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Opening Layered Files Without All The Layers

 

If you have a large multilayered file, you know it can take a while to open, and that’s fine—it’s part of working with large files. But sometimes you’re not going to actually work on the file, and you just want to open it, take a quick look at it, and then close it (maybe you just want to see if it’s the version of the file you’re looking for). So why waste time opening a huge multilayered file if you just want to take a quick look? Well, you don’t have to—just go under the File menu, choose Open, and navigate to the layered file, but before you click the Open button, hold Option-Shift (PC: Alt-Shift). By holding those two keys down before you choose Open, it opens a flattened version of your layered file. Pretty darn slick.

2 Comments

  1. Toh Yee Suang said on — March 28, 2008 @ 11:55 pm

    May i know why there is a dialog box contents “Read the composite data instead”after i try to use this technique (Alt + Shift and click Open button) ? Besides, if i choose Ok, there will be a black rectangle background and white texts instead of reviewing my images ?

  2. Toh Yee Suang said on — March 28, 2008 @ 11:56 pm

    Thanks a lot!

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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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