The Extra-Strength Tips for the Clients and Friends of Ben Willmore (www.digitalmastery.com):

It's been eons since we paid any attention to Photoshop's Layer Styles (way back in '01), and because they are such a wonderfully potent feature, I think they deserve another visit. If you're new to Layer Styles (also known as Layer Effects), then be sure to check out the last two Layer Style tips at http://www.digitalmastery.com/tips/073001tip.html and http://www.digitalmastery.com/tips/062801tip.html .

A Style in Photoshop (Window>Styles) is a preset collection of Layer Styles (like Drop Shadow and Bevel & Emboss) that can quickly be applied to the currently active layer by simply clicking on one of the style thumbnails that show up in that palette. But did you know that you can drag a style from the Styles palette to any part of your image and Photoshop will apply that style to the layer below your cursor? That means that you can quickly apply styles to multiple layers without having to think about which layer is currently active.

After applying a style, you might find that the effect is a little too extreme (example: stroke too thick). You can tone down the style by choosing Layer>Layer Style>Scale Effects. Or, if you'd rather be more efficient, just Ctrl-click (Mac), or Right-click (Win) on the Layer Style icon for the active layer in the Layers palette (black circle with an "f" in it) and choose Scale Effects from the menu that appears.

Now, let's say that you need to apply the same style to multiple layers. Just apply the style to the currently active layer, then link that layer to the others you'd like to apply it to (by clicking in the square to the right of the eyeball icon for each layer in the Layers palette). Then to transfer the style from the active layer to those linked layers, Ctrl-click (Mac), or Right-click (Win) on the Layer Style icon for the active layer and choose Copy Layer Style. Then Ctrl-click, or Right-click on that icon a second time and choose Paste Layer Style to Linked.

If you prefer to create your styles from scratch instead of using the presets in the Styles palette, then here are a few tidbits you might want to keep in mind:

Here's how to cheat and add multiple strokes to a layer: First choose Stroke from the Layer Style pop-up menu at the bottom of the Layers palette (it looks like the same black circle I mentioned earlier) and get your first stroke setup the way you'd like it. Then, add an Outer Glow style, change the Blend Mode pop-up menu from Screen to Normal, set the Spread setting to 100% and then experiment with the Size setting until you get what you'd like. If you need more than two strokes, then try adding an Inner Glow, set the Choke setting to 100%, the mode to Normal and then experiment with the size setting. For still another stroke, you could add a Drop Shadow, set the Spread setting to 100%, the Blend Mode to Normal and the Distance setting to 0. I'm not mentioning all this just to you can have a bunch of strokes around something. It's just to let you know that you can use the Layer Styles in non-standard ways if you're open to thinking differently.

Some of the styles (like Gradient Overlay and Pattern Overlay) completely cover the contents of a layer which makes it rather difficult to use more than one of those styles at the same time (unless you know of the trick I'm about to share with you). Let's say you added a Pattern Overlay style and then add a Gradient Overlay. The Gradient Overlay will completely obscure your view of the Patten Overlay. To get the gradient to brighten and darken the pattern instead of covering it up, set the Blend Mode of the Gradient Overlay to Hardlight or Overlay mode.

What if the style you added came from a Layer Style that you downloaded off the Internet? If you'd like to extract the style so that it's always available, then, with the styled layer active, choose Pattern Overlay from the Layer Style pop-up menu at the bottom of the Layers palette and then click the icon that looks like a sheet of paper with the corner turned over. That will save the pattern from this layer into Photoshop's preset patterns and will make it so that pattern is always available when you're adding Pattern Overlays in the future.

If you had any difficulty following these tips, then be sure to read the two previous tips about Layer Styles (I mentioned at the beginning of this tip) so you can get more comfortable with the basics of Layer Styles.

And finally, I want to thank Lars and Leif at Cooleremail.com for making these free tips possible. Without their gracious donation of services, you wouldn't be getting this tip. If you ever need to send out bulk e-mail, I highly recommend them, and not just because they're nice people. Check out www.cooleremail.com and tell them that I sent you.

-Ben Willmore