If you’re like most people, you probably use Photoshop to edit photos, create graphics and logos, and more. But what if you want to add another layer of complexity to your work? In this article, we’ll show you how to do just that. Adding a new layer in Photoshop is simple. Just open the Layers panel (Window > Layers), click on the New Layer button at the bottom of the panel, and give your new layer a name (we’ll call ours “Background”). Now let’s start adding some content to our Background layer. First, select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and draw a rectangle around one of your photo’s edges (we used our photo of San Francisco). Next, go to Edit > Fill and choose the Color option from the menu that pops up. In the resulting dialog box, select the color blue from the swatch that appears on top of your photo. Finally, click OK to close out of that dialog box. Your Background layer now has a blue fill color applied to it. To add some more visual interest to our Background layer, we’re going to use some filters. First, go back up to your Layers panel and click on the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of it. This will open up a new dialog box where you can choose which parts of your image will be visible through your Background layer’s mask (we’ll leave all but our rectangle selected). Now let’s apply some filters to our Background layer: first, go back up to Photoshop’s Filter menu and choose Blur > Gaussian Blur. This will cause all pixels within your rectangle’s boundaries (which are still selected in our Layers panel)to be blurred by a factor of 2px (.5em). Next, go back down to Photoshop’s Filter menu and choose Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. This will sharpen all pixels within your rectangle’s boundaries by a factor of 10 ..
