From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Converting the flat Background into a layer - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Fundamentals

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Converting the flat Background into a layer

- [Instructor] In this movie we begin the creation of our Pegasus project and the first step is to convert this flat background which you can see here inside the layers panel to a permanently free floating independent layer. And along the way, I'll also introduce you to the move tool. Now notice the name of this image is gallopinghorse.jpeg. The jpeg format is well suited to saving photographic images, but it cannot accommodate layers. You always end up with a flat image which appears as this background item here inside the layers panel. And that image must be rectangular and it's limited to the four walls of the canvas. Compare that to the final layered file which has all shapes and sizes of layers inside of it. So down here at the bottom, we have a flat white background, but notice if I turn it off I reveal areas of checkerboard which indicate transparency. And that tells us that this horse layer for example, is actually smaller than the canvas which is why we have some checkerboard action at the top of this thumbnail. And so in order to achieve this effect we have to convert the horse to an independent layer. And so, I'll go ahead and switch over to that flat image and take a look up here at the top of the tool box where we have the move tool. The move tool allows you to move layers and selections inside Photoshop. And so, for example, let's say armed with the rectangular marquee tool that I just go ahead and select a portion of the horse's head. If I want to now move that selection I don't drag the selection using the marquee tool because that's going to move the outline independent of the image. Instead, I would press control z, or command z on the Mac to undo that movement and then I would switch to the move tool up here at the top of the tool box. Notice that it has a keyboard shortcut of v. The letter v is of course the third letter in the word move, but the reason that keyboard shortcut is assigned to the move tool is because a v looks like an upside down arrow, and the move tool behaves like a standard arrow tool. In other words, it allows you to move stuff around. Now notice the appearance of the cursor. When I have the move tool outside the selection outline it appears as an arrowhead with a four direction arrow next to it, which is telling me that I can use it to move an entire layer. If I move it into the selection, that four way arrow is replaced by a pair of scissors telling me that I'm going to move the selection independently of the image. And so notice if I go ahead and drag the horses head down and to the left here I leave a hole where the selection used to be and that hole is automatically filled with a background color which by default is white as you can see down here at the bottom of the toolbox. Now the problem with working this way is we have what amounts to a floating selection, which is to say, it's by no means an independent layer. And we can see that's effect here inside the layers panel because we still have a background item and nothing more. Which means, if I were to switch back to the rectangular marquee tool, for example, and draw a new selection outline the old selection is fused into place, which is obviously not what we want. And so the moral of the story is that when you work with floating selections you work dangerously, you're always better off using layers. So what I'm going to do is go up to the file menu and choose the revert command in order to revert the image to it's saved appearance. Alright now, there are three different ways to convert a flat background to a floating layer. I'm going to show you all three, but I do have a preference. So I'll make it clear which is the best way to work. So method number one, is the just go ahead and switch to the move tool and without anything selected, just drag inside the image window. At which point, Photoshop will bring up an alert message telling you that the move tool is not really designed to move a flat background, which is why you need to convert it to an independent layer first. And you can do that on the fly by clicking on this button. The problem is even though we do now have and independent layer as indicated by the words layer zero here inside the layers panel, I just performed a blind move. In other words I had no idea what I was doing in advance. Compare that to moving the image once it's converted to a layer in which case you can preview the move on the fly. So, that's method number one. I'll go the the file menu once again and choose the revert command. Method number two is to click on this little lock icon in the layers panel, which will unlock the background, and convert it to a floating independent layer, once again named layer zero. Now if you don't like that name you can rename a layer anytime you like by double clicking on it's existing name and then entering a new name such as horse. And then pressing the enter key or the return key on the Mac Alright method two removes the ambiguity of trying to move the image blind but it also requires two steps. You have to first convert the background and then rename the layer. But there is a third method that allows you to do both at the same time and to demonstrate that I'm just going to flatten this file and I just want you to see how that works. Anytime you want to convert an independent layer back to a flat background, which is the kind of thing you may want to do if you wanted to save this image as a jpeg file, then you go up to the menu, choose new and choose background from layer which is going to leave you once again with a flat background. Method number three, for converting the flat background to a floating independent layer is to double click anywhere on this background item which will bring up the new layer dialog box and then just go ahead and name this layer, horse, for example, and click okay, and now we've performed both steps in a single operation. After which point you can see that I can drag this layer using the move tool to a different location. Now you may wonder, how in the world to you save this file. Because after all, if I go to the file menu and choose the save command or use that standard keyboard shortcut of control s here on the pc or command s on the Mac, I'm not going to save my changes to the jpeg format because after all jpeg does not support layers, Which is why Photoshop is going to display the save as dialog box. The best format for saving layers is the native .psd or Photoshop format after which point I'll just go ahead and locate this file that I've saved in advance which is called Layered horse right there and then I'll click the save button in order to save over it. If Photoshop displays this alert asking you if you want to maximize compatibility for now you can just ignore that by clicking okay. And that is how you convert a flat background to a permanently floating independent layer as well as saving that layer to the native .psd format here inside Photoshop.

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