Transcript:
– [Instructor] Hello and welcome to this Design Cuts, video tutorial and today we’re going to be looking at working with layer comps in Photoshop. We’re gonna look at what they are and how you can make use of them. The illustration that we’re going to be working on. Is this one and in it. I’ve used a couple of Design Cuts elements. So let’s have a quick look at the elements that I’ve used. I’ve used a texture from The Ultimate Texture and Photography Kit. This kit has heaps and heaps of really wonderful textures, and I’ve used one of those In that illustration. I’ve also used a bird from this 30 Bird Illustrations kit. This is a Vector kit. But there are also some PNG files there. So what I did is just open one of the PNG files in Photoshop. Here is the bird that I’ve used. And what I did on the layer below is I just did a rough painting of some white to capture the white behind the bird. I’ve also added a small shadow beneath the bird’s feet. I’ve got this texture here, which is blended in using the Linear Burn blend mode, There’s a white layer underneath that has a screen blend. That’s just killing a little bit of the colour in this multi-colored layer here. And this layer has a motion blur on it, which cuts out the sort-of sharp edges on the original layer. So this image has been built up with a number of layers. And if I were presenting this to my client, I would have a couple of ways that I wanted to show them. This image a couple of choices, at least that. I want them to consider. One of them is the image as it is here right now. But then I may want to take out the white background. I might want to say well. What about the image without that white behind it? Or what if I wanted to use a different blend mode for this texture Or perhaps take out the motion blur here? So there are quite a few ways that I could present this image to my client. But the actual process of presenting the image in different ways can be rather tricky. Well, it can be tricky if you don’t use layer comps. So let’s see how layer comps are going to help us, And I’m gonna choose Window and then Layer Comps. Now I’m using Photoshop CC, but layer comps have been in Photoshop for some time. Now They’ve just been added to in Photoshop CC, But the tools were gonna use have been around for quite a while. It’s really just a basic introduction to layer comps. So first of all, I’m gonna take the image as it is right now. I’m gonna say this is one of the versions that I want to show my client. So I’m gonna click here on the New icon and I’m just gonna call this version one And I’m gonna put down here. What is in that version one? So it’s got a white background on the bird. It’s got shadows and a motion blur. This is enough of a description to identify this layer comp to me, but you can add some more detail in here. Should you wish to? We’re just gonna click, okay. So there’s my first layer comp. Now I’m gonna set up my document Another way. Another one of the ways that I would want to present it to my client, Perhaps without this white background and perhaps without the motion blur. So now I’m going to set up a second layer comp. I’m gonna call this version two, and I’m going to just call this No white background and no motion blur. Now you can see here that we’ve got various options that we select to embed in our layer comp. One of them is the visibility of layers, and that’s gonna be important to us here because we’ve made some layers invisible, And we want the layer comp to be storing that invisible layer data here, so that the layer comp when we ask to see what the image looks like is going to recognise that these layers were here and it’s gonna hide them for us. Now, Position of Layer sort-of sounds like it might have to do with the position of the layer in the stacking order. Well, it doesn’t so don’t be misled by that. I’m gonna show you in a minute, exactly what? Position means Appearance is going to be important in this case, too, because we turned off this motion blur, And we want Photoshop to take note of that fact, And when we ask to see the image as it was in this version, we want Photoshop to disable that motion blur. So I’ll just click. Okay, And let’s make one other layer comp and for this, I’m gonna move the bird. So I’m gonna take the bird layer. I’m gonna start pulling it over to the side here. Now, in this case, I want the bird with no white fill, But had I wanted the white fill? I would have displayed all of these layers, selected all of them and moved the bird. So let’s go on and create a layer comp for this. And this is what we mean by the position of the layer. The bird has moved to the right and we want the layer comp to store that moved layer data. So I’ll click, okay. So far, we’ve created three different layer comps. So let’s have a look and see what’s actually stored in the layer comp. And what’s gonna happen when we click to select it? Well, I can click just here to target the layer comp, but nothing’s happened To be able to view the image as it was when I created the layer comp. I would need to click on this box here. And you can see what’s happened. This white layer has been displayed as has the shadow on the bird’s feet. When I click here on version two, the visibility of those layers has been disabled, and the motion blur has been turned off. And in version three. Well, it’s gonna be version two, but with the layer moved. So this gives me a really handy way of showing different representations of this image to my client, But, of course, that would require my client to be sitting beside me or to be sharing a screen, for example through the Internet. But what if my clients not able to see the document as I click on each of these layer comps. Well, Photoshop has a really handy export option. So what you can do is you can choose File and then Export and choose Layer Comps to Files or Layer Comps to PDF. Now In earlier versions of Photoshop, this option was actually in the Scripts area. Because what you’re doing is running a script. So, in here would be your Layer Comps to File or Layer Comps to PDF option. But it’s been moved recently to the Export option. I’m gonna choose Layer Comps to Files. This is a dialogue, So it’s asking me. Where do I want to put my layer comps? So I’m gonna click Browse. The image is already going into the folder that I was working in. But I wanna add a folder inside this. So I’m just gonna call this Client Files. So I’m adding a folder called Client Files into which my layer comps are gonna be placed. The filename prefix for each of my layer comps is going to be the file name, which is Bird on Background. But I could call it whatever I wanted to. Now these are going to be named Double-o double-o one double-o two, for example. I can choose to only export the selected layer comps. Which is this one here? But if I did select this option, then all the layer comps are going to be exported to individual files. There’s a choice of file format BMP JPEG TIF, and you can also export them as PDF or PSD files. I’m gonna choose jpeg because that’s a flattened file format, And then I can set the quality. So that’s the compromise between quality and file size. So dragging it a little bit Lower is going to give me a smaller file. Size a little bit less quality. When I’m ready, I can just click Run And as the script ran, you could see that Photoshop selected each of these layer. Comps, (mumbles). If it clicked on these options here, set up the document the way it looked and then saved it out. And then went to the next one, and then the next one And so now each of these layer comps has been exported into a jpeg file. Those three jpeg files. I could then send to my client and ask from which of those files they wanted to use. So let’s just go to that folder. I have it open here. And you can see that we’ve got three different layer comps. The file names are Bird on Background. Its 000, version. One is the name of the layer comp. Here’s the description. And here’s the second one, and here’s the third one. So it’s very easy for me to send different looks of a single image to my client, and then they can determine which one of these that they want to use. When they tell me which one it’s very easy for me to just open the Photoshop file and select the layer comp that matches the image that they’ve chosen to use. These layer comps are saved within the file. Of course, if I save everything as a PSD file, then all of these layers visible or not are going to be saved in the file. So you can see that layer comps can really help your workflow. You can use them when you’re prepping documents for a client, but they’re also hands to use yourself if you want to just compare two or three different versions of a document. I hope that you’ve enjoyed learning these Photoshop workflow techniques. Let us know what you think in the Comments below and give us a thumbs up if you enjoyed the tutorial. Until next time, I’m Helen Bradley for Design Cuts.