The Layers palette is your control center for any kind of layer-related action you want to perform, like adding, deleting, or duplicating layers. Figure 6-3 shows you the Layers palette for an image that already has lots of layers. Each layer displays its name and a little thumbnail icon previewing the layer’s contents. You can adjust the size of the icon or turn it off altogether if you prefer, as shown in Figure 6-4.

The Layers palette usually contains one layer that’s active, meaning that any action you take, like painting, is going to happen on that layer (and that layer only). The active layer is darker so you can see which one it is.

Figure 6-2. Layers make it easy to combine elements from different photos. You may not be able to afford to send your grandparents on a real trip to Europe, but once you understand layers, you can give them a virtual vacation. When you copy part of one photo into another image, as was done here, Elements automatically places the pasted-in material on its own layer. You don’t have to do anything special to create the layer—it just happens. There’s more about combining elements from different photos on Layer Masks.

When you look at an image that contains layers, you’re looking down on the stack of layers from the top, just the way you would with overlays on a drawing. The layers appear in the same order in the Layers palette—the top layer of your image is the top layer in the stack in the Layers palette. (Layer order is important because whatever is on top can obscure what’s beneath it.)

Elements lets you perform lots of different maneuvers right in the Layers palette. You can make a layer’s contents invisible and then visible again, change the order in which layers are stacked, link layers together, change the opacity of layers, add and delete layers—the list goes on and on. The rest of this chapter covers all these options and more.

Figure 6-3. The Layers palette for the illustration in Figure 6-1 looks like this. Each row lists a separate layer. An eye icon indicates that a layer is visible. To hide a layer—helpful if you want to see what you’re doing while working on other layers—click the eye. When you want to make the layer visible again, click the spot where the eye was.

Figure 6-4. If you want to change the size of the thumbnail icons in the Layers palette, in the palette’s upper-right corner, click the arrows (or the More button, if the palette is out of the bin) to open the pop-out menu. At the bottom of the menu, choose Palette Options, and the dialog box shown here appears. In this case, the medium-size icon is selected.

The bottom layer of any image is a special kind of layer called the Background. If you bring any image or photo into Elements, then the first time you open it, you see its one existing layer is called Background. (That’s assuming that nobody else has already edited the file in Elements and changed things.) The name Background is only logical because whatever else you do will be on top of this layer.

As for content, the Background can be totally plain or busy, busy, busy. A Background layer doesn’t mean that it literally contains the background of your photograph—your entire photo can be a Background layer. It’s entirely up to you to decide what’s on your Background layer, and what you place on other, newly added layers. With photographs, people often keep the photo’s image on the Background layer, and then perform adjustments and embellishments (like adding type) on other layers.

You can do a lot to Background layers, but there are a few things you can’t do: If you want to change a Background layer’s blending mode (see Blend Mode), opacity (Arranging layers with the Move tool), or position in the layer stack, then you need to convert that Background into a regular layer.

You can change a Background layer to a regular layer by double-clicking the Background layer in the Layers palette. Or, if you try to make certain kinds of changes to the background (like using the Transform commands [Transforming Images]), then Elements prompts you to change the Background layer to a regular layer.

You can also transform a regular layer into a Background layer if you want. One reason to do this transformation is to send a layer zipping down to the bottom of the stack in a many-layered file. To do so:

Elements gives you several different ways to add new layers. You can use any of the following methods:

Figure 6-5. More controls on the Layers palette. On the left side of the Layers palette, click the little “Create a new layer” icon when you want to quickly add a new layer.

When you create a new layer using any of these commands, the layer starts out empty. You don’t see a change in your image until you use the layer for something (for example, painting on it). If you look at the Layers palette, then you see that any new layer you add appears just above the layer that was active when you created the new layer.

Some actions create new layers automatically. For instance, if you copy and paste an object from another photo (see Layer Masks for instructions) or add artwork from the Content palette, then the object automatically arrives on its own layer. And that’s very handy for arranging the new item just where you want it, without disturbing the rest of your composition.

You can easily delete layers, if you decide you don’t want a particular layer anymore. Figure 6-6 shows the simplest way.

Figure 6-6. To make a layer go away, either drag the layer to the Trash can icon on the Layers palette or, after selecting the layer, just click the “Delete layer” icon (the Trash can [where the cursor is here]). Elements responds by asking if you want to delete the active layer. Say yes, and it’s history. Once you delete a layer, it’s gone forever.

Elements also gives you a few other ways to delete a layer. You can:

Duplicating a layer can be very useful. Many Elements commands, like filters or color modification tools, don’t work on a brand-new empty layer. This limitation poses a dilemma because if you apply those changes to the layer containing your main image, then you alter it in ways you can’t undo later. The workaround is to create a duplicate layer and make your changes on that new layer. Then you can ditch the duplicate later if you change your mind, and your original layer is safely tucked away unchanged.

If all this seems annoyingly theoretical, try going to Enhance → Adjust Color → Adjust Hue/Saturation, for example, when you’re working on a new blank layer, and see what happens. You see the stern dialog box shown in Figure 6-7 if you try to work on a blank layer.

Figure 6-7. Elements is usually pretty helpful when you try to do something that just isn’t going to work, like applying a Hue/Saturation adjustment to an empty layer. The solution here is just to switch the Layers palette focus to a layer that has something in it.

Elements gives you a few ways to duplicate an existing layer and its content. Select the layer you want to duplicate to make it the active layer, and then do one of the following:

Creating a new layer using any of these methods copies the entire contents of the active layer into the new layer. You can then mess with the duplicate as much as you want without damaging the original layer.

You can also make a new layer that consists of only a piece of an existing layer. (Helpful for things like applying a Layer style to one object from the layer, for instance.) But first you need to decide whether you want to copy your selection or cut it out and place it on the new layer.

What’s the difference? It’s pretty much the same as copying versus cutting in your word processing program. When you make a “New Layer via Copy”, the area you select appears in the new layer while remaining in place in the old layer, too. On the other hand, “New Layer via Cut” removes the selection from the old layer, and then places it on a new layer, leaving a corresponding hole in the old layer. Figure 6-8 shows the difference.

Figure 6-8. The difference between “New Layer via Copy” and “New Layer via Cut” becomes obvious when you move the newly created layer and reveal what’s beneath it. Left: With “New Layer via Copy”, the original light is still in place in the underlying layer. Right: When you use “New Layer via Cut”, the excised light leaves a hole behind.

Once you’ve selected what you want to move or copy, your new layer is only a couple of keystrokes away.

If for some reason you want to cut and move the entire contents of a layer, you can press Ctrl+A first, although usually it’s easier just to move your layer instead. Just drag it up or down the stack in the Layers palette to put it where you want it.

You can turn the visibility of layers off and on at will. This feature is tremendously useful, if you think about it. If the image you’re working on has a busy background, for example, you often find it hard to see what you’re doing when working on a particular layer. Making the Background layer invisible can really help you focus on the layer you’re interested in. To turn off visibility, in the Layers palette, click the eye icon to hide the layer. Click the eye once more to make the layer visible again.

Your choices for layer visibility aren’t limited to on and off. You can create immensely cool effects in Elements by adjusting the opacity of layers. In other words, you can make a layer partially transparent so that what’s underneath it shows through.

To adjust the opacity of a layer, click the layer in the Layers palette, and then either:

Figure 6-9. You can watch the opacity of your layer change on the fly if you drag your mouse back and forth on the word Opacity. Different blend modes (see Blend Mode) often give the best effect if you adjust the opacity of their layers.

When you create a new layer using either the keyboard shortcut (Shift+Ctrl+N) or the menu (Layer → New → Layer), you can set the opacity right away in the New Layer dialog box. If you create a new layer by clicking the New Layer icon in the Layers palette, then you need to Alt+click the New Layer icon—the New Layer dialog box appears and you can change the opacity.

You can protect your image from yourself by locking any of the layers. Locking keeps you from changing a layer’s contents. You can also lock just the transparent parts of a layer—helpful when you want to modify an object that sits atop a transparent layer, like the seashell shown in Figure 6-10. When you do that, the transparent parts of your layer stay transparent no matter what you do to the rest of it. (You’re actually locking the pixels’ current transparency level, so if you have pixels that are only partly transparent, then they stay at their current transparency level, too.)

To lock the transparent parts of a layer, select the layer, and then, in the Layers palette, click the little “Lock transparent pixels” checkerboard. It works like a button, and it’s grayed out if you have no transparency in your photo. When you lock the transparency, a light gray padlock appears in the layers palette on the right side of the layer. To unlock, just click the checkerboard again.

Figure 6-10. After you’ve isolated an object on its own layer, sometimes you want to paint only on the object—and not on the transparent portion of the layer. Elements lets you lock the transparent part of a layer, making it easy to paint only the object itself. Left: On a regular layer, paint goes wherever the brush does. Right: With the layer’s transparency locked, the stroke stops at the edge of the seashell, even though the brush (the circle) is now on the layer’s transparent portion.

To lock the contents of a whole layer so that no changes can be made to it, click the “Lock all” icon (the dark gray padlock in the Layers palette next to the checkerboard). A dark gray padlock appears in the layers palette at the right of your layer, and the “Lock all” icon shows a dark gray outline around it. Now if you try to paint on that layer or use any other tools, your cursor turns into the shape of the universal “no” symbol (circle with a diagonal line through it) as a reminder that you can’t edit that layer. You’ll also see a lock icon next to the layer name in the Layers palette. To unlock the layer, just click the “Lock all” icon once more.

In the Layers palette, you also see another little menu that says “Normal” or, in the New Layer dialog box, “Mode: Normal”. This setting is for your blend mode. When used with layers, blend modes control how the objects in a layer combine, or blend, with the objects in the layer beneath it. By using different blend modes, you can make your image lighter or darker, or even make it look like a poster, with just a few bold colors in it. Blend modes can also control how some tools—those that have Blend Mode settings—change your image. Changing a tool’s blend mode can sometimes dramatically change the results you get.

Blend modes are an awful lot of fun once you understand how to use them. You can use them to fix under- or overexposed photos, or to create all kinds of special visual effects. You can also use some of the tools, like the Brush tool, in different blend modes to achieve different effects. The most common blend mode is Normal, in which everything you do behaves just the way you would expect: An object shows its regular colors, and paint acts just like, well, paint.

Blending and Smudging has lots more about how to use blend modes. For now, take a look at Figure 6-11, which shows how you can totally change the way a layer looks just by changing the layer’s blend mode.

Figure 6-11. This photo of some leaves has a Pattern Fill layer over it, showing three different modes. In normal mode at 100-percent opacity, the pattern would completely hide the leaves, but by changing the blend mode and opacity of the pattern layer, you can create very different looks. (There’s more about Pattern layers on Blending and Smudging.) From top to bottom, the modes are Normal, Dissolve, and Hard Mix. Notice how Dissolve gives a grainy effect and Hard Mix produces a vivid, posterized effect.

Not every blend mode makes a visible change in every circumstance. Some of them may seem to do nothing—that’s to be expected. It just means that you don’t have a condition in your current image that’s responding to that particular mode change. See The High-Pass Filter for one example of a situation where a mode change makes an enormous difference.

One of the truly amazing things you can do with Elements is move your layers around. You can change the order in which layers are stacked so that different objects appear in front of or behind each other. For example, you can position one object behind another if they’re both on their own layers. In the Layers palette, just grab the layer, and then drag it to where you want it.

Figure 6-12 shows the early stages of the flyer for a Fall Harvest Festival (originally shown in Figure 6-1). The pumpkins are already in place, and the scarecrow was dragged in from another image. The scarecrow comes in at the top of the stack, in front of the pumpkins. You can put the scarecrow behind the pumpkins by simply dragging the scarecrow layer below the pumpkin layer in the Layers palette.

You can also move layers by going to Layer → Arrange, and then choosing the command of your choice:

You can easily align objects in any image, thanks to the Move tool. The Move tool’s aligning feature arranges the objects on each layer so that they line up straight along their top, bottom, left, or right edges, or through their centers. So, for example, if you align the top edges of your objects, then Elements makes sure that the top of each object is exactly in line with the others.

You’ll also find it a breeze to evenly distribute the space between multiple objects. The Move tool’s distributing feature spaces out the distance between objects, also letting you choose edges or centers as a guide. If you distribute the top edges, for example, Elements makes sure there’s an even amount of space from the top edge of one object to another.

Aligning and distributing layers with the Move tool works much like rearranging layers:

What if you want to move several layers at once? For instance, in the Harvest Festival image back on The Background, two layers have pumpkins on them. It’s kind of a pain to drag each one individually if you need to move them in front of the scarecrow. Fortunately, you don’t have to; Elements gives you a way to keep your layers united.

Figure 6-14. Top: Each of these butterflies is on its own layer, but they need to be tidied up if you want them in a neat stack. Bottom left: The result, after selecting the butterflies with the Move tool, and then picking Align → Horizontal Center. As you see, the centers of the butterflies are now aligned, but they’re not distributed evenly. Bottom right: The butterflies after a trip to Distribute → Vertical Centers. Note that they’re evenly spaced but still pretty close together. That’s because Distribute doesn’t add any additional space between the outermost objects. If you want wider spacing between the shapes, then make sure they’re farther apart before you distribute them.

Linking layers

You can link layers together, and then they’ll travel as a unit, as shown in Figure 6-15.

If you want to remove a link between layers, then select the linked layers by clicking one, and then clicking the same chain icon to turn it off again. You can always merge the layers (covered in the next section) into one layer if you want. Sometimes, though, you’ll want to keep layers separate, while still being able to move the layers as a group. You perform this trick by linking. You can also use the layer selection choices, described in the box “Selecting Layers”, and skip the linking. As long as your layers all stay selected, they travel as a group. Linking’s advantage is that your layers stay associated until you unlink them. There’s no need to worry about accidentally clicking somewhere else in the palette and losing your selection group.

STAYING ORGANIZED: Selecting Layers

You can quickly target multiple layers when you want to manage them, like linking, moving, or deleting your layers. For your quick-selection pleasure, Elements gives you a whole group of layer selection commands, which you’ll find in the Select menu. Here’s what they do:

• All Layers. Choose this command, and every layer except the Background layer gets selected. Even if you’ve turned off visibility (Managing Layers) on a particular layer, that layer still gets selected.

• Deselect Layers. When you’re done working with your layers as a group, you can choose this option, and you won’t have any layers selected until you click one.

• Similar Layers. This command is the most useful. Choose this option, and every layer of the same type gets selected, no matter where it is in the stack. So, for example, if you have a Text layer as your active layer when you choose Similar Layers, then all your Text layers get selected. If, on the other hand, you had an Adjustment layer active, then all your Adjustment layers get selected. You may use this command to quickly select a stack of Adjustment layers you want to drag to another image, for instance, using the technique described on Adding captions.

You can also Shift+click to select multiple layers that are next to each other in the palette, or Ctrl+click to select layers that are separated. That way, you can avoid the menu altogether. Once you’re done, you can either use the Deselect Layers command from the menu, or just click another layer to make it the active layer.

Figure 6-15. Shift+click to select the layers you want to link, and then click the little chain (where the hand appears in the figure) to link two layers together. The chain icon appears to the right of each layer name to indicate that the chosen layers will now move as a group.

Note

The chain icon at the top of the Layers palette behaves like the “Lock Transparent Pixels” button does. You click the chain icon to link your layers, but it doesn’t look any different once you’ve got some layers linked together (contrast that with the way the “Lock All” transparency button looks pushed in when active). The Linked layer chain next to the layer name is the only hint you get that a layer is linked.

Grouping layers

An even more powerful way to combine separate layers is to group them. With grouping, you can let one layer influence the other layers it’s grouped with. Grouping layers isn’t anything like linking them. You can probably understand grouping most easily by looking at the example shown in Figure 6-16, which shows how you can crop an image on one layer using the shape of an object on another layer. (This kind of grouping is also called a clipping mask in Photoshop, and sometimes in Elements as well.)

Figure 6-16. This image began life as a picture of a seashell on one layer, and a beach scene on the layer above it. At first, the beach image totally hid the seashell, but interesting things happen when you group the layers. The beach layer automatically gets cropped to the shape of the bottom layer, the seashell. The minute little downward-bent arrow (visible just above the cursor) in the Layers palette shows the beach layer is grouped.

Note

If you group two layers together, the bottom layer determines the opacity of both layers.

Once the layers are grouped, you can still slide the top layer around with the Move tool to reposition it so that you see exactly the part of it that you want. So in Figure 6-16, the beach layer was maneuvered around till the sandpiper showed in the bottom of the shell shape.

To group two layers together, make the top layer (of the two you want to group) the active layer. Then choose Layer → “Group with Previous”. You can also group layers using the keyboard. First, make sure the top layer is the active layer, and then press Ctrl+G.

You can also group right in the Layers palette. Hold down Alt, and then, in the Layers palette, move your cursor over the dividing line between the layers. Click when you see two linked circles appear by your cursor. Now your layers are grouped.

If you get tired of the layer grouping or you want to delete or change one of the layers, then select Layer → Ungroup or press Shift+Ctrl+G to remove the grouping.

Tip

You have an even easier way to group layers: The New Layer dialog box has a checkbox for “Group with Previous Layer”. Turn it on, and your new layer is pre-grouped with the layer below it.

By now, you’ve probably got at least an inkling of how useful layers are. But there’s a downside to having layers in your image: They take up a lot of storage space, especially if you have lots of duplicate layers. In other words, layers make files bigger. Fortunately, you aren’t committed to keeping layers in your file forever. You can reduce your file size quite a bit—and sometimes also make things easier to manage—by merging layers or flattening your image.

Creating an Adjustment or Fill layer is easy. In the Layers palette, just click the black-and-white circle, as shown in Figure 6-18. The button displays a menu of all the Adjustment and Fill layer choices in one list (the first three choices are Fill layers; the rest are Adjustment layers).

Figure 6-18. To create a new Adjustment or Fill layer, click the black-and-white circle to get a drop-down menu that lets you choose the type of Adjustment or Fill layer you want. If you’d rather work from the menu bar, then go to Layer → New Adjustment Layer (or Layer → New Fill Layer), and choose the layer type you want.

Whichever type of layer you choose, you get a dialog box that lets you tweak the layer’s settings (Invert, which doesn’t give you any choices, is the exception). After you make your choices, click OK, and the new layer appears.

Elements gives you three Fill layer choices: Solid Color, Gradient (a rainbow-like range of colors), and Pattern. See more about patterns on Applying Patterns, and gradients on Applying Gradients.

Here are the kinds of Adjustment layers you can select from:

You can change the settings for a Fill or Adjustment layer by highlighting the layer in the Layers palette, and then going to Layer → Layer Content Options, or, in the Layers palette, double-clicking the left icon for the layer. The layer’s dialog box reappears, and you can adjust its settings. Deleting Fill and Adjustment layers is a tad different from deleting a regular layer, as explained in Figure 6-19.

Figure 6-19. When you click the Layers palette Delete icon, Elements asks if you want to “Delete layer mask?” Click Delete. Then you have to click the Trash can icon again to fully delete the layer. If you want to get rid of the layer in one step, then you’ve got a few choices: Use the Layer menu, right-click the layer in the Layers palette, or use the More button (the arrows) to delete it. In each case, you should see a Delete Layer choice. The next section has more about layer masks.

Adjustment and Fill layers use something called a layer mask, which dictates which parts of the layer are affected when you make your changes (see Figure 6-20). By changing the area covered by the layer mask, you can control which part of your image the layer adjustments affect.

Figure 6-20. Adjustment and Fill layers, like the top-most “Levels 1” layer shown here, always have two icons in the Layers palette. The left-side icon indicates that the layer’s making an adjustment (Levels, in this case). You can double-click that icon to bring up the dialog box to make changes to your settings. (Note to Elements veterans: In Elements 7, Fill Layers still have a unique icon for each type of layer, but now all Adjustment layers show the little gear icon you see here. Individual icons for the different types of adjustment layers don’t exist anymore.) The right icon is for the Layer Mask; you can use it to control the area that’s covered by the adjustment.

Full Photoshop uses layer masks for many other purposes, but in Elements, Adjustment and Fill layers are the only place you encounter a layer mask. The great thing about layer masks is that you can edit them by painting on them, as explained on Editing a layer mask. In other words, you can go back later and change the part of your image that the Adjustment layer affects.

Incidentally, the term layer mask may be a bit confusing if you’re thinking about masking with the Selection brush. With the Selection brush, masking prevents something from being changed. A layer mask really works the same way, but by definition, it starts out empty; in other words, you can use the mask to prevent your adjustment from affecting parts of the layer, but not until you mask out parts of your image by painting on the layer mask. So to begin with, your entire layer is affected by your change. You can learn how to edit layer masks on Editing a layer mask.