Photoshop - layers

I have bought Photoshop’s Layers by Matt Kloskowski. This is the easiest to understand computer manual I have so far come across.

For the uninitiated, Photoshop is complex software enabling photograph manipulation, painting, and graphic design etc. In contrast to Matt’s manual it is devilishly unintuitive, but rewarding when one  masters some of its attributes relevant to your requirements.

Photoshop’s cornerstone  is a many faceted feature called layers, which seems to demand three dimensional lateral thinking to make it perform the task you require. Photoshop, like most software has its own vocabulary which often has no hint of the outcome for a named operation, or if there is a hint you nearly always have to set up some other parameter before you get what you want.

I have dabbled with Photoshop for a number of years, but my present restriction after a replacement knee operation five weeks ago has provided  the opportunity to explore further.

Matt’s manual  teaches you to do things the right way. I have already discovered quicker methods for some operations compared with my own laborious procedures.

The results below are hardly sophisticated, and were achieved in a fairly cavalier fashion - detail could easily be tidied, but I am not aiming for the front cover of a graphic design magazine at the moment. These efforts have been constructed using only photographs. In previous posts I have shown examples of free painting using Photoshop, which is a much more creative format.

Creative possibilities are only limited by one’s own imagination, and of course skill in operating the software.

"The bloke in the pub said there were dinosaurs in these woods"

"I think that chap in the tent has a Cornish pasty - I'm off over there"