Essential Layer Effects and Styles

- Photoshop has a number of build in, non destructive effects like the Drop Shadow which can be applied to a variety of different kinds of layers. So first, we are going to add a drop shadow to this photograph and in order to do that we need to scale the photograph smaller, or add Canvas Size around it. In this case we'll just scale it a little bit smaller. To do so I need to convert the background into a layer. Now, if I want to rename the layer I could double-click "Background" and rename it but if I just simply need to unlock it I can click on the lock icon.

Now that it's a layer instead of a background I'll choose "Edit" and then "Free Transform" or I could have used the keyboard shortcut cmd + t or ctrl + t. In order to constrain the proportions I'll hold down the shift key and I'll also hold down the option key on the Mac or the alt key on Windows in order to scale this from the center. When I've got it the size I like, I'll tab "return" or "enter." Now to add a drop shadow from the bottom of the Layers panel I'll click on the effects icon and then select "Drop Shadow." You can see that the layer-style dialogue is actually divided into two areas.
On the left hand side we have the name of the different effects and then as soon as you select one of those effects, we can see the options on the right hand side. So, in this case, if I wanted to change the angle or the distance, I could use the slider here to choose the distance and I could use the dial here in order to change the angle. Now I'm not sure if you can see that drop shadow, so I'm going to increase the opacity of it. Now, instead of changing the angle on the distance again this time what I'll do is I'll just move my cursor into the image area.
You can see that I can move the drop shadow around by just dragging it. In the dialogue you'll notice that both the angle and the distance are changing. If I wanted to soften this a little bit I could increase the size of the drop shadow. When I click on "Outer Glow," you'll notice that all the options swap out. If I had just selected to toggle on the Outer Glow by clicking on this check-box right here, then we wouldn't actually get the options for the Outer Glow because Drop Shadow would still be selected and we are seeing all the Drop Shadow options.
So you have to make sure that you actually click on the effect that you want in order to see those options. If I don't want to apply an outer glow, I simply un-check it. I do want to add a stroke around here, however, so I'll click where it says "Stroke," that applies it, meaning that it enables it and turns on the check and gives me all the options to the right hand side. Now I want to increase the size of the stroke because I want to show you the difference here between putting the position on the inside of the stroke versus the outside of the stroke.
You'll notice that when it's on the outside, it always has a rounded corner here, so I prefer to put the position on the inside of the stoke. And I'm going to change the size to three by just tapping the "3" on the keyboard. If these are the settings that you want to apply all the time, like over and over, you might want to make this the new default, by clicking "Make Default." I'll go ahead and apply these two effects, which would also be called a Layer Style, by clicking "OK." Now, if I wanted to turn off or hide all the effects but not remove them, I can click on the eye icon next to the word "Effects." In order to show them again, I'll click to the left of "Effects" in order to toggle back the eye icon.
If I only want to hide one effect I'll just click on the eye next to that effect. To show it again, click in the blank area. If I wanted to hide all of these effects or minimize the space that they take up on the Layers Panel then I can click on the upward facing triangle to the right of the word "Effects." If I want to reveal them, I'll click again. If I wanted to edit one of the effects I simply double-click on the name of the effect and then make my change. When I'm finished, I click "OK." Now, lets go ahead and add some type to this image.
In order to apply an effect to a different layer other than a pixel based photo-layer I'll tab the "t" key that gives me the Type Tool. Now I don't know what settings you have in your Type Tool, so I'm going to right mouse-click and choose "Reset Tools," if you don't have a two button mouse just hold down the control key and click on the "t" to reset the tool. Now I'll start typing in the word "California." If I want to scale this, I can hold down the command key and then start dragging any of the anchor points.
Then I'll add the shift key in order to constrain the proportions of the type. If I position my cursor away from the type, you'll notice that it switches to the "Move" tool and I can actually re-position the type before committing to it. Once I like the type I'll go ahead and tap "enter" or "return." And now I want to add the same layer effect, with the same two styles, to the text. However, if I click on the word "Effects" and just drag it up to "California" on my Layers Panel it actually removes it from layer zero, or the photo, and positions it on the text.
So we'll undo that and this time I'll hold down the "option" key or the "alt" key, and drag the word "Effects" to the California layer. So you see, now we have a duplicate of that Layer Effect on both layers. However it is important for me to point out that just because I duplicated the effects, they are not linked together. Meaning that, lets say for example on the text I didn't want the stroke, I could hide the stroke or I could even throw the stroke away in the trash can but the effects on layer zero still remain.
Likewise, if I double-click on the word "Drop Shadow" and I change the opacity of the drop shadow on the text you'll notice that the opacity on the photo layer does not change. However you'll notice that there is an exception and that is when I change the angle. And that's because of this option right here to "Use Global Light." If I want to cast a shadow on one layer in a different direction than in another layer I need to un-check that. Now I can move them independently.
Alright, when I'm satisfied I'll click "OK." However, I'm not fond of the drop shadow angle on this photo layer, so let's just double-click on that and I will un-check "Global Light." I want to make sure that the drop shadow is in the lower right here. Alright, one last thing that I want to show you and this is a great feature if you have to apply a layer style to multiple groups. What I'll do is I'll select my "Custom Shape Tool" and then I'll right mouse-click on the icon for the shape and select "Reset Tools." If you're on the Mac you can "control" click and then reset this tool.
From the "Shape Picker" I'm going to select just the third arrow here from the default shapes. Then I'll click and drag out an arrow across the bottom here, maybe about that large. Now, I want to add four additional arrows, so I'm going to use the keyboard shortcut cmd + j in order to create my first copy, second, third and fourth. Now I'll use the Move Tool in order to move the most recently created shape, that's the shape one, copy four, over here to the right and you can see if I use my Smart Guides I want those in alignment.
I can also just hold down the shift key to make sure that they stay in alignment on the horizontal axis. Alright once I have got that positioned where I want it, I want to distribute all of these. So on the layers panel I've got the Top Shape Layer selected, I hold down the shift key and select "Shape 1" Then we can use the distribute icons here in the Options Bar in order to distribute these based on their centers. The reason we did this was to make sure I had lost of different layers that I could put into a group.
So I'll use the keyboard shortcut cmd + g our you can go to "Layer" and then "Group Layers." Once they are in a group we can rename that by double-clicking on it and I'll call it "Arrow." Then, in order to add an effect to all of the arrows at one time, instead of selecting a single arrow I'll make sure that I'm actually selecting the group and then at the bottom of the Layers Panel I'll select the effects, I'll add a stroke, in this case I'll change the color of the stroke to something that we can see, like white.
Click "OK" and "OK" again. So this is a very convenient way when you have a lot of different shapes and you want to apply the same effect. Especially because if you want to make a change to this, instead of having to change all the individual effects I can simply double-click on the word "Stroke," change it, maybe decrease the size down to two pixels, and click "OK." But the one thing to be aware of is that if you move one of these shapes outside of the group then it will loose that layer effect.
So I'll go ahead and choose "Edit" and then "Undo Layer Order" in order to put that last shape layer back in the group. One last keyboard shortcut; if you want to collapse of the layer styles in your Layer Panel, meaning that you don't want to see all the individual effects here, if you hold down the option key on Mac or the alt key on windows and just click on that triangle it will collapse them all at one time. Excellent, that wraps up this overview of Layer Effects and the layer styles in Photoshop!