Points of View Photo Project #27
Welcome to the 27th week of the Points of View Photo Project!
This week we are fortunate to have a source image from Friend-of-the-Blog Marc Benton of the Columbus Skyline. Thank you Marc!
We have 6 versions for your enjoyment this week! I am excited for the continued growth of the project and I encourage you all to give it a shot for next week. We have a special image at the end of the post that comes from my brother, Chris, from his recent trip to Antarctica.
So have a look at what we all did to process this initial photo and, who knows, you might learn a little something too!
Cool Text Effect
I just learned how to do this really cool effect while reading one of the Down and Dirty Tricks tutorials in latest issue of Photoshop User Magazine. Click “more” to learn how to do it!
Bringing Some Work Home
As some of you may know, by day I am a web designer for a sporting goods company putting together marketing emails, maintaining the look and feel of the website, and keeping an eye on the SEO initiatives we have going.
Coming up later this week we are launching a new sport line. We are mainly a wrestling and volleyball supply retailer, with some running, but we’re jumping into the realm of field sports (lacrosse, field hockey, and soccer) and it has been my job to compile product images, build pages and make sure the whole section is ready to go.
“Ask Jason” – What’s the Difference Between Opacity and Fill?
Welcome to the first of what will hopefully become a more regular series here on the blog. I invite you, my readers to send in questions about Photoshop and digital photography that I may address them here. No question is too small and the learning process of such a deep and complex program such as Photoshop and Lightroom is an ongoing endeavor. As I’ve mentioned before, I work from the philosophy that when I learn something about Photoshop I want to share it so that you can learn more too. So please, ask away!
To start us off, here is a question I received from a reader the other day:
Jason,
I’ve been trying to distinguish between Opacity and Fill. As an experiment, I created two layers, black over white. I then adjusted opacity to 50%, flattened and measured the color of grey (r=g=b=128). Repeating the process but adjusting fill to 50% gave the same results. What’s the difference and when would I prefer to use one over the other?
Thanks,
Steve
What Steve is asking is actually a fairly common question and even some more advanced users aren’t quite sure how it works or when to use it. In fact, I asked a couple of my fellow designers in the graphics department at work and they didn’t really know what it was for. So, Steve, you’re in good company!
So we all know what we’re talking about, in the upper right corner of the Layers Panel you will see two boxes, one for Opacity and one for Fill and it is very easy to assume that they both do the same thing.
Before getting into a discussion about Opacity vs. Fill, I want to make a distinction that has always helped me to understand what’s going on here. The distinction is between a layer and the contents of the layer. A layer is the row within the layers panel on which you can add objects such as shapes, text, images, drawings, etc. The contents of the layer are those things (text, shapes, etc.) that are on the layer. Simple enough, right? But this is a very important distinction. You do not apply layer effects to a specific object on a layer, you apply the effects to the layer as a whole. Which brings us to the question at hand.
Opacity, as I understand it, acts on the layer – the contents and the effects – while Fill acts only on the contents and leaves the effects alone.
To illustrate this, on a new layer, make a square of any color you like. Next, apply a decent sized stroke to it (inside, outside, color, whatever you want to do) and click Ok. Duplicate the layer and move the square so they are next to each other. Now lower the opacity of one of the layers to 50% and you will see that the square and its stroke are now more transparent. Select the other square, but this time, lower the fill to 50% and you will notice that only the square, not the stroke, is semi-transparent while the stroke is still fully opaque.
Most of the time adjusting the opacity slider along will do the job for you and you don’t have to worry about fill. However, when using layer effects you may want to play around with the fill to give yourself more options. For example, if you want to have text that is only an outline, add a stroke and lower the fill. If you want to create a semi-transparent box to hold some text in your design, create a black box, add a drop shadow that has a distance of zero and a decent size, lower the fill to about 20% – or whatever works for you – and there you go.
So, in a nutshell, Opacity affects the layer, Fill affects the objects on the layer and this really comes into play when using Layer Effects. Play around with it and I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it in no time! Do you know of another way of explaining the difference? What helps you remember? Are there other uses for Fill that you’ve come across? Please share them in the comments!
If you have any Photoshop questions, please send them along and you may soon find the answer here! Don’t be shy, I’m sure you’re not the only one wondering the same thing. By asking your questions, you’ll be helping others to understand and use Photoshop better too.
Workflow Friday
For this edition of my Photoshop Workflow series, I thought I would walk you through the steps to add a nice shadow/reflection to a product shot. It’s something that I’ve done a number of times at work for both our website graphics and marketing email campaigns. Because of time, I’ll only have the final image but hopefully the description will sufice.
- Isolate your product from its background and place it in a new document. If you’ve placed it in the new document it should be a Smart Object already, if you just dragged it over, convert it to a smart object for the added flexibility and preservation of the image. In this instance, we’re looking at a new Nfinity Volleyball Shoe that we’re selling so I had both the standard shot as well as the shot of the outsole to work with, which will make the reflection more believeable later on.
- If you are going to use the same image of the product as the reflection, duplicate the layer using Cmd/Ctrl+J. Select the version that is lower in the layer stack and go to Free Transform (Cmd/Ctr+T) and flip it vertically and align shift it down so that it lines up below the primary “right-side-up” version of the image.
- Lower the opacity of the upside-down image to around 40%. Add a layer mask to this same layer and with your linear gradient set to “Black to White” grag from the bottom edge of the product to where it meets the right-side-up version. If you like, you can also add a slight Gaussian Blur to it as well.
- To see the effect, using the Rectangle Tool, create a black box below both layers so that the top edge of the box falls part of the way up the original version of the product – be sure to make it far enough up so it looks like the object is sitting on a surface but not too high that the edge is not above the object.
- At this stage we’re going to add a little more flair to it to really make it stand out. On a new layer above the reflection and below the object, use the Eliptical Marquee Tool – or the Elipse Tool – to create an oval around the base of the product and fill it with white. Convert it to a Smart Object and blur it quite a bit to make it look like a spotlight is shining on the product. And reduce the opacity of this layer to about 80% or so – to your taste.
- Duplicate the layer you just created and reduce the size a little, while holding down Option/Alt+Shift to create a hot spot in the middle of the spotlight.
- Duplicate the product shot one more time and select the copy that is directly above the spotlight layers. Add a black Color Overlay Layer Effect to this layer.
- Go into Free Transform and grab the middle handle on the top of the product shot and drag down so it shows up beneath the object – you may need to do some warping/skewing/etc. to get it to fall properly and look right.
- Add about a 4px Gaussian Blur to the shadow layer.
- Add a Layer Mask to the shadow layer and using the edge of a fairly large, soft-edged brush paint with black a couple of times along the edges of the shadow so it will appear that the shadow falls off a little, in a more realistic way.
And the finall shot will look something like this (with a few added touches):
Give it a try and if you come up with anything cool, send it along and I’ll post it here on the blog!
