- Dan Moughamian
- Forum Member
Hi everyone,
I've received some questions about using layers in different contexts, so I thought I'd start a discussion thread. Here are a few things that I frequently do when retouching images:
1. Use Adjustment Layers for tonal and color corrections.
This allows me to make precise color and tone edits in a completely non-destructive way. There are no pixels inside of Adjustment Layers, just instructions for how to display the pixels in your image. No matter how many times you save and close your document, you can always go back into the Adjustments Panel and modify or completely reset your Adjustment Layer's settings.
2. Limit History Steps (in preferences) to somewhere between about 75-150, depending on how much RAM I have and how large the images are that I'm working on. History states can quickly use up RAM so, it's a bit of a balancing act. You want to leave enough that you have some flexibility to jump around between states, but not so many that it bogs your system speed down.
3. Use Pixel-based retouching layers to keep a set of "History Milestones" that allow me to quickly go back and start over on a set of edits, without starting at the beginning (duplicating effort) or using hundreds of History steps (potentially slow). This technique is most useful on complex editing jobs, rather than on images where you only intend to make a few minor corrections. Example:
Let's say you start working on a portrait. You've exported your image from ACR or Lightroom, and have duplicated your background layer as a start (always leave that intact, in case you need to start over from scratch). You name your duplicate "Eyes", because you decide to work on the eyes first. So you have in the Layers panel two identical layers (for now):
Eyes
Background
You highlight Eyes and start your edits. Let's say you took 48 steps to correct the eyes, and you made a couple more edits as you moved on to the next area (the total is now 50) before realizing you've reached a good demarcation point. If you click or step back to history state 48 in the History panel, that becomes the "current active state" of the document. From there, you can duplicate the Eyes layer by dragging it to the New Layer button on the Layers panel. Thus the finished eyes become the starting point for the new layer, minus the extra two steps.
Next, you continue working on the new layer (let's say you named it "Smile"), fixing the person's smile in 30 steps. Time for another new layer! Continuing this process by duplicating your "top pixel layer" each time you reach a good "history milestone" is easier than having hundreds of history steps (which can make it hard to find specific steps, or worse, can be lost if you save and accidentally close the document). While it will increase the file size, each "milestone layer" has the iterative effect of the History steps built into it, and can be saved with your PSD or TIF image document.
So for this example, every time you duplicate "Smile", you are -in effect- starting at step 78 (the 48 used for "Eyes", and the 30 used for "Smile"). If you make some corrections you don't like, and you've used up all your history states (i.e. some changes are no longer retrievable), you can just discard the current layer and start over again from the prior milestone, rather than the beginning. When finished, you might end up with a stack of (pixel-based) layers that looks like this:
Hair
Smile
Eyes
Background
...each one having built on the layer below it (other than the Background).
Here are some typical scenarios where I break my edits into "History Milestones" by using this layering technique: retouching different parts of a portrait; retouching different parts of a building or product shot (especially anything that has a mix of surface types, like glass, brick and wood); anything that requires use of the Liquify Filter; blending or retouching different parts of a composite image; and retouching images that require an artistic effect like a Lens Blur or Motion blur....
Hope some of these tips are useful. Good luck!
All Instructional Text Copyright 2009, Dan Moughamian
I've received some questions about using layers in different contexts, so I thought I'd start a discussion thread. Here are a few things that I frequently do when retouching images:
1. Use Adjustment Layers for tonal and color corrections.
This allows me to make precise color and tone edits in a completely non-destructive way. There are no pixels inside of Adjustment Layers, just instructions for how to display the pixels in your image. No matter how many times you save and close your document, you can always go back into the Adjustments Panel and modify or completely reset your Adjustment Layer's settings.
2. Limit History Steps (in preferences) to somewhere between about 75-150, depending on how much RAM I have and how large the images are that I'm working on. History states can quickly use up RAM so, it's a bit of a balancing act. You want to leave enough that you have some flexibility to jump around between states, but not so many that it bogs your system speed down.
3. Use Pixel-based retouching layers to keep a set of "History Milestones" that allow me to quickly go back and start over on a set of edits, without starting at the beginning (duplicating effort) or using hundreds of History steps (potentially slow). This technique is most useful on complex editing jobs, rather than on images where you only intend to make a few minor corrections. Example:
Let's say you start working on a portrait. You've exported your image from ACR or Lightroom, and have duplicated your background layer as a start (always leave that intact, in case you need to start over from scratch). You name your duplicate "Eyes", because you decide to work on the eyes first. So you have in the Layers panel two identical layers (for now):
Eyes
Background
You highlight Eyes and start your edits. Let's say you took 48 steps to correct the eyes, and you made a couple more edits as you moved on to the next area (the total is now 50) before realizing you've reached a good demarcation point. If you click or step back to history state 48 in the History panel, that becomes the "current active state" of the document. From there, you can duplicate the Eyes layer by dragging it to the New Layer button on the Layers panel. Thus the finished eyes become the starting point for the new layer, minus the extra two steps.
Next, you continue working on the new layer (let's say you named it "Smile"), fixing the person's smile in 30 steps. Time for another new layer! Continuing this process by duplicating your "top pixel layer" each time you reach a good "history milestone" is easier than having hundreds of history steps (which can make it hard to find specific steps, or worse, can be lost if you save and accidentally close the document). While it will increase the file size, each "milestone layer" has the iterative effect of the History steps built into it, and can be saved with your PSD or TIF image document.
So for this example, every time you duplicate "Smile", you are -in effect- starting at step 78 (the 48 used for "Eyes", and the 30 used for "Smile"). If you make some corrections you don't like, and you've used up all your history states (i.e. some changes are no longer retrievable), you can just discard the current layer and start over again from the prior milestone, rather than the beginning. When finished, you might end up with a stack of (pixel-based) layers that looks like this:
Hair
Smile
Eyes
Background
...each one having built on the layer below it (other than the Background).
Here are some typical scenarios where I break my edits into "History Milestones" by using this layering technique: retouching different parts of a portrait; retouching different parts of a building or product shot (especially anything that has a mix of surface types, like glass, brick and wood); anything that requires use of the Liquify Filter; blending or retouching different parts of a composite image; and retouching images that require an artistic effect like a Lens Blur or Motion blur....
Hope some of these tips are useful. Good luck!
All Instructional Text Copyright 2009, Dan Moughamian
Last Edited on Feb 18th 2009 @ 02:38 PM