Adobe Photoshop, 2nd Edition, 2nd Edition

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In darker, sadder times, when we wanted to apply some effect or filter to something composed of multiple layers, we had to merge those layers into one. Thus, to apply a drop shadow effect or blur filter, for example, we would either sacrifice the compositional freedom layers gives us, or merge those multiple layers into yet another layer, then hide the originals in case we needed to recompose. I still remember the shortcut to create a merged copy of multiple selected layers: ⌘-option-shift-E/Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E. It just rolls off the tongue.

Depending on the task, we now have more elegant nondestructive solutions that are easier to edit later. For filters and transformations that need to be applied to multiple layers, we should use Smart ...