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Missing Your Background Layer? Here’s The Fix

 

If you’re opening new documents and they don’t have a Background layer, there’s a reason (of course there’s a reason, everything has a reason; we just happen to know what it is). The reason is that you’ve selected the Transparent option in the New document dialog. That seems like a reasonable thing to do; everybody wants transparency, right? However, what it tells Photoshop is “Don’t worry about creating a Background layer.” To get Background layers again, the next time you’re in the New dialog, under Background Contents, make sure you choose White, and from then on, you’ll have Background layers in your documents.

3 Comments

  1. GQ said on — May 5, 2009 @ 4:37 am

    Thank you! That was driving me crazy, none of my actions would work properly! You’re a star!

  2. Noel said on — November 12, 2010 @ 9:57 am

    You are a genius! Thanks for the tip. Now I can get back to editing the layers properly again!

  3. Renate said on — March 16, 2011 @ 6:21 am

    What a great tip, thank you so much. I thought I was going crazy, but the answer is so simple. Thank you.

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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