The picture below was the JPEG version, directly out the camera. The picture above is a edited version of the picture below. It is not necessarily the better looking picture but it demonstrates a few very important aspects of what one will get out the camera and what is possible using editing software. For one you will see the sky has been optimized drastically and the shadow areas now has much more detail. What is also interesting is that while editing the picture I extensively used layers to isolate specific parts of the picture that was to be edited plus it helped me to very selectively sharpen the picture. In this section we will talk much more about layers and how they can help us.

Why is Layers so significant?

Layers has so many different advantages that its difficult to pin down only one or two reasons for why they so significant or important. What I can say is that every photographer that wants to become more serious about photography and photo editing has to develop a very good understanding and ability or skill to work with layers. Layers open up a complete new world of ideas, possibilities and techniques that can help the serious photographer develop his or hers own style.

On these pages I included a short introduction article on layers. Before continuing with this section I will strongly recommend those unfamiliar with layers to go read that article. In addition to that I will recommend you to look out for magazines that discuss layers, articles on the web plus finally video material discussing layers. The techniques I will add to this section over the next days, weeks and months will assume you know the basics and it will aim to really help you use layers in a advance way. Here you will find a great PDF article on layers that will really give you a great start with layers.

What will be the theme of the next Layers Article.-

These articles will be written for the beginner and the hobby photographer with a reasonable knowledge on layers. I will kick off with a few important basics and then I will build from there onwards to a more advance level. In my first article I will briefly discuss basic masking techniques, basic techniques on how to work with layers and finally we will do a example of partial editing and how one can apply editing techniques to only parts of a picture.

The next article will be ready for the end of April 2010,