Chapter 6: Advanced Techniques – Layers and Masking

This is the chapter where you'll move up a notch, from practicing the basics of good but essentially quite basic image editing, to learning the art of greater creative control over your work output.

That said, for many grappling with the concepts of layers and masks, this might seem counterintuitive. Indeed, when I first started to learn Photoshop Elements, it took me months of self-persuasion before I was ready to make an assault on the concept of layers, such was its perceived complexity.

I was lucky in that, at that point, I had always worked in photography—from commercial audio-visual production to printing in a pro lab, so the concepts of dodging, burning in, masking, and exposure were all familiar.

Even so, I still found layers somewhat tricky, but after a few weeks of messing about, it became one of my all-time favorite features simply because it opened my eyes to a completely new range of creative...