layers

This week, Deke and I ditch the guests (fabulous as they are) and return to our secret, undisclosed San Francisco location to talk about . . . our new book: Photoshop Elements 8 One-on-One. The existence of this book comes as no surprise to anyone who's heard me whining about writing it all summer. In its honor, and happily ensconced in our comfy home turf, we brought back that old favorite, the Shameless Plug, because whose plugs are more important to us than our very own?

In a matter of minutes, the conversation veers away from the book and dangerously toward the product itself, Adobe Photoshop Elements 8. After all, what other application offers you half of Photoshop's power for about one-tenth the price? Read more » 

I don't usually do wee-hours-of-Sunday-morning posts. But I happened upon a pingback message in my inbox. And besides, I was supposed to review some contracts tonight. (Ug, contracts.) So I felt compelled to blow off my real work and do this instead.

An article that I wrote for Layers magazine got picked up as part of a big Smashing magazine compilation of "50 Excellent Digital Photography Photoshop Tutorials." (Mine is the very last one. Many of the others are very good, so check it out.) It's all old news. Both the compilation and the article appeared in 2008. But I hadn't seen either before so I thought, what the hey, I'd pass 'em along.

The topic of the article (entitled "Nesting Smart Objects for Multimask Effects in Photoshop") is every bit as relevant now as it was last year. It explains how to take an image that requires some advanced applications of sharpening and smoothing, and achieve both using a combination of nested smart objects, which in turn permit you to apply independently masked smart filters.

Along the way I take this uninspiring bison photo (that I shot, mind you):

And turn it into the elegantly finessed one below. (Damn, you one fine, sesame-sprinkled bison, Bison.)

The one thing missing is the full-res sample file. The Layers post includes a downloadable "before" file, but it's been downsampled so you'll get different results. Which is why I'm including the full-res file here. Read more » 

You know, it occurs to me now that somewhere along the way I lost control of this show. Perhaps it was the 43:00 mark of this particular episode. But if losing control means having Deke, along with Adobe's John Nack and Russell Brown, go into a free-for-all discussion of Photoshop layers, well then control is overrated. Bring on the (subltly layered) chaos.

Yes, the theme this week is layers. And since I couldn't come up with a layered gin-based drink (do olives count as a layer?), I asked Deke to model this week's logo after the classic layered dessert Jello 1-2-3. Listen as the knowledge of our Photoshop experts separate itself into the foamy, bubbly, and jellowy (strawberry-flavored) layers of goodness.

Read more »