Learning Effects
page twoBefore you start, look at your History palette, and make a mental note of what the last state showing is named. We will be coming back to it.
Choose the Asphalt effect in the Effects Browser, and click on the Apply button in the palette’s upper right corner.
When Elements is finished applying the effect, you will be asked, in an alert box, “Do you wish to keep this effect?”.
Before clicking “Yes”, I want you to look at your History palette. Notice that, at the very top of the palette, there is a Snapshot.
This is a Photoshop feature that is not accessible in Elements. It allows you to “save” a particular history state for as long as your document is open.
Normally, when you exceed the number of history states that you have specified in preferences, the oldest states are discarded. By creating a snapshot, Elements is making sure that it can return you to where you started from if you decide not to keep the effect.
Go ahead and click “Yes” to accept the effect. Now, go to your History palette, scroll up the list of states to the top, and click on the first step before the start of the Asphalt effect. In this case, that would be the state right before New Layer.
In all cases, when we are walking through these effects I want you to watch 1) the Layers palette, and don’t forget to check for Blend Mode and Opacity changes, and 2) your image.
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Appendix
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Brushes in 7
Using PS7 Brushes
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7 Reference: Palettes
Reference: Effects
Selections
Channels
Basic Layers
Basic Pen
How Much?
Color Management
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Combining Images
Combining Images II
Combining Images III
Compositing in Photoshop
Perfect Blend
Multicolor Fill
Dodge and Burn
Duotones
Styles On Masks
Organic Textures
Abstract Background
Make a Frame
3D Wire Text
Doodling
The next four states, Mezzotint, Add Noise, Texturizer, and Gaussian Blur are all filters. Watch your image as you click on each successive state to see what the filter is doing to the image.
Just in case you’re looking at your totally blotted out image, and wondering what the heck this is for, the Asphalt effect is from the Textures group, and is intended for filling suitable objects with a particular texture.
When stepping through these history states, unless you are a veteran Photoshop user, you are not going to recognize many of the names. I have made an Appendix with an alphabetized list of all the state names found in Effects, accompanied by the path to where you can find the commands in Elements. See the Appendix page, whenever you need help.
Older Tutorials
Quick Mask
Rubberstamping
More Adjustments
Sharpening
Filters
Color
Elements Basics
Reference: Elements Tools
Reference: Elements Palettes
How Do I...?
Gotcha
Pre-Beginner
Pre-Beginner II
Why Layers?
Holes
Fade In
Playing With Styles
Learning Effects
Redeye Removal
Artistic Filtering
Symmetrical Flowers
Simulated Alpha Channels
Layer Masks
Multilayer Masks
Displacing Textures
Also, please notice the Blend Mode, and the Opacity settings for this new layer.
Go ahead and have a look at the last two states. Clouds is a filter.
Watch the image to see its effect. Then watch the Merge Down command combine
the Clouds layer with Layer 1 which is where the asphalt texture was created.
You can walk backward, and forward through
your History palette as many times
as you like, or need, in order to understand what was going on. You can
also turn off the visibility of layers in the Layers
palette by clicking on the eyeball icon at the left side of a layer,
in order to try and see what’s on another layer.
However, and please remember
this, the minute you use any tools, or commands, or change the Blend Mode,
or layer Opacity, this constitutes a new history state, and all subsequent
states will be deleted.
Off course, you can simply go back to the
beginning, and run the effect again, but do be aware that you can’t
add new edits to the image and still be able to see edits in a different
direction.
Now that you’ve walked all the way
through the Asphalt effect, I want to have you look a little closer at
one of the states that may have puzzled you. When it added that Cloud
filter to the new layer, you could barely see any change. And, you can’t
look at the layer alone because it’s grouped. If you turn off visibility
for the Layer 1 layer with all the black texture, the grouped Cloud layer
is automatically turned off, too.
We need to have a closer look. With the
Cloud state selected in the History palette, select the Cloud layer (Layer
2) in the Layers palette, and then choose Layer > Ungroup.
Notice that you have now lost the last
history state of the effect, Merge Down. This is what I just warned you
about. Performing an edit deletes all history states which follow the
one you add edits to.
In the Layers
palette, turn off visibility for all layers except Layer 2 which is
the top layer. Next, with Layer 2 selected, enter 100 in the Opacity text
box, or use the slider as shown below. In your image, you can see what
the Cloud filter layer looks like.
Now, I want to jump down the list of effects, and do the Brushed Metal
effect. It combines several features that I want to talk about, so we’ll
do it next.
continue on page three
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Copyright © 2002 by Jay Arraich.
All rights reserved.
All photographs copyright ©2002 by Jay Arraich
jay@arraich.com
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