This work helps you to create, correct, and control with layers, the most powerful tool in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Imagine yourself in total control of every adjustment to your photos. You've seen the illustrations in glossy magazines, the fine art reproductions in museum catalogs, the award-winning pictures of professional photographers. To produce this kind of magic, understanding how to use layers for your entire breadth of image correction is key. It helps you to discover the best ways to showcase your talent with the full power of layers from best-selling author/digital image specialist Richard Lynch. This work also helps you to learn what layers can do for you as an integral part of organizing image development, creating and storing image versions with nondestructive editing, and promoting a positive workflow. Timeless, not version specific, this book will help you take layers to a new level to increase your efficiency and produce better end results, whatever release of the software you use. Step-by-step instructions and practical examples illustrate how to. Don't make your work harder than it needs to be when you can use layers to control any adjustment using multiple forms of blending concurrently - transparency, clipping, opacity/fill, masking, modes, channel targeting, Blend If, and styles. Author Richard Lynch is a photographer, designer, editor, web developer, and author of the popular "Hidden Powers" series on "Photoshop and Photoshop Elements". He also writes for "PCPhoto", "Popular Photography", "Digital Photographer", and "Digital Photography Techniques". Leverage layer power to correct and enhance color, fix problems in composition, repair damage or flaws, and isolate image areas for changes, adjustments and experimental concepts. This work incorporates layers in a workflow that extracts the maximum from your camera, exploits the potential in every image and helps you organize your perceptions and ideas according to your unique vision. This work lets you recombine layers to form new images in a nondestructive process that preserves both the original image and intermediate layers for further editing - or tomorrow's inspirations. It allows you to dip into the accompanying CD with a robust library and presets of practice images. It also helps you to create your own set of favorite composition techniques.