Layers

Layers

Photopedia

23 October 2007 12:28

Layers are a feature of many image editing programs and allow you to make a composite image where each element is on a separate layer or level. In its most simple form, a layer can be thought of as a sheet of transparent acetate laid over a white background. You can create as many layers as you want.

When we bring a photograph into Photoshop it’s essentially painted onto this sheet of acetate and placed over the canvas. As we add another image, it’s added to its own transparent sheet and piled on top of the previous image.

Each picture obscures an area of the canvas, or picture beneath, so it appears as one image. The advantage of using Layers is that you can shuffle and tweak each image in-situ to get the most pleasing result.