Can’t move the Background layer? That’s because back in Photoshop 6.0, Adobe locked the Background layer from movement. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that if you look at the top of the Layers palette, you can see that “Yup, the checkbox to lock movement is turned on,” but the frustrating part is that it’s also grayed out, so you can’t simply uncheck it to unlock it. The only way around this is to double-click on the Background, which brings up the New Layer dialog. Click OK, and your Background layer becomes Layer 0 and is unlocked. Now you can move it.

11 Comments

1. Rory said on — August 12, 2008 @ 4:03 pm

   Or better yet, you can simply hold Alt and double-click the background layer in the Layers palette. It saves a couple clicks…

2. Photo-John said on — August 12, 2008 @ 4:24 pm

   Nice! I’ve always wondered how to unlock it. My workaround has been to just make a duplicate layer from the background and edit that. That actually works just fine and ensures that the background layer – my original – doesn’t get screwed up. That’s probably why Adobe locked it in the first place.

3. Toby Fairchild said on — August 12, 2008 @ 9:59 pm

   Great tip Corey. I also use ‘alt + double-click’ to do it too. This just unlocks it without giving you the dialogue box to rename it. If, however, you do want to rename the background layer, then just plain double-clicking will be the faster option.

4. Marc said on — August 14, 2008 @ 12:44 am

   Rory-thanks for the Alt double-click workaround. I’m doing a post for beginners tomorrow where unlocking the background is the first step so I’ve added that as an option.

5. elaine said on — June 11, 2009 @ 12:33 pm

   I have just installed cs4 and I cannot unlock background layer using alt double click. I scanned an image and want to free transform it but the option to do so is grayed out so I tried unlocking the background and nada. very frustrating… any other solutions.?

6. Amanda said on — July 23, 2009 @ 2:19 pm

   Elaine, I’m having the same problem. The Alt double click won’t work for me either. I have CS4. It IS frustrating..

7. me yeah said on — August 2, 2009 @ 1:54 am

   I had the same problem and fin ally figured it out. The first thing you want to do is this:
   1. Make sure your workspace is set to RGB… go to Image>Mode>RGB Color
   2. Double click the layer in the layer window… it will pop up a box that says new layer Layer 0… Blah blah blah
   3. Hit OK and now the image will be editable.
   Hope this helps.

8. JK said on — November 25, 2009 @ 3:01 am

   Lol me too i have the same problem but i can unlock it but i can not seem to use any tool…only somethime i can use tools and if i can after some time i cant anymore…there only a hand there…

9. ewr photo said on — December 18, 2009 @ 5:04 pm

   Yes this is a real pain to have to make a new layer to work in!! I don’t understand why adobe did this and is there a way to turn off the permanent locked background layer??

   Another problem for me in CS4 is when you open two images you cannot see both of them on your desktop at the same time. Is there a preference or a control where I can chage that?

10. Dave said on — January 28, 2010 @ 6:38 am

    The comments were very helpful. Alt double click is definitely a quicker way to unlock background than simply double clicking. Thanks for your insights!

11. Darragh Nugent said on — February 3, 2010 @ 10:42 pm

    Thanks very much for your help! greatly appreciated!

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