Photoshop Elements 5: The Missing Manual

Chapter 6: Layers: The Heart of Elements 165

Fill and Adjustment

Layers

because they allow you to save different states of your image. So, you could have a

version with layers and a flattened version, too.

NOTE Flattening creates a background layer out of the existing layers in your image, which

means that you lose transparency, just as with a regular background layer. If you want to create a

single layer with transparency, use Merge Visible instead of Flatten Image.

Fill and Adjustment Layers

Fill layers and Adjustment layers are special types of layers. Adjustment layers let

you manipulate the lighting, color, or exposure of the layers beneath them. If

you’re mainly interested in Elements to spruce up your photos, you’ll probably use

Adjustment layers more than any other kind. Adjustment layers are great because

they give you the ability to undo or change your edits later on if you want to.

You can also use Adjustment layers to take the changes you’ve made on one photo

and reapply those changes to another photo (see the box below). And after you’ve

created an Adjustment layer, you can limit future edits so they affect only the area

of your photo covered by the Adjustment layer.

You’ll find out much more about all the things you can do with Adjustment layers

in the next few chapters. For now, you just need to learn how to create and manip-

ulate them.

Fill layers are just what they sound like: