Neverside

PSP User with questions

<I tried to post this ealier but it didnt show up..so here goes again>

I'm a new user to Photoshop, I've used Paint shop pro in the past and I somewhat know my way around Paint shop pro.

I have a PSD template that I'm using for my website forum. I would like the change banner to something else, maybe a few pictures blended together. My problem is that I can select the banner layer, but after that I dont how to manipulate it so that I can make a new one. Is there a tutorial? or could someone point me in the right direction of what to do... I feel really dumb about this...
I will attach the PSD file.
James

Uhh... what do you want to do with it?

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There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of creatures Chuck Norris has allowed to live.

Hello James

I took a look at your PSD file. I'm not totally clear on what issue you're having, so I'll just try to talk about what I see here hehe

Anyhow, looks like you have a layer called "topbanner" which is what contains the orange clouds. On that layer you also have what's called a "Layer Mask" which can be used to non-destructively hide portions of a layer by painting a mask over it (i.e with a paintbrush tool, gradient, etc). Black paints the mask onto your image (hiding whatever you paint), and white removes the mask wherever you paint. To access and edit the mask instead of the image on the layer itself, click on the white box to the right of the preview on the layer. Click back away from that icon when you want to edit the image itself and not the mask.

What you have now on your topbanner layer is a Layer Mask that has a gradient painted on it, which has the effect of hiding/blending that portion of the image behind a gradient. Whatever you do on that layer will be affected by that Layer Mask.... i.e. if you drew a box in the middle of that header image on the same layer, it would also be partially hidden by the Layer Mask.

If that's what you want, you can leave the Layer Mask, or better yet, apply the Layer Mask to a Layer Set instead of a single layer, and put multiple layers of your design into the Layer Set, and all of them will be affected by the Layer Mask.

Anyhow, they say a picture's worth a thousand words... or something haha.... so I made a few sample items on your PSD so you can see what I mean. Let me know if this helps and if you have any more questions once you've had a look.

Good luck, and welcome to Neverside!

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Neverside Admin

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