Raster Layers

If you have any questions or comments about this tutorial, please post them here.

ABOUT RASTER LAYERS
To me, when you paint an image, raster layers are a MUST! When you have a raster layer made, you will be able to change the opacity, or better known as ghosting, an object or an image, also will be able to move, colorize, cut out, or use a drop shadow on a particular area that you may not want on another part of your image. Seriously, there are a number of things that can be done when you make a raster layer. In this short tutorial you will see why I speak so fondly of them! Truly I do not know all there is to know what can be done with layers, but I decided to share to the ones that are new to psp a little about what I do know. With this in mind let's get started on our paints!

MAKING A NEW RASTER LAYER
We will start out with something simple. Let's try a text on a new raster layer. So open up your psp and go to file/new. You can set your size settings to anything you want, but I have set mine on 102 width & 116 height and white background color. Now look at the top of your psp menu screen and find layers. Looks like this if you are using psp7,

click on layers, then a box will come up, click on new raster layer. Another box will come up and you can name this layer if you want or just do what I do and just click ok. If you take the time to name your raster layers I will say it is easier to keep track of what layer you are dealing with but it is not necessary. Now this will not look like you have done anything, but wait and you will see you have done alot!

USING YOUR OPACITY SLIDER
Now on your image you want to add text. Use any font, any color, but for our tutorial I used the name Versatile done in black, font was verdana set on size 14.





Now this is how I always bring up my layer palette, I simply click on the L key on my keyboard. There is a slider in that box, located on the right, it will say 100, that you can move side to side. Just place your cursor on the double arrows and let's move our slider to 20 or whatever you want. It should look like this:






Now look at your image! Check out how you made the text fade into the background!






Now let's make a second layer and repeat the steps above, but this time add the text in the center. Looking like this:





MOVING YOUR SELECTED RASTER LAYER
Ok now you can move the position of your raster layer at anytime you want. Say that now you have decided to move your text around a bit. Working on the previous text image from the lesson above, let's move the text to the bottom to say creations versatile. As is right now you can't because you are still on layer 2, how do we get back to layer 1 to move to the bottom? Well here's how.... Click on L again to bring up your layer palette, if you named your layers then you are A...O.K. if not, then place your cursor on each layer that you see on left of your layer palette box and this will bring up a little box and show you what layers it is. Once you have found your layer that you are looking for right click once and this will highlight your box. It will look like this:




Now you know that you are only working on that one particular thing that you wanted to move and nothing else. So now use your mover tool located at the left in your psp menu and move the word versatile to the bottom.





MERGING LAYERS
When you are done with all of your layers you need to merge them together. How?! Click back on the layers up in the psp menu and you again will see your list. Look for where it says merge and click on merge. Then another small box will pop up and you want to click on merge all(flatten). What this will do, will bring all the layers that you have made into a whole. This is very important to remember to do, so that if you want to work on the image as a whole, you can't until you merge these layers together, if the layers are not merged then you will be working on the last layer made or highlighted only.

WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE
Let's not forget the other stuff that we can do to an image, such as colorize, drop shadow and cut-out and the list goes on and on and on.....it's your preference how you want to dress your image as a whole or if it is done on many different layers and where and how to add the last touches to your image.