Layers aren't so terrifying but I'm afraid this exceeds 300 words

Below is the sequence of steps involved in creating a layered montage (four images, two lines of text) in Photoshop. I hope it doesn't seem discouraging. The fact is writing it out results in a much more ponderous set of instructions than doing the job itself. Once the first two layers have been created the job becomes self-evidently repetitive. Also the benefits of layers become quickly apparent and the reasons why the approach to layers seems complex is explained. Finally, once you've done a montage with PS layers you'll never want to do it using the hit-and-miss methods offered by other graphics packages.

The montage that currently heads my blog is built up from four layers each containing an image (PicA.jpg, PicB.jpg, PicC.jpg, PicD.jpg - in sequence below) and two further layers each containing text (Works Well, and the opening of the sonnet). Let's deal with the images first.1. Open all four images together in Photoshop.Although the biggest image (PicA.jpg - the Spitfire) will obscure the rest the others can be accessed by scrolling the little arrowheads at the bottom of the work area labelled Photo Bin.

The biggest image, PicA, is naturally going to provide the background to the rest. The others I'll call subsidiary images. For the moment, simply bear this in mind.
2. Using the Photo Bin arrowheads open (ie, bring to the top of the pile) any of the three subsidiary images. Let's say this is PicB. Go to Layer in the toolbar and click "Duplicate Layer". This small window (above) has two slots that need to be filled in: "As:" and "Document:" The Document slot has a downward-pointing arrow on the right which releases a drop-down showing the names of all four images.

4. Ignore the data shown in the two slots. From the drop-down click on PicA which then appears in the "Destination:" slot and establishes PicA on the background layer. Up above, in the "As:" slot, type in Pic.B. Click OK.

5 Do Step 4 for the second subsidiary image. Using the Photo Bin arrowhead open PicC. Do Layer > Duplicate Layer; use the drop-down to again select PicA in the "Destination:" slot, then type in PicC in the "As:" slot.Click OK

6. Do the same for PicD.7. The three subsidiary images are now layered on the background image. You can confirm this by using the Photo Bin arrowheads to bring PicA to the top of the pile. The three subsidiary images may be piled one on top of the other. To shuffle them about independently identify the Layers facility at the bottom of the right-hand corner of the screen. Click on this and small versions of the four layers appear (see above), correctly identified. Click on any of them and a dotted frame will appear round the selected image.

8. The image may be moved around by locking the cursor on to the image's centre mark and moving the mouse. To resize the image click on its bottom right-hand corner. This causes the toolbar immediately above the work area to change. Click on the three-link chain to the right of the Width slot. This locks the width/height ratio and by pulling or pushing on the image's corner the size may be altered without distortion.

TEXT LAYERS

9. Use the Layers facility (bottom r-h corner of screen) to click on the background layer containing PicA. Go to Layers in the toolbar, click New. This causes a box to open with a slot called "Name:" Type in Text1 and click OK.

10. The thing that baffles many! A totally INVISIBLE layer has now been imposed over the four layered images. However its existence may be confirmed in miniature in the Layers facility. Using the Text tool (a capital T) in the vertical toolbar and choosing a contrasting colour write in whatever you want. Increase the type size in the conventional text box in the toolbar. Move the words round by using the Move Tool (top of the vertical toolbar).

11. To create another text layer merely repeat Steps 9 and 10 but enter Text2 instead of Text1. The unshaped montage will look like the picture below and will be identified in the Layer facility as in the picture below that.
12. Size, colour and font of the text layer are changed in the conventional manner. However Photoshop offers some sexier options. Works Well is an embossed special effect and is found (after some searching) under Filters.

13. When you're satisfied with the sizes and positions of the layered elements go to Save As, give it a name and feel superior to the rest of the known western world.

Novel progress 10/11/09 (Working title: The damaged con-rod). Chapter one: 3420 words, Chapter two: 3806 words. Chapter three (finished and edited): 3153 words. Chapter 3.5 (an interlude - finished 10/11/09): 500 words. Comments: Ch. 3 re-edited. Interlude (possibly in itals) links parallel story starting Ch. 4.

Here's to the Metropolitan Line

SONNET Autumn 1959
Hearing the pulse of Betjeman we rode
The line north-west to its extremity.
By Spice Isles (Wembley Park and Chorleywood)
To empty smoking roads of privacy.
That newness of ourselves we lost elsewhere
Yet I may touch the texture of that day:
The soft beige calf-length coat, the sleek gold square,
Suede gloves, the cloud-sprung head, the breath’s bouquet.
While I – a shabby swain – in mackintosh,
The stigma, later, of perverted age,
Smooth jowled, smooth cropped, smooth mind, all false panache;
A vagrant on an unaccustomed stage.
An afternoon of chance-bred unity,
That led to this, a vital memory.

NOTE (7/11/09): I am dissatisfied with the way I responded to kind comments on the above sonnet. My latest "re-comment" tries to explain this.

Novel progress (Working title: The bent con-rod). Chapter one: 3420 words, Chapter two: 3806 words. Chapter three: 2890 words - 8/11/09; previously 2376 - 6/11/09. Comments: Another goodish afternoon - 500 words. Big bifurcation ahead, possibly to the dismay of Hatch lovers.

Can't see it; haven't got it

I have three roles in Mrs BB’s kitchen: to wash up, to lift things down from high shelves and to observe. Recently I observed blind baking beans in action, preventing that culinary solecism whereby pastry case and tart contents combine. I recognised their function but couldn’t remember having seen this procedure before. It turned out Mrs BB had bought the beans two years ago. And before? Real beans, but “they’d begun to look a little secondhand”.

I wondered if cooking beans end up in that destination I identify as the Food Processor Bermuda Triangle involving tools for comparatively rare but very specific tasks (eg, a melon baller). So rare that when the need arises one bodges rather than look for the tool. The phenomenon reaches its expensive apogee when a food processor is “put away” rather than being left on the work surface. “Not in a well organised kitchen,” replied Mrs BB a trifle frostily.

I AM NOT SEDUCED by perfumed toilet products. My preferred shampoo is Head and Shoulders which has a chemically smell and an in-yer-face aim (gets rid of dandruff). My favourite soap is Wright’s Coal Tar. If I could find a tooth-paste flavoured with petrol I would buy it. Yes, I know, it’s a man’s thing and its finest expression is a deep love of Swarfega (alas, now newly packaged). Used by garage mechanics for cleaning oily hands it is a luminescent green gel which feels excitingly slick to touch and has a hypnotically techno smell. It’s at its best when taken from an industrial-size container and it not only works well but better than you could ever expect. Welcome to this blog.

Novel progress (Working title: Bloggers Unite). Chapter one: 3420 words, Chapter two: 3806 words. Chapter three: 698 words.

Getting the better of Photoshop

I shouldn’t be posting grandson for a second consecutive time but he has WALKED ON WATER! I was trying to redesign the blog's home page montage and he insisted Photoshop’s Photomerge Panorama feature wasn’t the way to go. It had to be PS’s terrifying system of layers. We had many false goes; the jargon is horribly knotty (Why for goodness sake “duplicate” rather than “copy”?) and for a time there was no way out. Then it happened; immediately I had him repeat what he’d done. And, of course, once you know, it’s the only way and you start to understand why it’s so complex.

I know other people have given up on Photoshop and opted for easier software. Fine. But if there’s something you’d like to do, chances are PS will do it. And despite appearances PS was designed by humans for humans. Ughh, how smug I’m getting.

IT MUST HAPPEN. Had a chat with my younger brother recently. For no good reason he doesn’t figure often in WW. Much of his adult life he has sailed and recently I was drawn into this esoteric yet absorbing activity. Just enough to understand the buzz. For various reasons he sold his 36 ft yacht Takista and now he’s on the brink of buying a Contessa 32. He’s a successful businessman, now retired, and he started talking about the favourable economics of getting another boat. Passionately I begged him to put aside the instincts of a professional lifetime and just respond to the boat’s aesthetics. This may well happen. I hope the photo shows why I urged him on.

Surfer's last wave

A hurricane, driven by my 6 ft 4 in. grandson (see above), has transformed my computer into a lean, serene machine. Boot-up takes about a minute, icons have been scythed from the desktop, impatient programs no longer lurk on the start-up toolbar, the registry (ie, the machine’s DNA) has been re-arranged, temp files trashed, and so on. Opened windows slide effortlessly and buttons depress like those on a Mac. There’s talk of converting the second hard drive – retained so my granddaughter could play Sims without disturbing my part of the computer – into a repository for Linux.

Yet the work included at least one of those circular journeys so typical of computers; a special kind of irony, if you like. I run a website for the local community. Several years ago a feature called FTP Surfer allowed me to look at the website files stored on the server as opposed to those on my machine. This had become defunct and grandson and I worked hard to restore it. We contacted the ISP, changed passwords, permutated the changed passwords and consumed a further hour in general fiddle-faddle. Finally FTP Surfer was restored.

I then showed grandson the workings of Dreamweaver, the complex software with which the website is created and maintained. I revealed, for instance, the many files that go to make up Belmont Rural, plus… Oh no!… all the reflected files on the server. So that’s why I was able to get along without FTP surfer working. Its need had disappeared.

The irony lies in what happened next. In grandson’s purge of unneeded programs, the next casualty was FTP Surfer. Seen as a problem, repaired, and now rushed off to Tyburn.

Beware the editor's footnote

Still coughing but becoming more loquacious.

I spend my leisure fencing with the literate, multi-talented, globe-spread, no doubt handsome people of the blog world. But I have another life – running a local website – where passions take a different turn. For instance:

BELMONT RURAL letters.
The editor's right to edit is understood but when my words "the Rotherwas Waste Recycling Centre" were changed to "the dump" I queried this with the website's editor-in-chief.

Our discussion centred on public awareness. Many folk may not realise that, on average, 80% of the unwanted materials delivered to The Rotherwas Centre are in fact reused for… etc, etc, Cllr X

NOTE Since Cllr X has uncomplainingly borne not only changes to many of his website contributions in the past, but even outright refusal to publish other contributions, he is fully entitled to draw attention to what he considers heavy-handed or unsympathetic editing. Calling the RWRC the dump diminishes the centre's functions, it is true. But no label is an exact description. I reacted to the newer term in the way I might had I been faced with "rat catcher" elevated to "pest and rodent extermination officer". Also the shorter word has benefits: asking the average Herefordian the way to the dump might well produce an immediate answer, whereas there could well be a pause (at best) if the longer phrase were inserted. And since the website has only one worker-ant I feel I can dispense with editor-in-chief for the shorter, punchier - website editor.

Despatches from El Alamein

Just a heavy cold but complicated, as always, by the after-effects of a childhood racked with chronic bronchitis now retro-diagnosed as asthma. Feverish dreams in which I’m compelled to complete a sodoku game (it’s no go; conscious or unconscious I don’t know the rules) followed by two months of coughing. I exacted some revenge months ago by writing a sonnet on that latter subject.

Colds are bad news because I know they can’t be cured. So, treat the symptoms. The temptation to use scotch must be eschewed since the symptoms persist, enhanced by a murderous headache. In my case the bronchi and – rather surprising – the diaphragm blaze with pain after every cough. Pain demands an analgesic, hence industrial-strength ibuprofen.

The result is a pyrrhic victory (“Any more wins like that and we’re done for.”) As the drug fights the nerve endings the battlefield is laid waste. But the battlefield is my body and what laughably passes for a mind. The fruited plain becomes nothing more than landfill. This is not the time to embark on a demanding new verse form or to entertain a fellow blogger with a comment that will read a week later as pure boiler-plate. The prescription is thus analgesic plus abstinence from creative activity.

And that includes thinking. No great loss since sooner rather than later thoughts will turn to the state of my lungs. Finding things to curse is one solution, self-induced torpor is another. I leave the TV switched off: good stuff turns enthusiasm into wheezing, bad stuff makes me angry with the same result. I may if I wish contemplate the case of Michael Jackson.

A post from the distaff side

Plutarch's most recent post consists of a breaking wave, reminding me that when we met at TBR he was interested to hear Mrs BB had taken up painting and urged me to let in some light on this matter. Mrs BB's reaction to this was predictable (ie, No.) but one doesn't live for forty-nine years with someone and not discover one or two of the pressable buttons. In the end neither of us could decide which of our preferences should get the nod, so here they both are with another thrown in for good luck. The fact that neither is precisely aligned can be blamed on the one who operated the camera.

PS: Further close examination revealed that the twin paintings were not only unaligned but out of focus. Hence their replacement.