Although this has been written for Photoshop 5 the techniques are the same in Photoshop 6

Understanding layers and transparencies are two of the keys that will unlock the power of Adobe Photoshop and before very long anyone who uses this software will need to be able to tap into these valuable recourses.

At first both layers and transparencies can be a bit confusing to grasp, but they are well worth a little effort to understand. Using the images supplied you can take a slow walk through these techniques and at the end all will be crystal clear, we promise.

Step 1. We have provided you with three images of hot air balloons shown below.

What you need to do is to make all three into transparencies, i.e. cut out the sky and leave the balloons floating on a transparent background. Call up fig 1 and select the magic wand tool from the menu bar. Double click the icon to bring up the magic wand palette and you will see that you can alter the tolerance setting. A higher setting will select more and a lower setting less. The default value is 32 and for this exercise stay with that setting as shown below.

Call up your layers palette by pressing F7 and double click on the background thumbnail and rename it. This process is essential as Photoshop cannot make a transparency out of your background. By altering the name you are changing your background into a layer and it then reacts in a different way.

Click into the sky area of the first balloon and Photoshop will make a selection for you as shown below. There is every chance that the selection will cover all the sky in one go, but if not hold down the shift key and add to the selection by touching down in the areas not selected. Small spaces around the basket can also be added in this way.

Always feather the edge of your selections before you cut and paste anything. The feather command is found in the select menu and you should try a feather radius of 1-3. On this occasion choose 2 and then edit-cut from the menu bar. Photoshop will remove all the sky and leave your balloon floating on a transparent background and it will look like ours below.

A transparent background is generally depicted with blue and white squares, but you can change this in the preferences if you wish. Carry out this same procedure with the other 2 balloons figures 5 & 6 and make sure you save each one as you go.

Tip. You can only save a transparency in Photoshop as a PSD file and all other choices such as JPEG and tiff will not be available until you flatten the image.

Step 2. You are now ready to combine the first two images into a layered composition and you need to call up two of your balloons and the layers palette. To add one image to another to create a second layer drag the thumbnail of one balloon from within the layers palette into the main picture area of the other balloon just as we demonstrate below..

You will now see two layers in your layers palette, one holding the coloured balloon and one holding the blue and white one as shown below.

Call up your remaining balloon transparency and drag the thumbnail of that balloon into the other two making three layers.

You have now created three transparencies and amalgamated them into a three layer composition.

Step 3. We can now adjust each of these layers separately to create our own composition. Before making changes to any layer you have to select it by clicking the thumbnail and the layer will change colour, in this case green to show you it is active.

You can also adjust how the layers stack by dragging any layer into different positions. Just hold the left mouse button, drag the thumbnail into the position you want and release it.

Select a layer and choose Edit-transform-scale from the menu bar. Using the toggles that appear on the corners hold down the shift key and you can resize the layer while keeping the length and breath in proportion. You can temporarily turn off the other layers if you wish by clicking the little eye to the left of the thumbnail.

Repeat this sizing process with the other two layers making each one slightly smaller than the previous. Using the move tool from the menu bar shown below

move the smaller balloons into position and adjust how they stack using the drag and drop process and your three layered image will look like the one below.

Step 4. To finish the image create a new blank layer by clicking the centre icon at the bottom of the layers and drag it to the bottom of your stack. Choose a realistic sky blue and flood the layer using the Alt+del key. Add 3-4 pixels of monochrome noise, which you will find via filter-noise-add noise.

An alternative to creating this sky in your software is to photograph a sky and import it into your layered composition in the same way as you did with the balloons.

You will find that making a transparency and creating layers will feature in many tutorials that you will read. If you have followed this tutorial you will begin to see what other effects and options can open up to you using these same techniques. For e.g. Any effect or change you can make in Photoshop can be applied to one layer, once that layer is selected. You can turn and flip individual layers and apply filters to just one layer. The possibilities are almost endless so try those layers and engage your creativity.