I wanted to write a quick post to answer a question I received a few days ago regarding the management of layers in the Layers panel of Adobe Photoshop. Many folks who are new to this application have some difficulty understanding the basics of how layers work. I always tell them to think about Photoshop as a table and layers as pieces of paper on top of that table. You can move the pieces of paper around, just as you can with layers. You can reorder the paper, just as you can with layers.
Adobe Generator is one of the cool new features in Photoshop CC.If you need more information, please visit this link.In this quick tip I will explain you how to quick batch rename layers and layer groups to prepare them for export using Generator.
You can also stack the pieces of paper on top of one another, just as you can with layers. Layers are quite literally “layers.” They’re layered on top of one another in a certain sequence.While this post is about layers, it’s mostly about something more specific than that.
The question I received had to do with how to name layers as well as how to change the order of them in the panel. Since this is quick and easy to explain, I thought I’d do it here. I would never want to respond to a question like this to an individual if others can be helped as well.In today’s post, I’ll open a few images in Adobe Photoshop. I’ll use those images as examples when it comes time to name their layers.
I’ll also demonstrate how to change the order of the layers in the Layers panel as well. This is all easy stuff, so it shouldn’t take long at all. Demo PhotosOkay, I’ve gone ahead and opened four different images into the same file in Photoshop. The way I did this was to select the files in Adobe Bridge and then go to the Tools Photoshop Load Files into Photoshop Layers menu item and click. That opens all the selected images into one file as layers. It’s a very handy feature to have around.
It saved me some clicking and dragging.Anyway, here’s the fancy “natural looking” arrangement I made. I hope the fact that the images are on top of one another is noticed. Naming the Individual LayersI guess the question is, why in the world would anyone want to name the individual layers in the Layers panel? I mean, most of the time, there are only one or two layers. Maybe three at most, so why not just keep them as the way Photoshop named them by default?
To be honest, when I’m working with just a handful of layers, this is what I do. The answer is, you want to name them because you’re not always going to be working with just a handful. There may be a point where you work with dozens or hundreds.
You’ll certainly want to not only name them, but group them as well, but that’s something for another day. Another good reason to name the individual layers is because you may be working on variations of the same image (or similar looking images). Perhaps they just have different brightness levels. Since this can get confusing fast, naming them to describe them makes a lot of sense.Let’s take a look at the current Layers panel.As you can see, each of the four photographs has its own layer. The thumbnails are showing which is which. You can also see that I added a bottom layer that I filled with white.
That’s helping my demonstration out. Since the current names of the photo layers are the image file names, I’d like to change them to be more descriptive.
To rename a layer, I’ll simply double-click the current name with my mouse. The name area will become editable and I’ll type the new desired name and then when I’m finished with that, I’ll press the Enter key on my keyboard.In the above screenshot, I completed the renaming, but I left the top one in the editable state, so you can see what that looked like.
Reordering the LayersYou may have noticed that I have sort of a collage of photos going on in my example. The order is random, so I may want to change that. In order to change the way the photos are stacked on top of one another in the workspace, I’ll need to change the layer order in the Layers panel. This is easy enough to do.Currently, the “Curvy Bridge” photo layer is third from the top. I’d actually like that to be the top layer. To make it the top layer, I’ll click and drag the layer in the Layers panel to the top position.
In the next screenshot, I have clicked and dragged the Curvy Bridge layer to the top position. As I dragged it, I noticed that light blue lines were appearing between the other layers. Those are the areas I can drop this one so it can reside in its new position. Once it’s where I want it to be, I can simply drop it and that’s it. Another easy way to reorder layers is to use two keyboard shortcuts.
To move a layer down in relation to the other layers, use Ctrl+ and to raise it up, use Ctrl+. I thought about it and I came to the conclusion that I didn’t like the bridge photo all the way on top, so I pressed Ctrl+ to move it down one space. Now it’s perfect. If I wanted to move a layer all the way to the top or all the way to the bottom in one fell swoop, I would add the Shift key to the shortcuts.I know that these were simple concepts, but they’re necessary and not everyone knows how to manage these parts of the Layers panel in Adobe Photoshop.
I do hope I clearly explained everything though. If you have any questions regarding this post, please feel free to ask in the comments section down below or in the. I’m always hanging out in both areas. Thanks for reading!Filed Under: Tagged With.
Adjusting and improving workflow efficiency in Photoshop is a breeze with the ample amount of user-created scripts, actions, and extensions available online. For my design workflow within Photoshop, I have borrowed a concept from software engineering, “Don’t Repeat Yourself.” As often as possible, I am always looking to further optimize my workflow by automating simple and repetitive tasks that disrupt the flow of my design iteration.These are a few of my favorite scripts and extensions that I use daily to streamline my process in Photoshop:If Photoshop has any limitations, it is within the realm of guides and grid management. Dragging out guides into a grid is a time consuming and imprecise headache. GuideGuide fixes this. You can input measurements and generate a grid in an instant and then save your grid as a grid set for later use as well.Create Smart Objects from Active LayersWorking nondestructively is a must and creating smart objects has always been the way to go for applying transformations to a layer or set of layers nondestructively. Photoshop’s built-in functionality creates a single smart object from all selected layers or layer groups. But, what if you want to create individual smart objects from the selected layers and layer groups?
You have to repeatedly select and convert each layer independently. This script allows you to quickly accomplish this without all of that repetitive input.Ever need to expand a smart object back to its original layers? Currently, doing this in Photoshop requires opening the smart object and then duplicating the layers back into the document where the smart object was. This script quickly executes those steps on any selected smart object.Ever find yourself renaming multiple layers in Photoshop by double clicking each layer you need to rename and typing the same thing over and over? With this script you can append to, prepend to, or replace the layer names of all selected layers quickly and easily.This one requires the small extra step of activating in the Script Events Manager, but it is worth it.
With this script, the semantically worthless “Background” layer that every flat image has when first opened is automatically converted to an editable layer and renamed with the filename.Layer Groups to Layer CompsRoutinely, I like to keep multiple versions of images or design concepts within the same PSD for easy access, management, and export. This script allows me to quickly convert layer groups within a PSD to layer comps for easy renaming, switching on and off, and exporting. If exporting, combining this script with the following Layer Comps to Files script makes exporting multiple files from a single PSD much faster.Layer Comps to FilesThis script, which comes with Photoshop, allows you to quickly export all layer comps into the file type of your choice. Paired with the above script, it allows you to quickly export all design concepts in a PSD as images. I prefer to use an altered version of the script that exports JPGs using Photoshop’s Save For Web settings to save even more steps in my exporting process.Other ResourcesMy go-to source for plugins, scripts, and extensions for not just Photoshop, but all Adobe suite software, is, a Tumblr made just for this stuff. It’s always a pleasure to scroll through this blog and find something that I didn’t know I needed.What do you use?What are your favorite scripts and extensions for Photoshop? Have any awesome resources for Photoshop?