Tuesday Top Tip – Make A Layer From Layer Effects
This week I am going to revisit one of my all time favourite tips in Photoshop. I first posted about this a while back before the website became the daily post thing it is now, so this time I’ll spend a little more time on it.
Make A Layer From Layer Effects
First off, here’s the set up. I’ve done a quick bit of type and added a bevel and a hefty stroke to it in a complementary colour.
Click To Enlarge
But now here’s the tip, I head up to the Layer Menu and choose, Layer Style>Create Layer
Looking at the Layers Palette we can see what happened;
Firstly it has sorted the shadows [1] and the highlights [2] from the bevel and emboss and put them on their own layer. The arrows [3] indicate that the layer is clipped to the layer below. This means that it will only appear within the pixels of the lower layer. These layers are above the text.
Below the text, Photoshop has created a layer for the Outline [4]. As we can see here, Photoshop doesn’t actually draw a stroke, it draws a big layer shaped blob that is x amount of pixels bigger than what it is stroking.
Now I could leave the tip there, but let’s not. As it stands it looks no different to if I hadn’t used the Create Layer menu option.
Because these layer effects are now layers themselves, they too can have layer styles, filters and anything else you care to mention, applied to them.
So in my example I’m going to add a Halftone pattern to the layer called Tippy’s Outer Stroke [4]. I find that under Filter menu, Sketch>Halftone Pattern.
I’ll have a bit of a play with the settings in there and click ok.
And then I’ll add a bevel to it too.
There is nothing stopping me now choosing to Create Layer from the menu again and start working on the layer effects I just created.
I used this technique to create the doorbell for a page of the original, never actually used, pages for TipSquirrel. (More of which you can find on my Facebook page)
I added effects to the circle, created a new layer from them and then added layer effects. Then I made the circle smaller and repeated.
My memory is rubbish, but I think there is Drop Shadow, Bevel, and Satin as well as the Stroke effect.
LOL! Would you believe that’s the tip I used to win the Photoshop Challenge Extreme during Midnight Madness at Photoshop World. Not widely known, but very useful.
Awesome.
A pure coincidence, but if I’d have seen you do it, I ‘d have nicked what was probably a far better explanation.
I use this feature to correctly separate what should be vector art from what should be bitmap. Illustrator can create the most common effects like glow and drop shadow, but if I’m working in a really big file with tons of effects, illustrator will take forever to update screen redraws.
So I build my Illustrator file to the same dimensions as my Photoshop file. I copy and paste my vector art into my Photoshop file and apply my effects to the copied illustrator art inside of Photoshop. Then I use create layer to separate the vector art from the effect. Now I can turn off the illustrator art layer and save out my Photoshop file with the effects in place. Because I built the Photoshop and Illustrator files to the same dimensions, everything lines back up when I place it back into the illustrator layout.
This is a great production tip for designers working in the print world, especially large format printing.