then we apply the shadow. The shadow offset should be zero, the size - depending on the situation.

10. Repeat the steps with the remaining photo fragments. It is better to arrange them in a chaotic order, so the composition will look organic.

Since the lesson is not about making collages, we’ll stop there. We learned how to cut photographs into fragments and process them separately. If you are interested in creating collages, be sure to study the techniques described in the lesson, the link to which is at the beginning of the article.

The layers are like transparent sheets of tracing paper lying on top of each other. Different types of drawing are grouped on different layers.

The first sheet contains a graphic representation of the part, the second - its dimensions, the third - shading, etc. If you superimpose one layer on top of another, the drawing will be reproduced with dimensions and shading. If you remove any layer, the image will be reproduced without it. Objects are created in the current layer.

Constructed objects are always placed on a specific layer. It can be either a default layer or a layer defined and named by the student himself. Each layer has its own color and line type associated with it. For example, you can create a separate layer to house centerlines and assign it a blue color and a linetype of CENTERLINE (or another line selected from the linetype library). Subsequently, if you need to build a centerline, you need to switch to this layer and start drawing. Thus, before each creation of centerlines, it is not necessary to set the color and line type again. In addition, if you need not to display centerlines on the screen or plotter, the visibility of the layer can be turned off. The ability to use layers is one of the main advantages of making drawings using a personal computer (PC) over pencil and paper.

When working in Paper space or with floating viewports (FVs) (more about Paper space in the Solid Modeling section), you can set the visibility of a layer individually for each viewport. All layers have the same settings for drawing limits, coordinate system, and screen zoom factor. If any set of layers is used frequently, then it is recommended to set these layers, colors and line types in the template.

To manage the properties of objects, use the floating panel "Object Properties" (Fig. 16).

Layer, color, line type, line thickness can also be controlled using the top four items of the Format drop-down menu.

By selecting the Layer icon from the Layer panel (Figure 16), you can open the Layer Properties Manager dialog box and use it to manage layers (Figure 17).

Rice. 16. Panels "Layers" and "Object Properties":

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Figure 17. Layer Properties Manager dialog box:

Layer properties:

layer name – can contain from 1 to 255 characters, including letters, numbers and special characters;

visibility (On) – layers can be visible On(ON) or Off(OFF).

Only those primitives that belong to the visible layer are depicted on the screen and drawn on paper, but drawings in invisible layers are part of the drawing and participate in regeneration; frozen / defrosted

on all viewports (VP) (FreezeinallVP) – freezing means turning off the visibility of the layer; locked / unlocked

– primitives in a locked layer remain visible, but cannot be edited. A locked layer can be made current, you can draw on it, change the color and line type, freeze it, and apply reference commands and object snaps to primitives drawn on it; color

– determines the color of the primitive of the given layer; line type name

– line type that will be used to draw all segments, circles, arcs and two-dimensional polylines belonging to the layer; 0 When you create a new drawing, a layer named 0 , and line type CONTINUOUS. Layer

cannot be deleted or renamed. It is usually used as a design drawing, meaning that the objects depicted on it are not included in the final drawing. The line type and color can be set to match or differ from the BYLAYER layer. New type

lines must be set in accordance with GOST 2.303-68. :

Managing Layer Properties Settings
.

1. From the Format menu, select Layer or from the Layers panel, select the Layer button.

2. In the list of available layers in the Layer Properties Manager dialog box, select the required layer and click the Current button.

3. Click the "OK" button.

When creating new layers, layers are created with the name Layer1, Layer2..., the color white and the line type "Continuous", which can be changed by clicking on the corresponding property. You can create multiple layers at once by entering the layer names separated by commas in the layer list.

Once the layers, colors, and linetypes you need are determined, you can assign them to objects in your drawing. In this case, it is possible to group various components of the drawing, distributing objects into layers. The user can control such layer properties as its visibility, color and line type, as well as the ability to edit objects located on this layer. You can move objects from one layer to another and change layer names.

The number of layers in a drawing, as well as the number of objects per layer, can be virtually unlimited. You can assign names to layers and specify any combination of layers for display.

Defining blocks can involve objects with different colors and line types located on different layers. Information about the color, linetype, and layer of an object can be stored for each object included in a block. In this case, each time a block is inserted into a drawing, each object included in it will be displayed using its assigned color, line type, and on the corresponding layer.

Editing Properties

Rice. 18. Properties Dialog Box

R You can edit any properties of objects using the "Properties" button from the "Standard" panel. By selecting it, you can open the Properties dialog box (Fig. 18). If there are no objects selected, the drop-down list at the top of the window says " Not chosen"

(Noselection) and the window shows the current settings. +<1>.

If you mark an object (select it) in a free part of the graphic screen, the contents of the “Properties” window will change and show the properties of the selected object, and its name will appear in the drop-down list. When the Properties dialog box is open, it does not prevent you from entering other commands.
The properties window can be called using a keyboard shortcut

AutoCAD has a command that allows you to transfer the properties of one object to another. In the Standard toolbar there is a button called "Copy Properties" (MatchProperties)

. After selecting this button, a command prompt appears:

For this request, you need to specify an object whose properties will be transferred to other objects (in this case, the mouse pointer takes the form of a brush), then specify the objects whose properties need to be changed.

This property greatly facilitates editing similar errors on graphic objects. It is enough to fix one object and then copy its properties to others.

It was said earlier that all graphic elements on a web page should only be rectangular. This is because files can only store images of this shape. Therefore, after you prepare the website layout, you will have to “slice” it, that is, divide it into separate images, which will then be saved in files and placed on the server.

It is more convenient to cut into separate parts an image that does not consist of many layers, but a “flat” image containing one layer (in most cases, this layer is the background one).

In order to “glue” layers together, you should use special commands found in the palette menu Layers(Layers), as well as in the menu Layer(Layer). These commands include:

To merge all visible layers, click Ctrl+Shift+E, or right-click on any layer --> Merge Visible. The resulting layer will be located in the place of the bottom visible layer and will take its name. If there was a background layer in the layers panel, then the visible layers will be merged into the background layer. Layers with visibility turned off will remain untouched.

Important! When merging visible layers, one or more of the visible layers must be selected, or none must be selected.

In the layers panel, the visible layers are “Background copy 3”, “Background copy 5” and “Background copy 7”, not a single layer is selected. The resulting layer is "Background copy 7"

4. Merging all layers of the stack to form a new layer.

This type of layer merging creates one new layer from all the layers in the stack, located at the very top of the stack, while all other layers (that were in the stack before the merge) remain untouched. To combine this, press the keys Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E. You can also hold Alt, right-click on any layer and click on the “Merge Visible” line.
Attention! Background layer also participates in the association!

All layers, including the background layer, were merged into a new layer, automatically named "Layer 1". The original layers remained unchanged.

5. Merging layers into a smart object

Hold Ctrl and select the layers you want. Then right-click on any of the selected layers and in the opened context menu Click on the "Convert to Smart Objects" item.

In the layers panel, the layers “Background copy 3”, “Background copy 5” and “Background copy 7” were converted into a smart object (Photoshop automatically named it “Background copy 7”), in the picture on the right panel the smart object is marked with an icon in the lower right corner of the layer thumbnail.

Combining layers by grouping them

Combining layers by grouping them is not an independent way to combine layers. This method is used when you are working with a complex document with a large number of layers and you need to combine a large number of certain layers.
First, you need to select the layers by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the desired layers. Then click Ctrl+G to group them. In this case, grouping is necessary so that you make sure that the group contains exactly the layers that you need; if not, then you can always remove or add layers from/to the group. In other words, you are simply checking that you have selected the right layers correctly before merging them.
Then, you need to right-click on the group and click on the line “Merge Group”.

Once again, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that these methods (except for merging into a smart object) are suitable for layers with a normal blending mode. If the blending modes are changed, the merging result may differ from the expected ones, i.e. The image in the document may change, and the changes can be either minor or dramatic. To avoid such problems and simply improve your Photoshop knowledge, read the article “Merging layers with different blend modes in Photoshop.”