Photoshop Elements 3: The Missing Manual

Managing Layers

The Layers palette lets you manipulate your layers in all kinds of ways, but first you need to understand a few more of the palette's cryptic little icons. Some of the things you can do with layers may seem tiresomely obscure when you first read about them, but once you're actually using layers, you'll quickly see why many of these options exist. The next few sections explain how to manipulate your layers in several different ways: how to hide them, how to group them together, how to change the way you see them, and how to combine layers together.

Making Layers Invisible

You can turn the visibility of layers off and on at will. This is a tremendously useful feature, if you think about it. If the image you're working on has a busy background, for example, it's often hard to see what you're doing when you're working on a particular layer. Making the background invisible can really help you focus on the layer you're interested in. To turn off visibility, first select the layer you want to hide and then click the eye icon in the Layers palette.

Tip

If you have a bunch of hidden layers and you decide you don't want them anymore, go to Layers Palette → More → Delete Hidden Layers to get rid of them all at once.

GEM IN THE ROUGHNaming Layers

You might have noticed that Elements isn't terribly creative when it comes to naming your layers. You get "Layer 1," "Layer 2," and so on. Fortunately, you don't have to live with those. It's quite easy to rename your layers in Elements. ...