What are layers?

One of the main features in Photoshop, is layers.
But what is a layer?
In its simplest form, a layer is a transparent platform that contains data. This data can be anything, such as text, photo, drawing, simple way of everything.
If you have different layers, they are superimposed.
The data on one layer, is totally independent of the data on another layer.
To work with layers, first open the “Layers” panel, of course.

To hide a layer, click the eye icon on the left of the layer.
To hide all layers except the one you click, hold the Alt key on your keyboard while you click the eye icon.
To return to show all layers, repeat this action.

To add a layer, click the button “Create a New Layer” (1) at the bottom of “Layers” panel.
Important. To edit a layer, select it first in the section “Layers”, otherwise it could be that your hours of work are on the wrong layer.

The advantage of working with layers, is that you can edit and move the data on the different layers separately.
To move data in one layer, first select the layer, select the “Move” tool in the toolbar, and you click and drag it to the desired position.

The section “Layers”

What do we find in the “Layers” section.
In the top box, we have the “Blend Mode”.
Based on the blending mode, we determine the blending style of a layer with the underlying layer. But a lot more about that in later lessons.
We also have the box “Coverage”. In the Coverage box, we determine the transparency of the layer. The lower the percentage, the higher the transparency.
Below that we have the box “Fill”. With the “Fill” box, we determine the transparency of the data in the layer, without changing the transparency of any applied effects.
We also have four lock buttons. All have something to do with the locking of the layer. When you move the mouse pointer over these icons, you will be clear as to what that lock is.Below that we have the different layers.
A layer consists of three parts.
The first part is the eye icon (1). What this does, I already told you in the previous lesson.
We also find a thumbnail (2) with the content of the layer. You can resize the thumbnail view by right-clicking it and selecting “No thumbnail”, “Small Thumbnails” and so on.
And finally we have the title (3) of the layer. By default, this name is “Layer 1”, “Layer 2”, etc. You can change it by double-clicking the name.

Below the panel we have a menu bar.
It just overflows from right to left.
At the right we have the trash icon. This is used to remove the selected layer.
To the left, we have an icon to add a new layer. When you click this, a layer can be added above the selected layer.
We also have the folder icon. This creates a folder in the panel where we can save several layers into folders. It is useful to organize the work a bit, when working with many layers.
The next three buttons are “New Adjustment Layer”, “Layer Mask” and “Layer Style”. All of them will be thoroughly covered in this course.
And finally, to the far left, we have the “Link Layers” button. When you have at least two layers selected from the panel, you can then click this button, then these layers are coupled together. What it means is, for example, when you move the contents of a layer, the content of the linked layer also moves. If you want to disconnect them back, select the layers again, and click the button again.

When you delete a layer, you can replace it back with the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Z button or by the “History” panel.
But more on that later.

When you click on the downward pointing arrow at the far right of the menubar of “Layers” panel, it unfolds a menu with various commands. The same commands, plus a few other, are available under the “Layer” in the menu bar and we will discuss them in a later topic of this course.

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