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About this lesson
Save time by grouping a set of layers and adding the layer styles to the group.
Exercise files
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Quick reference
Topic
Save time by grouping a set of layers and adding the layer styles to the group.
When to use
When you have a lot of individual elements that you want to be able to change as a group.
Instructions
One to one layer style transfer
- In the Layer menu select the layer whose style you wish to transfer.
- Right click on the layer and select ‘Copy Layer Style’
- Right click on the destination layer and select ‘Paste Layer Style’
Edit the layer styles of many objects with one setting
- Hold your Command or Control key and select the layers that you want to edit.
- Click on the 'new group' icon.
- Double click on the group and edit the styles.
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- 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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