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I can't really get too detailed as I've never used PaintShopPro, but I'm assuming that it has the same basic features as Photoshop.

I think of layers as sheets of clear plastic placed on top of each other, like they (used to?) use in cel animation. They let you paint stuff on an upper layer without affecting what's underneath. You can also turn layers on and off, duplicate them and move them around, etc, so they basically make image editing a hellava lot easier.

In addition to the normal Red, Green and Blue channels, each layer also has what's called an Alpha channel, which is basically a transparency map for the layer. You can edit this transparency map to make parts of a layer partially or fully invisible, which is also known as masking. Normally, the blending method for a layer is additive, but you can create all sorts of cool effects by changing it to subtract, multiply, darken, hue, soft light, etc. You can also add effects to the outline of layer shapes, like feathering, glows, drop shadows, etc.

OK, so that was a brief introduction to layers. Here are the basic steps of what I did to yout Aki picture.

1. Duplicate background layer to create an identical layer above it.
2. Create a "hide all" layer mask for new layer (Let's you directly paint on the layer's alpha channel).
3. Selected the new layer's mask and painted white on the morphed parts. This makes the new layer visible for these parts instead of the background image.
4. With the new layer selected, clicked on the "Unsharp Mask" filter. I forget the actual settings I used but "amount: 50%, radius: 40, threshold: 0-5" should give you a similar result.

My advice is to create a new layer before you start, so all of you "porphing" is done above the background image. It will then be easier to do tweaks at the end to get it to blend in better. Hope this clears things up a bit.

I want to give this a try myself as it seems like a good way to learn anatomy and practice shading. I'll probably have a few questions to ask you about that side of things.

[pete]

Reason …you are a Gentleman …THANK-YOU. With a little more practice, I should be able to produce some slightly different results, thanks to your excellent explanation.

If I CAN help you in any way, just shout

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