Layer Styles on Groups

Quick reference

• 00:04 Did you know that as of Photoshop CS6, you can now apply later styles
• 00:08 to a group of layers? Well you can, and this can be very beneficial for a number
• 00:13 of reasons,
• 00:14 which I'm going to show you in today's tip. Layer styles are useful for a variety of
• 00:18 reasons
• 00:19 and I'm sure many of you have used at least a few them in your journeys.
• 00:22 Looking through the list of styles, you can get an idea as to what they're used
• 00:26 for.
• 00:27 For instance, a drop shadow can be applied to create a subtle shadow
• 00:31 underneath this text layer, which can also be applied to similar layers
• 00:35 by reapplying the same style or by copying and pasting.
• 00:38 In your Layers panel, right click on a layer that contains layer styles.
• 00:42 You can then copy those styles and paste them right onto another layer.
• 00:46 This certainly works fine if you're only dealing with one or two layers
• 00:49 and you don't have any plans on updating those layer styles. But when you find
• 00:53 yourself with many layers that
• 00:54 share the same styles, updating them can be a pain.
• 00:58 This document contain several shapes that all share the same layer styles.
• 01:02 Instead of manually updating each layer when your design direction changes,
• 01:06 placing all of these layers inside a group will allow you to update them
• 01:11 all at once. So let me go ahead and clear the styles from these layers,
• 01:15 and once that's been done I can place them into a group.
• 01:18 The easiest way to do this is to first select all the layers that you want to
• 01:22 be included.
• 01:23 If they're stacked in your Layers panel you can select the first one
• 01:26 and then with your Shift key held down, click on the last one.
• 01:29 Otherwise you can hold your Command or Control key (Command on a Mac,
• 01:33 Control in Windows) and click on the layers that aren't stacked.
• 01:36 Once layers that you want in the group are selected, continue holding down your Shift key
• 01:40 and click on the new group icon.
• 01:42 This will place them all into a group which can then rename if you wish.
• 01:46 Now adding layer styles to a group is just as easy as adding them to a single
• 01:50 layer.
• 01:51 Double click on the group and add the styles as you normally would.
• 01:54 As I start adding the same styles that were once applied to the individual
• 01:58 layers,
• 01:59 because they're now being applied to the group, all the layers within that group
• 02:03 are updating at the same time. So at any point in the future,
• 02:07 if I decide to change the color of the strokes, I only need to edit one layer
• 02:11 style instead of all of them.
• 02:11 The second benefit to applying layer styles to a
• 02:15 group is that overlapping
• 02:16 layers within that group are treated as one flat object.
• 02:20 As an example, if I want to apply a drop shadow behind the design
• 02:25 in the center of this icon, applying a layer style to the individual shapes
• 02:29 would not only take a while, but it won't give me the result
• 02:32 that I was looking for.
• 02:33 As I don't want each petal to have a drop shadow, instead I can apply the drop
• 02:38 shadow to the group
• 02:39 which contains the individual shapes, and my shadow will then appear as I
• 02:43 wanted it to.
• 02:44 Adding layer styles to a group can not only save you time,
• 02:47 but it can help with your designing as well.

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