Graphics Zone - Speeding Up Layout

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Speeding Up Layout in Photoshop 6

by BarryHilton, Adult NetSurprise

Welcome to our tutorial on Speeding Up Layout in Photoshop... In this tutorial we'll be looking at arranging and formatting image layers and copying effects between layers... We'll be using a .psd file to illustrate the tutorial which you can download here... Download quick.psd file here.

First open the .psd file in Photoshop... Click Here to view sample. You'll that we have a selection of 10 items made up of 5 dots and 5 squares randomly placed on our image.

Now, we're going to align our dots into one horizontal row... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

Distribute the dots so they are all equally spaced... this spaces the three middle dots at regular intervals bewteen the first and last dot... NOTE: You must have at least three layes to use this function... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

We want our squares in the extact position as the dots... to do this we're going to use guidelines to position the first and last square in the same position as the first and last dots... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions. The guidelines will automatically snap into position as you get close to the dot.

Repeat, placing the second guideline against the right edge of the right dot... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

Now, drag your first square into position. It will automatically snap to the guideline... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

Do the same with the right most square... but position this one on the right guideline... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

We have one square that is outside the area of our squares... so we need to move it inside our two edge squares for the postioning to work correctly... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

Now we can align our squares in one row as we did with the dots... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

And, then distribute the squares to get them in the same position as out dots! Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

We'll use the Merge Linked function to place all of our 5 individual square layers into one workable layer... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

Now, add a set of three effects to our first dot, starting with a Stroke... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

Change your Stroke size to 1 pixel for our example... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

Add a Drop Shadow to our dot... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions. By using a base color of a similar shade to our background we get a more realistic shadow effect than by using black.

Lastly, add a Bevel and Emboss to our dot... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

Now, you'll see a list of three effects under our Spot 1 Layer... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

We want the same effect on each of our dots... it takes a long time to set up each dot individually, but Photoshop can copy your Layer Style to any other layer... So copy this Layer Style to the remaining four dots... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

The Effects List is shown under each of the spot layers... this can make looking at your Layer menu difficult and make it harder to find what you need when you have a lot of layers. To get around this you can 'hide' the effect information... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

We can also copy our effect to our square Layer... Because we have already copied our effect to the dots we can just paste it to our square Layer... We don't want a Bevel and Emboss effect on our Squares so instead of completely redesigning our Styke for the squares we can make the Bevel and Emboss invisible by clicking the 'eye' icon next to it's effect... Click Here to view Screen Shot with Instructions.

Here's our finished example... Click Here to view example.