Step 7: Nudge The "Red" Layer To The Right

With the "red" layer still selected in the Layers panel, press the letter V on your keyboard to quickly select Photoshop's Move Tool, then nudge the layer towards the right by pressing the right arrow key on your keyboard several times. As you nudge the layer, you'll see the red and blue 3D effect begin to appear. The exact distance you move the layer will depend on the size of your image and on how extreme you want your 3D effect to be, but you'll want to keep track of how many times you press the right arrow key since we'll be doing the exact same thing with the "green blue" layer next (although in the opposite direction). I'm going to press my right arrow key a total of 15 times. Your image should now look something like this:

Step 8: Nudge The "Green Blue" Layer To The Left

Click on the "green blue" layer in the Layers panel to select it, then use the left arrow key on your keyboard to nudge the layer the same distance as the "red" layer but in the opposite direction. Since I pressed my right arrow key 15 times with the "red" layer, I'll press the left arrow key 15 times to move the "green blue" layer. Don't worry that we're affecting the entire image for now. We'll fix that in a moment. Here's what your image should look like:

Step 9: Group The Top Two Layers

With the "green blue" layer currently selected in the Layers panel, hold down your Ctrl (Win) / Command (Mac) key and click on the "red" layer. This will select both layers at once. You'll see them both highlighted in blue:

Then, with both layers selected, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and choose Group Layers:

This places both layers inside a layer group which acts very much like a folder in the Layers panel (which explains the folder icon). Photoshop names the layer group "Group 1":

Step 10: Load The Saved Selection

Back in the first couple of steps, we selected the object we want to apply the 3D effect to and saved the selection. Now we need to load it. Go up to the Select menu at the top of the screen and choose Load Selection:

This opens the Load Selection dialog box. Select Alpha 1 for the Channel option:

Click OK to close out of the dialog box. The selection outline reappears in its original location in the document window:

Step 11: Nudge The Selection Outline To The Right

At the moment, the selection outline appears around the original location of the object, but what we need is for it to appear around the object on the "red" layer. Remember how we moved the "red" layer over to the right by nudging it with the right arrow key on the keyboard? We need to do the same thing with the selection outline. To do that, go back up to the Select menu and this time, choose Transform Selection:

The Transform Selection command lets us move selection outlines without moving the pixels inside them. A transformation box will appear around the selection outline, similar to the box we see when using Photoshop's Free Transform command. Use the right arrow key on your keyboard to nudge the selection outline to the right the same distance you nudged the "red" layer earlier. Since I pressed the right arrow key 15 times when moving the "red" layer, I'll press it 15 times to move the selection outline into the same location. When you're done, press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to accept it:

Step 12: Add A Layer Mask To The Group

With the selection outline now in place and the layer group selected, click the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:

This adds a layer mask to the group, with a mask preview thumbnail appearing in the Layers panel. Photoshop used our selection outline to define the layer mask, filling the area inside the selection outline with white and everything outside of it with black:

The way layer masks work is that areas filled with white are visible inside the document window, while areas filled with black are hidden. Since our 3D effect is entirely contained within the layer group, the mask we just applied to the group is now controlling which parts of the image are affected by it and which are not. If we look at my image, we see that the 3D effect remains only around the alien himself. The rest of the image has reverted back to its original non-3D state:

Step 13: Load The Selection Again And Nudge It To The Left

We still need to do the same thing for the "green blue" layer. Load the saved selection once again by going up to the Select menu and choosing Load Selection. When the Load Selection dialog box appears, make sure the Channel option is set to Alpha 1, just as before, then click OK. The selection outline will reappear back in its original location in the document.

We need to move the selection outline the same distance to the left that we moved the "green blue" layer, so go up to the Select menu and choose Transform Selection, which places the same transformation box around the selection outline that we saw a moment ago. Use the left arrow key on your keyboard to nudge the selection outline to the left. Since I pressed the left arrow key 15 times when moving the "green blue" layer, I'll press it 15 times to move the selection to the same location. When you're done, press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) to accept it:

Step 14: Fill The Selection With White

With the selection outline in place, go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Fill:

When the Fill dialog box appears, set the Use option at the top of the dialog box to White:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box. Since we have the layer group's mask selected, Photoshop fills the selection with white on the layer mask, which allows us to see the 3D effect from the "green blue" layer around the object in the document window. We don't need the selection outline anymore, so press Ctrl+D (Win) / Command+D (Mac) to deselect it.

And with that, we're done! Here's my final "retro movie theater 3D" effect. As I mentioned at the beginning of the tutorial, if you have a pair of those cardboard 3D glasses with the red and blue lenses, you should see your object popping out of the image:

And there we have it!

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