Comments on: Unlocking The Background Layer

By: Darragh Nugent

Darragh Nugent — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:42:15 +0000

Thanks very much for your help! greatly appreciated!

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 10:38:15 +0000

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

By: ewr photo

ewr photo — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:04:10 +0000

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?

By: JK

JK — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:01:49 +0000

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…

By: me yeah

me yeah — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:54:57 +0000

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.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:19:09 +0000

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

By: elaine

elaine — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:33:40 +0000

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.?

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:44:04 +0000

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.

By: Toby Fairchild

Toby Fairchild — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 02:59:13 +0000

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.

By: Photo-John

Photo-John — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:24:23 +0000

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.