From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

Creative layer effects - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop 2024 Essential Training

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Creative layer effects

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- [Instructor] Most people think that layer styles are just for adding simple effects like strokes and drop shadows, but they're much more powerful than that. Let's take a moment to explore some of the additional layer effects options that are available to us by adding them to this illustration to completely change the appearance. Now, before we start, we need to add a pattern overlay that's not loaded by default. So in the Patterns panel, I'm going to use the flyout menu and choose Legacy Patterns and More. As soon as I select that, we'll see that folder in the Patterns panel. Now, I'm going to target the creatures because I want to apply a layer effect to all of the layers within this group. So at the bottom of the Layers panel, I'll start by adding the pattern overlay. Here I've used the Pattern option to navigate to that Legacy Patterns and More. Inside the Legacy Patterns folder, there's an Artist Surfaces folder, and I've selected the second to last pattern, and then I've increased the opacity to 150%. I also want to add a color overlay, so I've selected a mustard color and set the blend mode to Color. All right, let's apply that, and then let's move down to the plants. I'll target it, but I want that same pattern overlay, so I'll hold down the Option key and drag the pattern overlay effect to the plants. Then in order to make additional edits, I'm going to double click on the word Effects, and I'll start by adding a gradient overlay. Now, because all of these layers are in a group and I'm applying the layer style to the group, the gradient that goes from dark green to light green is going to start at the bottom of this layer and go all the way to the top. So I just want to point out that we're not seeing much of the gradient on the smaller plants. All right. Next I want to add a stroke. I've changed the size to four pixels, and instead of filling with a solid color, I've chosen Gradient. This gradient goes from black to light green, but again, because we're applying this to the group, we're really only seeing the black on the smaller plants because the green doesn't appear until about halfway up the middle plant. Okay, let's also add an inner shadow. I'm going to increase the opacity to 50% and increase the size to 90 pixels, and of course, we could keep adding additional effects such as the bevel and emboss, or the outer glow. But for now, I'll toggle that off, and let's go ahead and apply this. Now, I'm not sure that I like the way that the gradient is applied to the group, and I'd like to apply it to the individual layers instead. So I'm going to right click and I'm going to copy the layer style, and I'll hide it from the group. Then I'll select all of the individual layers, right click, and choose to paste the layer style. Then we can hide the edges, and now we can see that gradient on the small plants as well as the larger ones. Excellent. As you can see, layer effects are much more powerful than just simple strokes and drop shadows.

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