How to split the finished image into layers. How to merge layers in Photoshop

Earlier it was said that all graphic elements on a web page should be rectangular only. This is due to the fact that only images of this shape can be saved in files. Therefore, after you prepare the site layout, you will have to “cut” it, that is, divide it into separate images, which will then be saved in files and placed on the server.

It is more convenient to cut into separate parts, not consisting of many layers, but a "flat" image containing one layer (in most cases this layer is the background).

In order to "glue" layers, you should use the special commands found in the palette menu Layers(Layers) and also in the menu Layer(Layer). These commands include:

Instructions

If you are working on a complex layered composition, it will take up quite a lot of disk space. When you try to send a file in the .psd format over the network, you will notice that it will "eat" a fair amount of traffic, and it will take a very long time to load. To reduce the file size after the work on the picture is completely completed, you can all layers into one. Select Layer and Flatten Image from the main menu.

Now let's get down to the actual blending methods. On the right side of the Layers menu, there is a box where you see “normal” or “normal”. This window contains all the layer blending modes. We will find the desired option by selection. It should be noted that the “normal” mode is the normal one, and nothing changes in this mode. In other modes, a lot of interesting things happen. Try all modes to see which one works best for your photo. Don't forget to adjust the opacity and fill of the layer; sometimes you need to loosen them to get the best effect.

Recently, when processing photographs and creating new interesting photographic images, it is increasingly necessary to turn to the Adobe Photoshop program. When opening different photographs and pictures, it is important to remember that each of them is a separate layer. Superimposing them on top of each other, processing and editing on one open sheet, each creates its own unique image. To create a complete image of the image, the layers need to be merged.

Instructions

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note

It should be remembered that when merging the visible layers, all invisible ones are removed, and the transparent places are filled with white. Once you save such an image, you will no longer be able to edit it. Therefore, we recommend, just in case, to save a copy of the image before merging the layers.

The large number of layers that arise in the process of creating a complex composition in Adobe Photoshop is sometimes a big hindrance to the designer. This leads to a decrease in the productivity of his work, because it is easy to get confused in them. In addition, a large number of layers increases the size of the file, which requires additional computer resources, which, at times, are already sorely lacking. Rescue in situations of this kind is the operation of merging together those layers of the composition, the work on which has already been completed.

Instructions

First of all, it must be remembered that as the creation of each new layer expands the possibilities for working with the image, so the destruction and merging of several layers irrevocably deprives you of certain possibilities: independent editing of fragments or individual parameters of each layer now becomes impossible. Therefore, each time carrying out such an operation, the designer must be 100% sure that each of the merged layers is finished, and in the future he will not have to spend time again to re-divide or re-render the merged layers, even though sometimes technically it is it is already impossible to carry out in any way.

Nevertheless, if the operation still needs to be performed, the Photoshop program provides several ways to implement it. The differences between these methods are mainly in how the layers to be merged can be selected. In the most general form, the operation is carried out as follows: in the list of layers, two or more lines with the names of the layers are highlighted. For selection, the standard, accepted in most interfaces, are used, the Ctrl keys - to add or remove single layers from the selection, or Shift - to select a set of elements when pointing to the first and last in their row. Having selected several lines with layers, through the context menu (it is called by clicking on the right mouse button) or through the main Layer menu, select the Merge Layers command. As a result, instead of several layers, those that were marked in the list, one will appear - the product of the merging of the original ones.

You can deliberately not select in the list of layers, but merge directly what is now in the workspace of the composition. That is, if any layers in the composition are turned off (the icon with a symbolic image of an eye opposite these layers is off, that is, they are not visible at the moment), then after the merge operation they will remain intact, each will continue to remain in its place in the list of layers. Sometimes this is convenient because the designer has a visual confirmation of which layers will now be merged - exactly those that are directly in front of his eyes. In this case, any of these layers can be selected in the list of layers, and an adjacent command from the same menu can be applied - Merge Visible.

If the layers were collected in a group, then for this case, the Photoshop program has a convenient function - you can convert the entire group into a single layer. Thus, all layers inside the group folder will be merged without any additional manipulations: select the required group in the list of layers and use the Merge Group command from the context menu. The group disappears, and a new layer appears in its place in the layer list containing the merged content of the former group.

There is also the most radical way to merge layers in Photoshop - this is the Flatten Image command. The use of this command, frankly, is rarely justified. It explicitly destroys all the technical stages of working on an image - layers, masks, transparency parameters, etc. Why should a designer destroy all his technical developments, on which hours of work with a specific image were spent - remains a mystery. Unless the task was very simple, the operations were elementary and, in fact, no technical constructions were carried out. In all other cases, the Flatten Image operation is, frankly, monstrous. For some reason, many novice designers believe that it is absolutely necessary in order to save the final file with a single image without layers, but they are wrong. The Photoshop program has a Save As command, when selected, the user has an additional setting option, where you can specify whether to save information about layers to a file or not. Thus, it is as easy as shelling pears to save a "lightweight" file intended for exchange with a customer or transfer over the network (usually a JPEG file), without doing any special merging of the layers of the original composition. The file with all the layers and settings in the "native" Photoshop format (PSD) must be saved separately, because, as experience shows, sooner or later you have to go back to editing an image, especially when it comes to a complex composition, even after how the customer was satisfied and the work is officially accepted. The most offensive thing in such situations is that the designer pays with his expensive time for his own arrogance: if he hadn’t clicked the once notorious Flatten Image, and a new fix would take only a few minutes, after merging all the layers, he would have to do hard labor again, count from scratch.

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While working in Photoshop, a very large number of layers can accumulate. Some of them are already fully worked out and only create mass, interfering with work. You need to get rid of extra layers. But how, after all, you cannot delete them? But you can combine them or mix them.

You will need

• Photoshop, picture, broken into layers.

Instructions

In the illustration you can see that it is broken into layers that are not merged with each other. All of them are named in accordance with the elements that are depicted on them. Each of the layers can be adjusted and moved independently of the others. Those. right hand, for example, you can in another place, redraw it, add an effect, recolor. And all this will not in any way affect other parts of the body of our "girl".

But if you have already finished all the parts of the head to perfection, there is no point in keeping them on separate layers. Let's merge the layers we need. Arrange all the pieces in their places. Hold down the Ctrl key and select all the layers you need to combine (in our case, these are the mouth, eyes, and head). Now click on any of them with the right mouse button. A menu will appear, in which at the very bottom you must select the "Merge Layers" item. Now the head and everything related to it have united and become one element. Rename this layer and name it "head". This is the first way to combine layers.

Now you can go the other way. This time, you need to combine a sundress, arms and legs, i.e. create a torso. Turn off the "head" and "background" layers by removing the eye from the window next to the layer. Click on one of the visible layers with the right mouse button and select the menu item "Merge visible". Those layers that have not been disabled will merge into one. Name this layer "torso".

The last method remains, it is called "Mixing". It is used as the very last step in working with an image. Rollup brings all layers in a document together and freezes them. Turn on the "head" and "background" layers. Right-click on any layer and choose Flatten from the menu that appears. All parts of the image are now connected. This is to reduce the weight of the psd file.

Useful advice

Do not merge layers if there is a chance you may need them separately.

With the help of the graphics editor Adobe Photoshop, you can create the most incredible visual effects and change familiar photos and images beyond recognition. In particular, in Photoshop, you can overlay one image on another, as a result of which you can achieve unusual and original effects on the image. Blending two pictures on top of each other using different opacity and blending options can be done in a short time.

Instructions

If you need to merge layers that are not adjacent, then first select all of them - click and click while holding down the CTRL key. Then right-click any of the selected layers. In the context menu, select the Merge Layers command. Pressing the hotkeys CTRL + E will perform the same operation.

To keep only one layer in the document, including all visible ones, right-click any layer except the text layer. Select the line "Roll up" in the context menu. If the document contains invisible layers, the editor will ask for confirmation - it will show a dialog box with the question "Delete hidden layers?". Click "Yes" and all visible layers of the document will be merged into one, and the invisible ones will be destroyed.

You can link layers without merging them into one. After such an operation, any actions with any of the layers of the bundle will be broadcast to all the others. To link layers in this way, select any of them, and left-click the rest just to the right of the layer thumbnail - an icon of several chain links will appear in this place. You can do it differently: select all the layers you need by clicking them with the mouse while holding down the CTRL key, and then click the leftmost icon ("Link Layers") in the row at the bottom edge of the layers palette - it shows the chain links.

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Those familiar with the Adobe Photoshop software suite know firsthand that to create truly interesting artwork, you need to be able to handle image layers. Now we will focus on the layer blending operation.

Instructions

Start simple. In order to learn how to work with layers, do not try to process a large number of them at once - this can easily get confused and lose interest. For the entry level, it will be enough to consider the principles of work on the basis of two or three layers. With an increase in their number, they will not change.

Use the same width and height values ​​for the processed images. For example, use images that are 600 pixels in size and 800 in length. Thus, they will completely overlap - without gaps and unnecessary overlaps.

Create a new file from the Adobe Photoshop menu by choosing File - New. In the window that appears, set the size of the image and click the "Ok" button.

In the left column of tools, specify the colors based on which the "Clouds" filter will work. An example is shown in the figure.

Use the menu items "Filter" - "Render" - "Clouds". If the initial version does not suit you, then you can press the Ctrl + F combination several times until you get the desired result. As a result, you should get something similar to what is shown in the picture.

Load any ready-made image by selecting such menu items as "File" - "Open" by selecting the desired image. As a result, both pictures should be open in the program window.

Select the window with the first image (clouds) and right-click on it. In the menu that appears, use the item "Duplicate layer", thereby creating a copy of this picture as a layer. Then in the toolbar on the right you will find a new layer "Background copy".

Press the "V" key, activating the tool for moving layers (looks like a black cursor on the left toolbar). Next, hover your mouse over a new layer located on the right toolbar. This will change the mouse cursor to a schematic representation of a hand.

Drag the layer onto the open image so that the "clouds" completely cover the original image.

Use the menu item "Layers" (bottom right toolbar), calling the drop-down list of all possible options for mixing layers.

See what you get. In the provided variant, such a blending option as "Overlay" was used.

If any element in the project, for example, a beautifully designed inscription, thanks to your efforts, has taken the desired shape, you can combine the components of this element (layers) into a single whole. Adobe Photoshop has the tools you need to do this.

Instructions

Open the program and create a new document in it: click the menu item File (in the Russian version "File")> New ("New"), or use the hotkeys Ctrl + N. In the window that appears, in the Height and Width fields, specify, for example, 500 each, in the Background contents field, set Transparent and click OK. A new project window will appear in the workspace of the program.

We considered the main features of the PNG format, now we will use them to optimize images.

Let's start with the simplest way - posterizing an image. In a complicated language, posterization is a change in the number of brightness levels in each color channel of an image, in simple terms - a change in the number of colors.

Open the test image (PNG, 12 KB) in Photoshop and call Image → Adjustments → Posterize. Move the slider to see how the image changes:

It is easy to see that the lower the level, the fewer colors in the image and the larger the monochrome areas. And the less the image weighs due to the fact that large monochrome areas are better filtered and packed. This method is especially effective on photographic images where the posterized areas are not very noticeable.

The next method is a little more complicated, it is used in images with semi-transparent areas. Its essence is as follows: all opaque pixels are saved in one PNG-8 file, and semitransparent ones in another. You can see this method in action in Volodya Tokmakov's article, I will only show you how you can quickly separate translucent pixels from opaque ones.

Let's take this image (PNG, 62KB) as an example:

We open it in Photoshop. It should be remembered that the entire shared image must be in one layer, so if your image consists of several layers (shadows, reflections, highlights, etc.), they must first be combined into one layer.

First, you need to select an object in a layer, for this we Ctrl-click (or ⌘-click on a Mac) on the image in the Layers palette:

Go to the Channels palette and create a new channel from the selection by clicking on the corresponding icon:

Unselect (Ctrl-D or ⌘-D), select the newly created channel and call the Threshold command (Image → Adjustments → Threshold). Drag the slider to the extreme right position:

We got a mask to select completely opaque pixels. It remains to load the selection (Ctrl-click / ⌘-click on the image of the Alpha 1 channel), go to the Layers palette, select the layer with the image and execute the command Layer → New → Layer via Cut. It turned out two layers: one with opaque pixels, the other with semi-transparent ones.

The disadvantage of this method is that the result is 2 images that are not always convenient to use (for example, when creating a product catalog). In the next article I will consider a rather complex and not so universal optimization method, but its advantage is that the output will only be one file.

When working on an image using Photoshop, you will need to create at least two layers. The more complex the drawing, the more layers there will be. For ease of processing, layers can be merged and separated. Adobe Photoshop offers several ways to do this.

Instructions