selections,layers and all that jazz

tepot

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27 Jul 2012 - 5:53 AM

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I have an image on screen and i make a selection, i create another layer above the first one then hit the liquify tool and it tells me no pixels are selected which i understand, what is the trick to get the modified portion onto another layer so leaving the original intact? i have read it somewhere but can't for the life of me think where.

Terry.

puertouk

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27 Jul 2012 - 10:54 AM

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You should never work on your original image, as you will not be able to get it back to it's original state. You've obviously got Photoshop, because you mention the liquify tool, so you can either drag your background layer to create a new layer, which will give you a copy of your background layer or use the shortcut, Ctrl + J or go to the top and under layer, choose duplicate layer. Now, when you work on the background copy, you will not effect the original image. With PS, there are certain things you can do with a blank layer and obviously things you can't do. If you want to learn more about Photoshop for free, go to Youtube and you will find a mountain of video tutorials. Some are very good and some are very bad. There's Kelby media group, Iceflow studios and Gavtrain.com to name a few. Hope this helps
Stephen

KingBee (e2 Member)

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31 Jul 2012 - 9:32 PM

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Quote: You should never work on your original image, as you will not be able to get it back to it's original state.

Umm, sorry, can I just query this? I always work with Raw files and every textbook you'll ever read will tell you that no matter how many changes you make to your Raw file, you'll never alter it permanently in any shape or form (provided of course you save your changes under another file name extension, eg .PSD). In fact, when I open a file in ACR in Elements 10, and it's one I may have done a bit of work on previously within ACR, all I need to do to get it back to its original state is to click on the drop-down menu in the "Basic" bar, then click on Camera Raw Defaults, and that's it - the image goes back to the way it was when it came out of the camera. Or, at least, it certainly looks like it. Sure, I know it's always better to create a duplicate layer or whatever, in case you screw up the original file irreparably, but I never bother.

Am I missing something here? Am I getting it wrong? If so, for God's sake could someone please tell me now?

Nick_w (Critique Team)

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31 Jul 2012 - 9:49 PM

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Quote: You should never work on your original image, as you will not be able to get it back to it's original state.

I think what the poster meant is when you take the image to PS it's good practice to get into the habit of copying the background layer - yes the RAW files still there, but it's frustrating having to re-open it again if you made a silly error - but the PSD/Tiff file is no longer a RAW image. After all how long does it take to copy the layer, 1/10 second?

I would go one further and say open the RAW in PS as a smart object, so you have access to the RAW adjustments - you can have several copies of the RAW file as smart objects, so you can expose say for different bits of the image, then use layer masks to reveal / hide bits - however that may be a bit too much whilst learning.

Nick_w (Critique Team)

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31 Jul 2012 - 10:01 PM

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Quote: You cannot alter a RAW file, i.e. you cannot make changes to it and save them in RAW format. Hope that puts your mind at rest.

From what I've been told not 100% correct, I've heard people have fraudulently managed to alter the RAW file, one of the reasons Nikon give for not releasing all the data to 3rd party converters - but that's a completely different topic - and no I don't know how to do it.

KingBee (e2 Member)

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1 Aug 2012 - 9:57 AM

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Listen, while we're on the subject: one thing I was doing which I realised I probably shouldn't (and have since changed my workflow accordingly) is to hold off doing a "Save as" until I've finished working on an image. For example, I have many JPEGs from my 'absolute beginnner' days, or from scans of film negatives or transparencies, which have been edited to produce a better image overall; but it was only when I finished my edit that I did a "Save as", usually as a .psd file.

As I say, I realise that I may have got the process the wrong way round, with the result that I have a whole raft of .psd files created from JPEGs where the .psd file was created at the last minute, rather than at the moment of opening the JPEG to work on it.

That all said, it's my understanding that when editing a JPEG, which I know is a 'lossy' format, you only lose information each time you save the file, not during the editing process. If so, that would rather suggest that so long as you don't save a file until you get to the end of the edit (and for the most part that's how I tend to work) it shouldn't really matter whether you do your "Save as" at the beginning of the edit or at the end. Would that be right?

KingBee (e2 Member)

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1 Aug 2012 - 11:03 AM

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Quote: If you don't save as you go what happens if you have a power cut?

A very good point, Gerwyn.