Phil Waclawski's Photoshop Homework

Review Questions Week 5

1. List two examples of how you could use a lowered layer opacity level.
   • It can create more depth to an image
   • You can make text more readable as it floats over an image.
2. What are Layer Blending Modes and how would you use them?
   • This allows pixels from one layer to interact with another creating very interesting effects, you can blend the color of a pixel in a layer with any/all of the layers below it.
     Right click the thumbnail of the image in the layers palette, and choose blending options to get all of the blending modes and options in a new options window.
3. How do you change a layer's Blending Mode?
   • You can just choose that layer in the layer palette, and use the little pulldown menu at the top to change the mode. If you want to access all the options, you need to right click that layer's icon and choose "blending options".
4. What are Layer Styles?
   • Special effects that can be applied to layers allowing for drop shadows and similar "eye candy".
5. If you want to manipulate a style such as a Drop Shadow, where would you do so?
   • Go to the Menu Bar -> "Layer" -> "Layer Style" which also gives you access to the blending modes as well.
6. Why would you use a Layer Style?
   • To create many special effects. Drop shadows and give more of a 3D impression for objects and text, beveled edges can also be used for that effect, and are popular in buttons. Many other options.
7. How can the History Palette help you with your work?
   • It keeps a history of the last 20 or so (number is adjustable) changes that you have made to the image. This lets you see what you have done, and skip back to a particular stage of your image quickly, to undo several steps you no longer want.
8. Where would you change the number of states the History Palette records?
   • Menu bar -> "Edit" -> "Preferences" -> "General" and there is a small text box with the number 20 (default) and just type the number of states you want.
9. List three tools that you would use to re-touch an image.
   • Healing Brush
   • Patch Tool
   • Clone Tool
10. Explain what the Aligned option does when working with the retouching tools?
    • This keeps the same you are using for cloning/patching whatever the same, so you continue to sample pixels from that same area