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Chapter 15) or a shape layer. Then click the add layer style icon at the bottom of the Layers palette — the one that looks like a florin (cursive f) — and choose any of the commands following Blending Options. Or double-click anywhere on the layer other than the layer name to display the Layer Style dialog box and then select an effect from the left-hand list. Use the check box to turn the effect on and off; highlight the effect name to edit its settings. You can select from one of the following ten effects:

Figure 14-9: Starting with an independent layer, click the add layer style icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose an effect (top). Then adjust the settings in the sprawling Layer Style dialog box (bottom).

Drop Shadow: The Drop Shadow command applies a common, everyday drop shadow, as seen in the first example of Figure 14-10. You specify the color, opacity, blend mode, position, size, and contour of the shadow; Photoshop makes it pretty.

Figure 14-10: Layer styles can make it look like the affected layer is above (left) or below (right) the layer behind it.

Inner Shadow: This command applies a drop shadow inside the layer, as demonstrated in the second example in Figure 14-10. The command simulates the kind of shadow you'd get if the layer were punched out of the background — that is, the background looks like it's in front, casting a shadow onto the layer. Figure 14-10 should give you an inkling of the fact that Inner Shadow is especially effective with type.

Outer Glow: The Outer Glow command creates a traditional halo, as seen in the first example in Figure 14-11. However, you have lots of additional controls in case you want to get fancy.

Figure 14-11: The glow layer styles can make your layer glow with outer (left) or inner (right) beauty. I filled my number 7 with black instead of white to help show off the glows.

Inner Glow: This command applies the effect inside the layer rather than outside, as demonstrated in the second example in Figure 14-11.

Bevel and Emboss: The Bevel and Emboss option produces one of five distinct edge effects, as defined using the Style pop-up menu. The first four appear in Figure 14-13; the fifth one is exclusively applicable to stroked layers and requires the Stroke effect to be turned on. You can add a three-dimensional beveled edge around the outside of the layer, as in the first example in the figure. The Inner Bevel effect (top right) produces a beveled edge inside the layer. The Emboss effect (bottom left) combines inner and outer bevels. And the Pillow Emboss effect (bottom right) reverses the inner bevel so the image appears to sink in and then rise back up along the edge of the layer.

Figure 14-13: The examples above demonstrate four of the effects available when you choose Layer Layer Style Bevel and Emboss. I filled my number 7 with medium gray to better show off the highlights and shadows that Bevel and Emboss creates.

TipContour and Texture: The Contour and Texture options aren't actual effects, but rather modify the Bevel and Emboss effect. The Contour settings create waves in the surface of the layer that result in rippling lighting effects. Texture stamps a pattern into the surface of the layer, which creates a texture effect. Figure 14-14 illustrates these two options.

Figure 14-14: The Contour (left) and Texture (right) options available with the Inner Bevel effect let you break up the surface of your layer in interesting ways.

Satin: This option creates waves of color, as in Figure 14-15. You define the behavior of the waves using the Contour options. One of the stranger effects, Satin can be difficult to predict. But as long as you keep the Preview check box turned on, you can experiment with a fair amount of success.

Figure 14-15: After making my number 7 white, I applied the Satin option (left) and then added a contoured inner bevel to produce a dramatic, metallic effect (right).

Color, Gradient, and Pattern Overlay: These three options fill the layer with a coating of solid color, gradient, or repeating pattern, respectively. They work almost identically to the three dynamic fills available to shape layers, as discussed in the section "Editing the stuff inside the shape" earlier in this chapter. All three can be quite useful when defining your own style presets. Figure 14-16 shows off the Gradient and Pattern Overlay effects.

Figure 14-16: While attractive on their own, the Gradient Overlay (top-left) and Pattern Overlay (top-right) options can be combined to create the entrancing effect shown in the bottom-left example. Add in my Satin and Inner Bevel settings from Figure 14-15, and the bottom-right example is the ravishing result.

Stroke: Use this option to trace a colored outline around a layer, as shown in Figure 14-17. The Stroke effect is often preferable to Edit Stroke because you can edit it long after creating it. By comparison, Edit Stroke is a permanent effect.

Figure 14-17: The Stroke effect (left) is an editable alternative to the Edit Stroke command and can be used in combination with other layer effects (right).

The Layer Style dialog box is a vast labyrinth of options, so it's handy to know a few additional ways to get around. To switch between effects without turning them on or off, press Ctrl (Win) or z (Mac) plus a number key. Ctrl+1 (z -1 on the Mac) highlights Drop Shadow, Ctrl+2 (z -2) highlights Inner Shadow, Ctrl+3 (z -3) highlights Outer Glow, and so on, all the way to Ctrl+0 (z -0) for Stroke. You cannot get to Blending Options, Contour, or Texture from the keyboard.

The advantages of layer effects

The layer effects available in the Layer Style dialog box are a godsend to beginners and intermediate folks, but experienced users might be tempted to turn their noses up at them. After all, you can create many of these effects manually using layers, selection outlines, and blend modes. But there is much to like about automated layer effects:

First, they stick to the layer. Move or transform the layer and the effect tags along with it.

Second, the effect is temporary. As long as you save the image in one of the three layered formats — native Photoshop (PSD), TIFF, or PDF — you can edit the shadows, glows, bevels, overlays, and strokes long into the future.

Third, layer effects are equally applicable to standard layers, shape layers, and editable text. This is unusual because both shape layers and editable text prohibit many kinds of changes.

Fourth, thanks to the Contour presets, layer effects enable you to create effects that would prove otherwise exceedingly difficult or even impossible.

Fifth, you can combine multiple effects on a single layer.

Sixth, you can copy an effect from one layer and paste it onto another.

Seventh, you can save groups of effects for later use in the Styles palette.

Eighth, the effects show up as items in the Layers palette. You can expand and collapse a list of effects, as well as temporarily disable and enable effects by clicking the familiar eyeball icons.

Ninth — why the heck do you need a ninth advantage? Didn't television teach us that Eight Is Enough? But what the heck. Ninth, layer effect strokes print as vector output, so they're guaranteed to be smooth. There, satisfied?

Now that you're champing at the bit to get your hooves on these effects, the following sections tell you how, why, and what for.

Inside the Layer Style dialog box

The Layer Style dialog box offers 13 panels containing more than 100 options. I discussed the first panel, Blending Options, in Chapter 13. The remaining 12 panels are devoted to layer effects. Select the desired effect from the list on the left; use the check box to turn the effect on and off.

Although there are gobs of options, many are self-explanatory. You select a blend mode from the Blend Mode pop-up menu. (For explanations of these, look to "The blend modes" section of Chapter 13.) You make the effect translucent by entering a value in the Opacity option box.

Other options appear multiple times throughout the dialog box. All the options that appear in the Inner Shadow panel appear also in the Drop Shadow panel; the options in the Outer Glow panel appear in the Inner Glow panel; and so on. The modified dialog box in Figure 14-18 shows four representative effects panels — Inner Shadow, Inner Glow, Bevel and Emboss, and Texture — which together contain most of the options you'll encounter.

Figure 14-18: A modified picture of the Layer Style dialog box, featuring the Inner Shadow, Inner Glow, Bevel and Emboss, and Texture panels.

The following items explain the options in the order in which they appear throughout the panels. I explain each option only once, so if an option appears multiple times (as so many do), look for its first appearance in a panel to locate the corresponding discussion in the following list:

Blend Mode: This pop-up menu controls the blend mode. So much for the obvious. But did you know that you can use the Blend Mode menu to turn an effect upside-down? Select a light color and apply the Screen mode to change a drop shadow into a directional halo. Or use a dark color with Multiply to change an outer glow into a shadow that evenly traces the edge of the layer. Don't be constrained by pedestrian notions of shadows and glows. Layer effects can be anything. Figure 14-19 offers proof.

Figure 14-19: Starting with the last example in Figure 14-17 (an image of questionable attractiveness), I added a white inner shadow (left) to create a soft beveling effect, and then surrounded the whole thing with a black outer glow (right) to make my number 7 really stand out from the background.

Color swatch: To change the color of the shadow, glow, or beveled edge, click the color swatch. When the Color Picker is open, click in the image window to eyedrop a color from the layered composition. When editing a glow, you can apply a gradient in place of a solid color. Click the gradient preview to create a custom gradation or select a preset from the pop-up palette.

Opacity: Use this option to make the effect translucent. Remember, a little bit of effect goes a long way. When in doubt, reduce the Opacity value.

Angle: Associated with shadows, bevels, the Satin effect, and gradients, this value controls the direction of the effect. In the case of shadows and bevels, the option controls the angle of the light source. With Satin, it controls the angle at which contour patterns overlap. And with a gradient, the Angle value represents the direction of the gradient.

Use Global Light: In the real world, the sun casts all shadows in the same direction. Oh, sure, the shadows change minutely from one object to the next, but what with the sun being 90 million miles away and all, the changes are astronomically subtle. I doubt if a single-celled organism, upon admiring its shadow compared with that of its neighbor, could perceive the slightest difference. The fact that single-celled organisms lack eyes, brains, and other perceptual organs does not in any way lessen the truth of this powerful argument.

As I was saying, one sun means one lightness and one darkness. By turning on the Use Global Light check box, you tell Photoshop to cast all direction-dependent effects — drop shadows, inner shadows, and the five kinds of bevels — in the same direction. If you change the angle of a drop shadow applied to Layer 1, Photoshop rotates the sun in its heaven and so changes the angle of the pillow emboss applied to Layer 9, thus proving that even a computer program may subscribe to the immutable laws of nature.

Conversely, if you turn the check box off, you tell nature to take a hike. You can change an Angle value in any which way you like and none of the other layers will care.

Distance: The Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, and Satin panels feature a Distance value that determines the distance between the farthest edge of the effect and the corresponding edge of the layer. Like Angle, this value is affected when you drag in the image window.

Spread and Choke: Associated with the Drop Shadow and Outer Glow panels, the Spread option expands the point at which the effect begins outward from the perimeter of the layer. If you were creating the effect manually (as discussed in the "Selecting the Contents of Layers" section in Chapter 12), this would be similar to applying Select Modify Expand. Spread changes to Choke in the Inner Shadow and Inner Glow panels, in which case it contracts the point at which the effect begins. Note that both Spread and Choke are measured as percentages of the Size value, explained next.

Size: One of the most ubiquitous settings, the Size value determines how far an effect expands or contracts from the perimeter of the layer. In the case of shadows and glows, the portion of the Size that is not devoted to Spread or Choke is given over to blurring. For example, if you set the Spread for Drop Shadow to 0 percent and the Size to 30 pixels, as in the top-left example of Figure 14-20, Photoshop blurs the shadow across 100 percent of the 30-pixel size. If you set the Spread to 100 percent as in the bottom-right example, 0 percent is left for blurring. The shadow expands 30 pixels out from the perimeter of the layer and has a sharp edge. This makes the effect seem larger, but only the opaque portion of the effect has grown.

Figure 14-20: The effect of raising the Spread percentage value from 0 (top left) to 100 (bottom right) on my now-familiar number 7. Note that I changed the color setting of Satin to white (insert your own Moody Blues joke here).

Size and Depth observe a similar relationship in the Bevel and Emboss panel, with Depth taking the place of Spread or Choke. When adjusting a Satin effect, Size affects the length of the contoured wave pattern. And in Stroke, Size controls the thickness of the outline.

Contour: Photoshop creates most effects — namely shadows, glows, bevel, and the Satin effect — by fading a color from a specified Opacity value to transparent. The rate at which the fade occurs is determined by the Contour option. Click the down-pointing arrowhead to select from a palette of preset contours; click the contour preview to design your own. If you think of the Contour preview as a graph, the top of the graph represents opacity and the bottom represents transparency. So a straight line from top to bottom shows a consistent fade. A spike in the graph shows the color hitting opacity and then fading away again. Figure 14-21 shows a few examples applied to — hooray! — a new layer. In case you're curious, I painted this S shape with a scatter brush, and then filled it with the Molecular Pattern Overlay effect, topping it all off with an Inner Bevel garnish.

Figure 14-21: Four Contour presets combined with an Outer Glow effect. The Contour setting controls how the halo drops from opacity to transparency, and sometimes back again. These settings were used throughout Screen mode, 100-percent Opacity, 15-percent Spread, and Softer Technique.

The most challenging contours are associated with Bevel and Emboss. The Gloss Contour option controls how colors fade in and out inside the beveled edge, as if the edge were reflecting other colors around it. (Figure 14-27 offers a glimpse.) The indented Contour effect — below Bevel and Emboss in the Layer Style list — wrinkles the edge of the layer so that it casts different highlights and shadows.

Anti-aliased: If a Contour setting consists of sharp corners, you can soften them by turning this check box on. Most presets have rounded corners, making antialiasing unnecessary.

Noise: Associated strictly with shadows and glows, the Noise value randomizes the transparency of pixels. It's like using the Dissolve blend mode, except that you have control over how much randomization to apply. The Noise value does not change the color of pixels; that is the job of an option called Jitter.

Layer Knocks Out Drop Shadow: In the real world, if an object was translucent, you could see through it to its own shadow. However, this turns out to be an unpopular law of nature with most image editors. So when creating a drop shadow, Photoshop gives us the Layer Knocks Out Drop Shadow check box, which when selected makes the drop shadow invisible directly behind the layer. Turn the option off for a more natural effect.

Technique: Moving out of the Shadow panels and into Outer Glow, the first unique option is the Technique pop-up menu. Also available when creating bevel effects, Technique controls how the contours of the effect are calculated. When a glow is set to Softer, as in all the examples in Figure 14-21, Photoshop applies a modified Gaussian Blur to ensure optimal transitions between the glow and background elements. Your other option is Precise, which calculates the effect without the Gaussian adjustment (shown in Figure 14-22). Mind you, the effect may remain blurry, but strictly as a function of the Spread and Contour settings. Precise may work better in tight corners, common around type and shape layers. Otherwise, stick with Softer.

Figure 14-22: This figure is identical to Figure 14-21 in every way, except here the Technique option is set to Precise.

The Bevel and Emboss panel doesn't provide the same kind of blurring functions that you get with shadow and glow effects, so the Technique option works a bit differently. The default setting, Smooth, averages and blurs pixels to achieve soft, rounded edges. The two Chisel settings remove the averaging to create sawtooth abrasions into the sides of the layer. Chisel Hard results in thick cut marks; Chisel Soft averages the perimeter of the layer to create finer cuts. Up the Soften value (described shortly) to blur the abrasions.

Source: When working in the Inner Glow panel, Photoshop wants to know where the glow starts. Should it glow inward from the perimeter of the layer (Edge, as seen in the left example in Figure 14-23) or outward from the middle (Center, as seen on the right in Figure 14-23)?

Figure 14-23: The two options for the Source setting in the Inner Glow panel. The other settings used in both examples are Blend Mode Screen, Opacity: 100 percent, Technique: Precise, Choke 15 percent, and Size: 40 pixels.

Range: The two Glow panels and the Contour panel (subordinate to Bevel and Emboss) use Range values to modify the Contour settings. This value sets the midpoint of the contour with respect to the middle of the size. As seen in the left example in Figure 14-24, values less than 50 percent move the midpoint away from the source, extending the effect. Values greater than 50 percent shrink the effect, as shown in the right example in the figure.

Figure 14-24: The Range setting at 20 percent (left) and 80 percent (right). The outer glow in both examples uses the Ring-Triple Contour preset; the inner glow uses the Ring Contour with a Source setting of Center.

Jitter: Where the Noise value randomizes the transparency of pixels, Jitter randomizes the colors. This option is operable only when creating gradient glows in which the gradation contains two or more colors (not a color and transparency).

Depth: The first unique Bevel and Emboss setting is Depth, which makes the sides of a bevel steeper or shallower. In most cases, this translates to increased contrast between highlights and shadows as you raise the Depth value. Figure 14-25 shows an example.

Figure 14-25: The return of the 7 with an inner bevel depth of 150 percent (left) and 950 percent (right).

The Texture panel includes its own Depth setting. Here, Photoshop renders the pattern as a texture map, lighting the white areas of the pattern as high and the black areas as low. The Depth value determines the depth of the texture. The difference is you can enter a negative value, which inverts the texture. Meanwhile, you also have an additional Invert check box, which you can use to reverse the lights and darks in the pattern. So a positive Depth value with Invert turned on produces the same effect as a negative Depth value with Invert turned off.

Direction: When working in the Bevel and Emboss panel, you see two radio buttons: Up and Down. If the Angle value indicates the direction of the sun, Up positions the highlight along the edge near the sun and the shadow along the opposite edge. Down reverses things, so the shadow is near the light source. Presumably, this means the layer sinks into its background rather than protrudes from it. But, in practice, the layer usually appears merely as though it's lit differently.

Soften: This value sets the amount of blur applied to the beveled highlights and shadows. Small changes make a big difference when Technique is set to one of the Chisel options. Figure 14-26 provides a hardcore look at this option.

Figure 14-26: Two Soften values compared with two Technique settings in the Pillow Emboss effect. Note that higher Soften values (bottom two examples) smooth out the otherwise jagged Technique settings without altogether getting rid of the edge.

Altitude: The Bevel and Emboss panel includes two lighting controls, Angle and Altitude. The Angle value is just that: the angle of the sun with respect to the layer. The Altitude, demonstrated in Figure 14-27, is measured on a half circle drawn across the sky. A maximum value of 90 degrees puts the sun directly overhead (noon); 0 degrees puts it on the horizon (sunrise). Values in the medium range — 30 to 60 degrees — generally produce the best results. If you find the effect to be too sharp, you can temper it with the Soften setting, as shown in Figure 14-28.

Figure 14-27: A couple of Gloss Contour presets with an Altitude setting of 1 degree (top) and 40 degrees (bottom). Note that the higher setting brings out the difference between the two Gloss Contour presets.

Scale: The Texture and Pattern Overlay panels include Scale values, which scale the pattern tiles inside the layer. Values greater than 100 percent swell the pattern; values lower than 100 percent shrink it.

Link/Align with Layer: When turned on, this check box centers a gradient inside a layer. If you want to draw a gradient across many layers, turn the option off to center the gradient inside the canvas. When editing a pattern, this option links the pattern to the layer so the two move together.

Position: The final Layer Style option appears in the Stroke panel. The Position pop-up menu defines how the width of the stroke aligns with the perimeter of the layer. Photoshop can draw the stroke outside the edge of the layer, draw the stroke inside the edge, or center the stroke exactly on the edge. It's up to you.

Figure 14-28: The first and last examples from Figure 14-27 with a touch of the Soften option.