Photoshop Layers Tutorial: The Layers Palette

So far, if you've been following along, we've looked at what working in Photoshop would be like without layers, we've had an introduction to layers, and we've looked at the Background layer and how (and why) it's different from normal layers.

To really understand how layers work inside Photoshop and all the amazing things we can do with them, we need to take a closer look at Photoshop's "Command Central" for layers, the Layers palette.

Since the Layers palette is one of the palettes we're guaranteed to want to use any time we do any image editing or graphics work inside Photoshop, Adobe went ahead and set up the program up to open the Layers palette for us by default , and you'll find it (again by default) on the right side of the screen in what is commonly referred to as "Palette Alley". I've highlighted its usual location in the screenshot below:

Whether you're opening a new blank document, a digital photo or a scanned image, Photoshop will provide us with a single layer in the Layers palette, which Photoshop automatically names "Background", as we saw in the previous section which covered the special Background layer in more detail. Below are two screenshots of the Layers palette. The one on the left shows the palette after opening a new blank document, and the one on the right is from opening a digital photo:

 

For our look at the Layers palette, we'll use an actual digital photo rather than simply opening a new blank document, just to keep things a bit more colorful and interesting. Here's our photo:

And here's the Layers palette once again. You can see the full image being displayed in the thumbnail-sized preview area of the Background layer:

Let's take a closer look now at the Layers palette.

The Name Tab

At the very top of the Layers palette, as well as all the other palettes, is a tab containing the name of the palette. You know you're on the Layers palette because the name displaying in the tab is "Layers".

If you look closely, you'll notice two other tabs hiding behind the Layers palette tab, "Channels" and "Paths". These are two additional palettes that Photoshop, by default, groups together with the Layers palette. Don't let these other tab names confuse you. They're simply two other palettes grouped in with the Layers palette for the sake of convenience while we're working, and as a way of minimizing how much space the palettes take up on the screen. Neither one of these other palettes has anything to do with the Layers palette, so you can safely ignore them for now.

The Layer Row

Each layer in our document is represented by its own individual row inside the Layers palette. Since we currently only have one layer in our document, we only have one row in our Layers palette:

Each row in the Layers palette representing a layer in our document provides us with information about that layer.

Toggling The Visibility Of A Layer

On the left of the layer row, you'll notice a small square box with an eyeball icon inside of it. This eyeball icon does two things; First, it tells us that our layer is currently visible in the document window, and second, it gives us the ability to toggle the layer's visibility on and off by clicking on the icon. To hide the layer, simply click on the eyeball icon, which will not only hide the icon itself and leave us with an empty box, it will hide the layer from view inside the document window. To make the layer visible again, simply click inside the empty box where the eyeball icon used to be and the icon will appear again, at which point the layer will be visible once again in the document.

The Layer Preview Area

To the right of the eyeball icon in the layer row is a thumbnail-sized preview of the current contents of the layer. In our example here, we have one layer, the Background layer, which contains the entire photo, so the preview area is displaying the entire photo. If we had other layers in the document, each layer would have its own separate preview area showing only what was on that specific layer.

Adjusting The Size Of The Layer Preview Area

Photoshop gives us the ability to change the size of the layer's preview area, or to not show a preview at all, in the options for the Layers palette. If we go back up to the top of the Layers palette once again, you'll see a small, right-pointing arrow in the top right corner of the palette (I've highlighted it in yellow below):

To access the list of options for the Layers palette, simply click on that small arrow and the options will appear:

The option we're looking for here is at the very bottom of the list of options, "Palette Options". Just a quick note, if you're using a version of Photoshop prior to CS2, you won't see the "Animation Options" choice listed. This is a new feature added in CS2, so don't worry if you're not seeing it.

Click on "Palette Options", which brings up the Layers Palette Options dialog box:

The Layers Palette Options dialog box is divided into two main sections, "Thumbnail Size" and "Thumbnail Contents" (we won't worry about the third option at the bottom since it involves layer masks and adjustment layers, which we'll cover in another section). The first section, "Thumbnail Size", is what we want if we want to change the size of the layer preview area. There's three different sizes to choose from (I have the largest size chosen in the screenshot above), and to choose which size you want, simply click inside the small circle to the left of that size option. There's also an option at the top for "None", if you don't want to see a preview of the layer contents (although I can't think of any reason why you wouldn't).

The second group of options here is "Thumbnail Contents", which also effects your layer preview area. Rather than affecting the size of the preview area itself though, this changes how Photoshop displays the contents of the layer inside the preview area. The two choices are "Layer Bounds" and "Entire Document". Let's say you've created a new layer, dragged out a small rectangular selection in the top left corner of that layer, and filled the selection with red. You now have a small red rectangle in the upper left corner of your document. If you have "Entire Document" selected for displaying the thumbnail contents, Photoshop won't care that your red rectangle is only taking up a small amount of space on the layer and that there's nothing else on the layer except transparency. It will show the entire layer in the preview area, including the transparent areas, so your rectangle will appear in the upper left corner of the preview area, exactly how it appears in the document. This is normally what you want since it's nice to see a preview of not only what's on the layer but its position inside the document (upper left corner, bottom right corner, somewhere in the middle, etc) as well.

If you'd prefer to simply see the contents of the layer in the preview area as large as possible and don't need to see where those contents are positioned on the layer, "Layer Bounds" is the better option for you. By choosing Layer Bounds, Photoshop will trim away all the transparent areas around the contents of the layer and display only the contents, and it will display them as large as it possibly can inside the preview area. There's pros and cons to both of these choices, and it really just depends on which one you feel most comfortable with while working. Try them both, you can always go back and change the option any time you like.

The Options Icons

Located at the very bottom of the Layers palette is a series of icons:

These icons represent various options. Starting from the right, we have:

Delete A Layer The icon that looks like a trash bin is the "delete a layer" icon. As the name implies, it's used to delete existing layers in the Layers palette. To delete a layer, simply click on it to select it (it will highlight to let you know that it's selected) and then click on the trash bin icon. Photoshop will pop up a dialog box asking if you're sure you want to delete this layer: Click "Yes" to delete the layer, or "No" to cancel. If you get tired of seeing this message, you can click the "Don't show again" box in the bottom left corner of the dialog box and Photoshop will just assume you know what you're doing and won't bother asking anymore. Another way to skip this message is to hold down the Alt key (Win) or Option key (Mac) and then click the trash bin. And still one more way to delete a layer is to click on it in the Layers palette and simply drag it over top of the trash bin. When you release the mouse, the layer will be deleted.

Create A New Layer The icon to the immediate left of the trash bin icon is the "create a new layer" icon. You can probably figure out by the name that it's used to create new layers in the Layers palette. To create a new layer, simply click on this icon and a new transparent layer will appear. Photoshop will automatically give a non-descriptive name to this layer, like "Layer 1" or "Layer 2", etc. If you want to rename the layer to something more descriptive, you'll need to double-click on the layer's name and type a new name in its place. If you want more control over the new layer creation process and want to be able to name the new layer at the same time you're creating it, hold down the Alt key (Win) or the Option key (Mac) when you click the 'create a new layer icon'. Rather than Photoshop going ahead and adding a new layer to the Layers palette, you'll get this dialog box instead: As you can see from the screenshot above, this gives you much more control by presenting you with various options for your new layer, the first of which is the name you want to call it. We'll ignore the other options here for now since they deal with more advanced topics. To give the new layer a name though before it's created, simply type a new name in the 'Name" text box and then click OK. Photoshop will then create your new layer with the name you specified. Keep in mind that the new layer will appear directly above whichever layer was selected when you clicked the 'create a new layer' icon, which means it won't necessarily appear at the top of the layer stack unless the layer you have selected and highlighted when you click on the icon happens to be the layer currently at the top of the stack. Also, keep in mind that by default, Photoshop creates new layers above the currently selected layer. Here's a neat trick: To have Photoshop create your new layer below the currently selected layer, hold down the Ctrl key (Win) or the Command key (Mac) when you click the 'new layer' icon.

Create A New Layer Group To the left of the 'New Layer" icon is the "Create A New Layer Group" icon. What's a 'Layer Group"? Well, it's essentially a folder that's placed in the Layers palette, just like a folder you'd find in a filing cabinet, and it's a great way to organize your layers into manageable, well, groups! Since Layer Groups require a bit more of an explanation than what we have room for here, we'll look at them in more detail in a future section.

Create A New Fill Or Adjustment Layer The icon in the middle of the row, which looks like a circle divided diagonally and filled half with black and half with white, is the "Create A New Fill Or Adjustment Layer" icon. Fill and Adjustment Layers are special types of layers which definitely require their own section for an explanation, and we'll take a detailed look at them in a future section. For a preview though of all the different types of Fill and Adjustment Layers, click on the icon which will bring up the full list of choices:

Add A Layer Mask The next icon, moving from right to left, which looks like a filled rectangle with a circular hole cut out of it, is the "Add A Layer Mask" icon, which allows us to add a mask not only to individual layers but to layer groups as well. Earlier in this section, we looked at the eyeball icon which allows us to toggle a layer's visibility on and off. The eyeball icon makes the entire layer either visible or hidden. It's all or nothing, essentially. Layer masks take layer visibility to a whole new level. Rather than making everything on the layer visible or hidden, they allow us to show only the area(s) we want visible while hiding everything else on the layer. It's a bit like having an eyeball icon for every individual pixel on the layer, but even that doesn't fully explain it because instead of being limited to either completely visible or completely hidden, we have an entire range of transparency levels to play with thanks to layer masks! That eyeball icon is kiddie stuff compared to this. We'll save any further discussion about layer masks for a future indepth explanation.

Add A Layer Style The icon second from left, a black-filled circle with the letter "f" inside it, is the "Add A Layer Style" icon. Layer styles are essentially special effects which we can apply to each layer individually. The effects range from simple drop shadows, glows and stroke outlines to much fancier effects like bevel and emboss and gradients. Clicking on this icon brings up the full list of style options: We'll take a closer look at Layer Styles in a future section.

Link Layers Finally, the icon at the far left is the "Link Layers" icon, which explains why it looks like a link in a chain. This option allows you to link two or more layers together in the Layers palette so you can move them around inside the document at the same time. You can also link layers together to align them horizontally or vertically in the document. To link layers, simply click on the first layer you want in the Layers palette and then hold down the Ctrl key (Win) or the Command key (Mac) and click on the other layer(s) you want to link together. If the layers you want linked are all located directly above or below each other in the Layers palette, you can click the top-most layer and then hold down the Shift key on the keyboard and click the bottom-most layer (or vice versa) to select both layers plus all the layers in between. Once you have all your layers selected, click the Link Layers icon and Photoshop will go ahead and link them together. You'll see a link icon added to the right of each of the layers in the Layers palette to give you a visual indication that these layers are linked. In the example below, the three layers above the Background layer are linked. Notice the link icons along the right hand side: If you're using Photoshop CS2 though, this Link Layers icon is no longer necessary because Adobe has finally given us the ability to link layers simply by selecting them! As long as you have two or more layers selected in the Layers palette, Photoshop treats them as if they're linked without having to actually, well, link them. You can still click the Link Layers icon if you want (if you like doing extra work), but it's absolutely unnecessary as of Photoshop CS2. If you're using a version of Photoshop prior to CS2, you will need to link the layers together with the Link Layer icon.

Layer Blend Modes

If we move back up to the top of the Layers palette once again, there's a few more options we need to look at, the first of which is the the Layer Blend Modes option, which I've highlighted below (it's the options box that says "Normal" by default):

Layer Blend Modes affect how a layer blends in and interacts with the layers below it. If you click on the down-pointing arrow on the right of the Blend Modes options box, you'll bring up a list of all the available blend modes:

Here's a brief description of how they work. To start with, notice how the blend modes are divided into different sub groups. The first group contains "Normal" and "Dissolve", the second group is made up of "Darken", "Multiply", "Color Burn", "Linear Burn", and so on. The reason they're grouped together is because they give you different variations of the same basic result. For example, the second group - "Darken", "Multiply", "Color Burn", and "Linear Burn", all darken the image in some way. The group below that - "Lighten", "Screen", "Color Dodge", and "Linear Dodge", all have the effect of lightening the image. And the group below that - "Overlay", "Soft Light", "Hard Light", "Vivid Light", "Linear Light", "Pin Light", and "Hard Mix", will all give you different variations of lightening and darkening the image at the same time. Knowing how to use layer blend modes effectively is an important skill to have when retouching or restoring an image, creating a complex selection for a mask, compositing images together, or for creating special effects. They're also a lot of fun to just sit back and play around with, which is the best way to learn about them and see for yourself what they do.

Opacity And Fill

To the right of the layer blend modes option at the top of the Layers palette is the Opacity option, and directly below that is the Fill option. I've highlighted both of them below:

These two options are the source of great confusion with many Photoshop users because they seem to produce the exact same results. They both affect the transparency of a layer, with a value of 100% being fully opaque and 0% being fully transparent. In fact, they do produce exactly the same results unless you have a layer style applied to the layer. The difference between Opacity and Fill will be explained more clearly in another section.

Locking The Layer

There's one final group of options we need to look at in the Layers palette, and that's the options for locking the layer, which you'll find at the top of the Layers palette directly below the layer blend mode options. Once again, I've highlighted them below:

There's four different options for locking a layer, and we'll look at each one of them in the "Locking A Layer" section, which you can get to here.

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