In this video, you’ll discover seven tips for working with Layer Groups.
The reasons are also listed below for those of you who prefer to read a list instead of watching a video!
- Layer Groups can help you to organize the Layers panel but putting similar layers in a group which can be collapsed/expanded as needed.
- Layer Groups can help when you want to effect multiple layers at once. For example, select the Layer Group and choose Free Transform to transform all of the contents of the group at once. Or, select a Layer Group and use Command + D (Mac) | Control + D (Win) to duplicate a Layer Group.
- Change the opacity of a Layer Group to effect the opacity of all layers within the group.
- Layer Effects/Layer Styles can be applied to a Layer Group. Note: when you add an Effect/Style to a group, Photoshop treats the contents of the group as if they are merged/flattened before adding the Effect/Style. As long as nothing on the layers overlaps, then the effet will be visually identicle to applying Layer Effects/Styles to individual layers (and if you only have one Layer style to update if you need to make changes). If you do have multiple layers that overlap (and don’t want the effect to appear as if the layers are merged), then you can apply the Effect/Style to one layer and copy/paste it to others.
- Blend modes can be applied to Layer Groups. (Similar to Layer Effects/Styles, if the contents of the layers within the Layer Group overlap, the Blend mode behaves differently than when applied to individual layers.)
- The effects of Blend Modes applied to individual layers within Layer Groups can be restricted to only effect those layers within the group by changing the Layer Groups Blend Mode to Normal.
- Layer Groups can be used as the base layer to apply Clipping Masks in order to “clip” or restrict the contents of a layer(s) to appear only where there is content within the Layer Group.
- Adding a layer Mask to a Layer Group enables masking of all layers within that group simultaneously.
