Learning by examining someone else's project

[Jimbo724]

I'm trying to learn by examining a PSD file in PP. This has about 15 layers. Alas, I cannot tell what most of the layers do or how they were created/tweaked. When I click on one, the tool panel on the right is blank. Is there some way to show exactly what a layer is and does?

[Andrius]

I'm trying to learn by examining a PSD file in PP. This has about 15 layers. Alas, I cannot tell what most of the layers do or how they were created/tweaked. When I click on one, the tool panel on the right is blank. Is there some way to show exactly what a layer is and does?

Hi there! Apologies for the late reply, this post slipped through. Layers will sometimes have been modified using nondestructive effects/adjustments/etc., but sometimes they'll have been created using destructive features or those non-destructive edits will have been merged down, at which point, there won't be a surefire way to tell how exactly that layer has been created or modified. This is especially true in PSD files because we have differently functioning tools, so we often have to rasterize (merge down) the nondestructive bits as our tools work differently and the same layer with the same slider values for a particular tool may be rendered differently.

If you want to get better at recreating designs and visuals, my feeling is that you'll get much further by following as many Pixelmator Pro tutorials as possible and generally becoming more confident with using the app. My opinion is that examining files won't really help all that much. It's kind of like reading music and playing music – sure, you can see all the notes and chords in some sheet music and everything that makes up the piece is right there on the page. But if you want to write something yourself, you have to understand why everything's structured the way it is and the best way to do that is by actually trying to create stuff yourself (with the help of others, if possible).