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Unlocking The Background Layer
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.
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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…
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.
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.
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.