Layer Opacity Vs. Fill in Photoshop
The author, Rajendra Prasad, an Associate of Royal Photographic Society of London, and a banker by profession, has been in the photographic field for over two decades and has extensive experience in both film and digital photography. At present he is the Chairman of Digital Imaging Division, India International Photographic Council, Delhi. Rajendra has a passion for sharing his knowledge on photography through teaching and writing. He has published several articles on photography in photographic magazines and journals of IIPC & FIP. He has also published an e-book An Introduction to Digital Photography which was released at Indore IIPC workshop by Sri Jaipal Reddy, Minister-Information & Broadcasting. He has also given talks on photography at Doordarshan. He has taught several photo-enthusiasts through workshops on photography in several Indian cities. His photographs have also won many accolades in different photographic salons. He has also served as a judge in various contests. His other hobbies are electronics and painting. He maintains a photoblog digicreation.blogspot.com and can be reached at rajdigi25@gmail.com
When you have a layer selected, you will notice that you have two sliders available at the top right hand corner of the Layers panel. One which you are probably familiar with is Opacity, and the other, which you might not be familiar with, is Fill. A fairly common question asked, even by a few advanced Photoshop users is, “What really is the difference between the Opacity and Fill options in the Layers panel? Don’t they both do the same thing?” It is an intelligent question because in most cases, they actually exactly do the same thing i.e. both the Opacity and Fill options control layer transparency; they control how much the currently selected layer allows other layers below it in the document to show through. Normally, to lower a layer’s transparency, we lower the Opacity value. But if the Fill option also lowers transparency, then what is the point of having two options that do the same thing? There must be some difference, right?
The main difference between Opacity and Fill has to do with Photoshop’s layer styles. If you haven’t added any effects (styles) to your layer, like a stroke, drop shadow, bevel and emboss or outer glow, you will get the same results, lowering either the Opacity or Fill values. If, on the other hand, you do have one or more layer styles applied, Opacity and Fill behave very differently. This feature is tremendously useful in many respects.
It is quite difficult for beginners to figure out how Fill and Opacity work without seeing it practically. So, in this month’s tutorial, we are going to learn the difference between the two. In the following tutorial you will learn how to add watermarks to your photographs. There are many ways to add watermarks in Photoshop, but I have chosen this particular method which uses the fill property of layer to display its importance.
If you are one of the many digital photographers or designers who use the web either to show your client the work you have done for them, or to show off your portfolio; one of the major concerns is that someone might steal your work. There is no guarantee that you can stop this from happening completely, but there are things we can do to hinder the stealing process. One such method is to add a copyright watermark to your images. So let us go through the process of how to add a watermark on your photograph, and simultaneously know the difference between Opacity and Fill command of layer. The screenshots featured here are of Photoshop CS5, but you can use earlier versions of Photoshop too.