Adobe Photoshop Unmasked: The Art and Science of Selections, Layers, and Paths

The concept of layers is integral to Photoshop. Layers allow you to composite images quickly, safely, and efficiently as well as provide an unprecedented range of creative possibilities through the combining of layer styles, blending modes, and opacity options. The more sophisticated aspects of layerslike grouping, layer comps, layer effects, and Smart Objectsenhance your workflow and reduce any organizational confusion that comes from working with multiple layers. But there's even more that layers can do. We'll see in the next two chapters that layer masks and adjustment layers make a great thing even better.