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Using the Shape Tool

whenever I use things like the shape tool, which we haven't used, that I might as well down here is our shape tool. Let's say I want on the lips that means a oval or circle. I can click and drag like this, and with default settings, it's gonna create a brand new layer to put it on. I use the text tool. Same thing will happen so often times you have to go out of your way to not work with layers. If we don't want to work with layers, you can always merge things together That was choosing Merge layers from layer menu. So let's see what I might want to work on this. We just have a circle, but it looks pretty flat. Let's make it look like it stands out. I'm gonna create a brand new empty layer by clicking on the new layer icon. The bottom of my layers panel. I'll grab my paintbrush and I'm gonna choose black to paint with. I'll use a soft edged brush that's really big, and I'm just gonna paint some shading on top of the circle. Well, I want that shading toe only show up where the circle is ...

well on. I do the same thing we did to get a photograph to show up inside our text, which is layer create clipping mask. Then it only shows up inside the layer that's underneath. It's too dark. Well, that's when you go to the top of your layers panel and you have opacity and I can lighten it up. Then I could repeat that process, create a brand new layer, maybe change the color and painting with toe white. And now add a little highlight in there. It's too bright, so I lower the opacity, and I think I can see extending beyond the circle. So I go to the layer menu in Create clipping Mask. Now it can't go any further. And if I use my move tool, I can reposition both of those layers. I could move this one up here, try to put the highlight where I think it's best I can work in the layer that's underneath by clicking on it, movin around. It would be just right with both of them. I can adjust the rapacity control how much they show up, so now you can see how I can add a little bit more dimension to something and by using layers its most versatile. If I were to put all this paint on a single layer that I wouldn't be able to reposition that highlights separate from the shadow that's there to make this have more control. I wouldn't be able to adjust the opacity of the shady part separate from the highlight, and so it's really convenient to be able to work with separate layers. But if they ever get in your way, just select all the pieces that you think should be one part. Go to the layer menu in choose merge layers that will combine them together into a single layer. Finally, there is one other command you'll want to know about because there's a command that's very similar to merge layers. It's under the layer menu, and it's called Flatten Image. What the heck does it dio flatten? Image is going to throw away any layers that have their eyeballs turn off. So if I hide that circle that we made, it's going to end up being thrown away. When I end up flattening the image, then it's going to merge together all the layers that were currently visible so that when it's done, all we're gonna have is a layer called background, and you could think of that is finalizing your image. That's what happens if you ever choose Save As and you save this in a file format that does not support layers like JPEG file format. Also, when you choose save as there's just a check box within the save, as dialogue called layers. And if you ever wanted to flatten an image so you give it to somebody else and they don't have the pieces it was made out of, you could turn off that check box that was called layers in what you'd be saving out would not contain those layers, but to have the most versatility choose. Undo there and I'd keep my layers. If you want to keep your layers when you save your file, save it. Neither Photoshopped file format or tiff. There is no quality difference between those two choices. I personally used tiff Onley because the maximum file size you can create a tiff file is twice his biggest photo shop. So if you run into a really complex document, it might complain that you went above the maximum that a Photoshopped file format could be, and if so, you'd have to switch to Tiff. So I just used Tiff to begin with, but there's no quality difference.

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