Did you know that pizza is a great way to teach layers in Adobe Photoshop? Our next assignment for our Digital Imagery class not only made us hungry for a delicious pizza pie, but it also allowed us to show off our layering and organization skills.
The pizza pie project asked us to place a pie crust on the background of our choice, and add pizza sauce, cheese and seven ingredients on top of the pizza crust using our choice of brushes, selection tools and other tools of our choice.
I chose a checkerboard tablecloth that reminds me of old pizzerias I enjoyed as a child. On top of that in a new layer titled pizza crust, I placed the bare pizza crust. Next, in a new layer labeled sauce, I used a brush to create the red sauce on the middle of the pizza. Next, I used the grass like brush to lay down the multiple colors of cheese in new layers named cheese. To maintain organization of layers, I added these two cheese layers into in a folder titled cheese.
Then came the toppings – pepperoni, bacon, spinach, green peppers, mushrooms, sausage and olives. For each topping, I first chose to delete the background of the image using the magic wand selection tool leaving a transparent background. Next, I used the quick selection tool to select each individual topping. I copied and pasted that individual topping to the pizza, putting each one into an appropriately named layer. I also rotated and resized the toppings as necessary for a more authentic look. Once I had all the pieces of that particular topping added, I grouped all those layers into one layer folder with the same name. The most difficult topping was the olives because they were grouped together in a bowl. However, there was a random olive off to the side of the dish. I used that olive as my topping, and simply resized and rotated the olive layers on top of the pizza.
For fun and authenticity, I added a brush of garlic butter to the crust so that when my fake pizza is baked, it would have a golden, delicious crust. I’ve worked in a pizza shop, and the garlic butter is quickly brushed on so I tried not to worry about the butter being too perfect. I did try to be careful not to let the brush paint butter on the table and pizza plate. I had to use the eraser tool a few times for that. I also labeled that layer in the Photoshop file as well.
Now, who’s ready for pizza?
It's a Digital World. 