Rangefinder Magazine
April 2006

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Photoshop CS2 How² Michelle Perkins
Working With Layers in Photoshop CS2

When it comes to day-to-day tasks, perhaps the most glaring change in Photoshop CS2 involves the Layers palette. If you’re accustomed to working with the Layers palette in previous versions of Photoshop, it’s going to take you some time to wrap your brain around the updates and alterations. It won’t be a completely foreign territory, but the changes are significant.

Figure 1—The Layers palette in CS
Figure 2—The Layers palette in CS2

What’s Missing The first thing you’ll probably notice is that a few of the old features are missing from the new Layers palette.

The Link Column. The link column is just plain gone. Instead, you can now select multiple layers and link them by clicking on the Link icon at the bottom of the palette.

Figure 3—The Link icon becomes active when more than one layer is selected.

Layer Mask/Layer Icon. The icon that indicates an active layer or layer mask is also missing. Instead, Photoshop CS2 indicates that a layer or layer mask is active by placing black brackets at the corners of its thumbnail.

Figure 4—The active Layer Mask icon in Photoshop CS (left image) is replaced in CS2 (right) by dark brackets at the corner of the Layer Mask thumbnail when it is active.

Layer Sets. In CS2, this is now called Layer Groups, but the functionality is the same as in Photoshop CS.

Click for Selection. In Photoshop CS, pressing Command (or Control on Windows) and clicking anywhere on the layer entry in the Layers palette selects the entire layer in the image. In CS2, you need to click on the layer thumbnail itself to achieve the same effect.

Selecting and Working With Multiple Layers In Photoshop CS2, you now have the ability to select multiple layers. There are many ways to do this. You can press and hold Shift while then click on the first and last layer you want to select, and all those in between will also be selected. Or you can hold Cmd (Ctrl) and click on a layer to toggle between a selected and unselected state.

With the Move tool active, you can select multiple layers by activating the Auto Select Layer checkbox in the Options palette. Then, click on your image to select the top-most layer that contains pixels in the area you clicked on. Press Shift and repeat this process to select additional layers. When no layers are selected, you can click and drag with the Move tool to draw a selection rectangle. When you release your mouse, all the image layers with pixels that fall within this rectangle will be selected. (If you try this when one or more layers are already selected, the Move tool will reposition the layers.)

Figure 5—The Options palette for the Move tool contains an Auto Select Layer checkbox that can be used when selecting multiple layers.

In the Select menu, you’ll also find some new options related to layers. Choosing All Layers will, as you might suspect, select all the layers in the document. Hitting Deselect Layers, deselects all of the Layers. The Similar Layers command allows you, when one layer is already selected, to automatically select all other layers of the same type—whether they are pixel-based layers, Type layers, Shape layers, groups or Smart Objects.

This can be helpful, for example, when your document includes several Type layers and you want to change the font or point size on all of them. Simply select one layer and go to Select > Similar Layers. Then, any changes you make in the Character and Paragraph palettes will instantly be applied to all the selected Type layers.

Figure 6—The Select menu for CS2 (right) contains options not found in the CS Select menu (left).

Once you have multiple layers selected, there are lots of useful things you can do to them collectively:

1. Move tool—Use the Move tool to drag multiple layers to a new position. You can also use the Align and Distribute icons in the Move tool’s Options palette to reposition the layers.

2. Transform—Go to Edit > Transform to scale, skew, or rotate the layers. You can also group the layers into a Smart Object (Layer > Smart Objects > Group into New Smart Object) to gain the additional Warp option from the Transform menu.

3. Apply Layer Styles—From the Styles palette, you can also click to apply any given style to all of the selected layers.

4. Make Text Changes—As noted above, when multiple Type layers are selected, any changes made in the Character and Paragraph palettes will apply to all the layers. You can also warp the text (Layer > Type > Warp).

Figure 8—After adding two lines of text (top left), both Type layers were selected and the font, color, and point size changed (top right). From the Styles palette, the Yellow Paper Clip style was selected (bottom left). Then, the text was warped (bottom right). Because multiple layers were selected, these changes only needed to be made once to affect all the text. (Image by Jeff Smith)

5. Organize and Work With Layers—Once the desired layers are selected, you can lock them (Layer > Lock Layers), hide them (Layer > Hide Layers), link them (by hitting the Link icon at the bottom of the Layers palette), delete them (Layer > Delete > Layers), duplicate them (Layer > Duplicate Layer), etc.

You can also access many of these commands by Ctrl-clicking (or right clicking) on a selected layer within the Layers palette.

Additional Changes in the Layers Palette.

Layer Masks. The general performance of Layer Masks hasn’t changed in CS2, but the way you view them (as noted above) has changed. To determine whether or not a mask is active, you’ll now need to look for the dark brackets on the corners of the Layer Mask thumbnail.

Once you’ve created a Layer Mask, you now have the option to click and drag it onto another layer. Press Option (Alt) while doing this to move a copy of the Layer Mask, or add the Shift key to invert the mask when moving or copying it to another layer.

Figure 9—Layer Masks can be copied from one layer to another by pressing Option (Alt) while clicking and dragging the Layer Mask thumbnail. As seen here, you can also hold down the Shift key while doing this to instantly invert the copied Layer Mask.

Layer Styles. In Photoshop CS, to copy a layer style to another layer, you simply clicked and dragged the name of the style onto the line just below the target layer. In CS2 you’ll need to drag the style onto the center of the target layer; however, clicking and dragging the style will only move it. If you want to copy it, you’ll need to hold Opt (Alt) while moving it.

If you’ve applied multiple styles, you can move/copy them all to another layer by clicking and dragging the Layer Style icon that appears at the far right side of the layer.

The way that the visibility of Layer Styles is indicated has also changed. In CS, the eyeball icon appeared in the column to the left of the layer in the Layers palette. In CS2, this column is gone and the eyeball icon, instead, appears in the blank space just to the left of the Layer Style name. This can make it a little tricky at first to figure out where you need to click to toggle the Layer Style visibility, since there’s no indication of the icon’s placement (i.e. where to click) when the style is not currently visible.

Figure 10—In Photoshop CS (left), the Layer Style visibility icon appeared in a column to the left of the layer. In CS2 (right), it appears directly to the left of the Layer Style’s name under the layer.

Figure 11—Being able to actively adjust the layer opacity while transforming a selection makes replacing “blinks” a lot easier.

Additional Quick Tips For Using Layers in CS2:.

1. Merge a Copy—Press Shift-Cmd-Opt-E (Shift-Ctrl-Alt- E) to merge the visible layers into a combined layer that will appear above the top selected layer (or at the top of the layers palette if no layers are selected).

2. Transforming With Opacity and Blending Adjustments— You can now adjust the opacity and blending mode of an individual layer while transforming it. This also works with layers in a group folder. This can help when trying to transform a layer to match up with an underlying layer.

3. Duplicate by Dragging—To duplicate a layer, you can now press Option (Alt) while dragging the layer into a new position on the palette.

4. Distribute Layers and Groups—To distribute multiple layers, select three or more layers, then go to Layer > Distribute and select an option to space the layers evenly starting from one edge or the vertical/horizontal centers.

5. Align Objects on Different Layers—To align multiple layers, select the layers in the Layers palette (or select a group). Choose Layer > Align and select a command from the submenu to align the edges or centers of the layers.

6. Export Layers. You can export and save layers as individual files by going to File > Scripts > Export Layers To Files. In the dialog box, under Destination, click Browse to select a destination for the exported files. Enter a name in the File Name Prefix box to specify a name for the files. To export only those layers that have visibility enabled in the Layers palette, select Visible Layers Only. Choose a file format from the File Type menu, then click Run.

The changes made to the Layers palette are some of the most likely of the new features to give seasoned users trouble when making the jump to Photoshop CS2. Nonetheless, a little practice will make them easy to live with—and, in most cases, provide ways to actually benefit from these changes by expediting your workflow.