Page 53 - Adobe Photoshop and Dreamviewer 2021

STAGE 3 / Creating Complex Selections

At this stage of the project, you still have a few issues to resolve: some of the images are still
randomly stacked on top of one another, and some have areas that are hiding other images (the blue
sky in the Skyline layer, for example). In this stage, you start fixing these problems.
Virtually any Photoshop project involves making some kind of selection. Making selections is so
important, in fact, that there are no fewer than nine tools dedicated specifically to this goal, as well
as a whole Select menu, and a few other options for making and refining selections.
In an earlier lesson you learned how to use the Rectangular Marquee tool to draw simple
selections. In the next series of exercises, you use several other selection methods to isolate pixels
from their backgrounds, called silhouetting.

Make a Feathered Selection in a Smart Object
Smart Object layers are actually links to the files that are placed. If you open the
linked file and make changes, those changes are automatically reflected in the file
in which the Smart Object layer exists. In this exercise, you will explore one of the
advantages and disadvantages of Smart Object layers.

1. With aftermath.psd open, hide all but the Lightning layer.

2. Double-click the Lightning layer thumbnail to open the Smart Object file
in its own window. If you see a warning message, click OK.

This message tells you that you must save the Smart Object with the same name for
the changes to reflect in the aftermath file. You can’t use the Save As function to save
the file with a different name or in a different location. Note:
If you don’t see this
message, you can open
Double-click the the General pane of
Smart Object layer the Preferences dialog
thumbnail to open box and click the Reset
the linked file.
All Warning Dialogs
button.
The Lightning.jpg file opens separately, appearing by default as a separate tab at the
top of the document window. This is a JPEG file, which means it is a flat file with only
a locked Background layer.

The Lightning image is a
flat image, which means
it has only a Background
layer that is locked.

Project 1: Composite Movie Ad 65