Introduction to Using Layers in Adobe Photoshop Elements 15 – Part 2
During this Photoshop Elements 15 tutorial video, we will be working with layers. You will learn how to add layers by copying and pasting a selection, as well as how to delete, flatten, link/unlink, merge layers and group layers
Hello again and welcome back to our course on PSE 15.
In this section we’re going to continue working with layers and I’m going to cover quite a few other aspects of their use in PSE 15. I’m going to start by reopening the image that I closed at the end of the preceding section. Note that I saved it in PSD format and it has four layers. The top layer is an adjustment layer which is currently invisible.
When we edited the adjustment layer in the preceding section I right clicked on the layer and you could see that a layer has quite a long contextual menu. And one of the important options on a layer is Delete Layer. And at any time if I really definitely don’t need a layer anymore I would that option to delete the layer. Note that’s not the same as making it invisible. If I just make it invisible I can reintroduce it at any stage. If I delete it it really is deleted.
The other thing that I mentioned at the end of the preceding section is that if I were to save this image as a JPG although all of the information that you can see here would be in that JPG from the point of view of what you can see in the image all of the layers would be sort of merged together if you like. Now that process is called Flattening. And one of the options on this contextual menu is Flatten Image.
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If I flatten an image what happens is all of the layers are basically merged into one. And if I have something like an adjustment layer the effect of that adjustment layer will be incorporated into that process provided the layer is visible. Now in this case that hue saturation layer at the top is marked as invisible. So if I flatten this image that hue saturation layer will have no effect because of course it’s having no effect here.
If I flatten the image, Discard hidden layers? Yes. The image is now flattened. There’s absolutely no effect on the image that you can see. What I’ve now got is a new background layer. And if I wanted to I could start again. So again I could make a copy of this. I could introduce other text layers and so on. But I couldn’t treat Exmoor Ponies, that text, as a separate layer because that separation has gone.
On this occasion what I really want to do is to carry on from where I left off. So what I could do is to close the PSD file without saving changes and reopen it or of course if I go up to my History Panel, click on Open and everything is fine again.
Let’s now look at other ways of adding to this image. And what I’m going to do next is to open another one of the images that we worked on earlier in the course.
And you may remember when we worked on this lonely sheep that we had a selection made. What I’m going to do now is to copy that selection to the clipboard. I’ve used the keyboard shortcut Control-C. And then I’m going to go back to my ponies. So at the top of the Layers panel there is an icon, Create a New Layer.
Note also that on the Layer menu there is a New Layer option. My new layer if you look over here, note the hatching here indicating transparency. What I’m going to do now is to go to the Edit menu and do a Paste. And now I have my lonely sheep and it’s joined the Exmoor Ponies in the field.
If you look over at the Layers panel and right at the top you can just about see the tiny representation of that sheep in the middle of the layer thumbnail. Let me move the sheep a little bit away I think from the ponies. It’s keeping itself to itself over there.
What I’m going to do now is to add a second sheep. And the way that I’m going to do it is like this. I’m going to go up to the Layer menu, click on New and I’m going to choose the option, Layer via Copy. And I now have two sheep.
Now because one of them is standing in front of the other you can only see one but note that if I select a layer and make sure that I’ve got Layer 1 Copy selected, which is in effect now the top layer, I can move the sheep around just by making sure I’ve got the move tool selected and I can just drag the sheep slightly over.
Now notice the sizing handles around that second sheep. You know which one you’ve got selected because you can see the handles. You also know which one you’ve got selected by looking at the Layers panel. If I want to select the other sheep let me click on one of the others.
Note as I hover I get that blue image of a selections rectangle. Click on it. I’ve automatically changed the selection in the Layers panel as well. Sometimes it’s easy to select the object you want to work on by clicking within the image but it’s always possible to select by selecting the correct layer.
Now already with this image we’ve got six layers and as I’m sure you can imagine sometimes you’re going to have a lot more than six. It’s very important to be able to keep track of what’s what. So what I’m going to do is to rename Layer 1. So I’m going to right click, click on Rename and I’m going to call it Sheep 1, just hit the Enter key, and I’m going to do a similar change to Layer 1 Copy. Okay.
One thing to bear in mind here is that at any time I could change the appearance of that little flock of sheep. For instance, I could drag Sheep 1 to the top of the Layers panel and Sheep 1 is now the front sheep. Of course Sheep 2 is now partly not visible. So changing the order of the panels is fine.
And the other thing that you may want to do is although these two sheep are on separate layers of the image you may want to move this little flock around as a flock. So you may want in some way to combine those two layers together to make it possible for them to be processed if you like as a unit, particularly from the point of view of them moving round Exmoor.
Let’s look first at a temporary way of doing this. Note that I currently have Sheep 2 selected in the Layers panel. If I hold the Control key down and select Sheep 1, so I’ve now got two layers selected. If I click on one of the sheep, note I’ve got the Move tool selected, and move it. I’ll actually move both of them. But that’s a purely temporary arrangement. Once I click on an individual sheep again then that would be moved around separately.
Let’s do that in a sort of semi-permanent way. Note that I’ve currently got Sheep 1 selected. Again I’m going to hold the Control key down and select Sheep 2 as well. If I right click now one of the options on the contextual menu is Link Layers. And if I click on Link Layers those two layers are now linked. And in fact if you look at the selection rectangle you’ll see that it covers both of the sheep. And if I now click with the move tool somewhere on those two sheep, move them round.
They are in effect now a unit. They are a pair of linked layers. Even if I click on something else in the image, so for instance if I click on the text and then go back to one of the sheep, select one sheep and move it it’s still moved as part of that flock. If I want to unlink then all I need to do is to make the same selection again, right click, the option now is Unlink Layers and they are once again separate sheep.
That’s the sort of semi-permanent way of doing that. There’s an even more permanent way. Let me just select those two layers again, right click again. One of the options is Merge Layers. And that will actually merge those two sheep into a single layer. That’s an operation that you would have to be confident in though because you cannot unmerge a layer other than of course going back in history and going back to an earlier version of your image.
One other item I’d just like to briefly mention here on working with layers is that you can group layers together and having grouped them you can also color code a group. Particularly as the number of layers gets larger this can be a very convenient way of identifying related layers and groups. It’s a very straightforward thing to do. Let’s suppose I want to make a sheep group. Whether or not I’m starting out with linked layers.
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And one way of doing this is to select the layers that I want to group and then if I right click there’s an option on the contextual menu of Group from Layers. If I do it this way then automatically I get a group. I can give it a name. I could just call it Sheep. And I can assign a color to it, say yellow, click on OK. And in my Layers panel now what I see is the Sheep Group just as a group.
It can be a convenient way of sort of reducing the clutter in the Layers panel. And it’s particularly useful when you’re dealing with layers and groups of layers where you’re unlikely to need to make many changes in the short term and you may just want less clutter really. It’s easy enough to ungroup. Right click, click on Ungroup Layers. And then up on the Layer menu you’ve got options such as Delete Group, Rename Group and so on.
The grouping facilities for layers were actually enhanced in PSE 15. So you may want to check those out in the PDF and the online Help.
In this section we’ve looked at several aspects of working with layers and during the balance of the course we’re going to be looking at several more. Some of the icons along the top of the Layers panel we’ve used, some of them we haven’t. And I’m going to be working through the balance of these during the rest of the course. One or two that are worth pointing out now, for example, are that one, that trashcan which is a Delete Layer icon. I talked about delete layer earlier on.
And one last point to mention in this section is that if I were to print this image at this point it would appear as it appears there. So when I print the printing process takes account of the visibility of layers as well. So anything that’s not visible is not printed either.
That’s it for this section. I’ll see you in the next one.
Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
