Are you working in layers in PhotoShop? You should be. The best thing about digital images is that they can be edited so easily. It’s the worst thing about them too. Take a look at this picture of the beach at Patoka Lake.

If I’m editing this image, using only the default background layer in PhotoShop, and I make a mistake, what do I do? Undo is the obvious answer, but what if I’ve closed the file before I notice the mistake? That detail is lost, and it can’t be regained. Even if you’ve saved a copy of the original, you’ve lost all of the work you did on your edits.

The solution as you might have guessed, is layers. If your edits are kept on a separate layer from your original image, then you can always go back to the original. Even better, it’s often possible to edit your edits. Because they are on a separate layer than the original, they can often be fixed or otherwise edited without losing any significant work.

Why else should you work in layers? How about selective filtering? Taking the photo above as an example, how about I add a filter.

Now that looks a little too severe. If I were working on the background layer, my only choices would be to fade the effect, accept the effect as is, or undo and try again. Once I’ve continued to work, those options are no longer really available. If however I duplicate the background layer, then apply the filter to the duplicate, I have some other interesting options. Instead of fading the effect, I can just reduce the opacity of the filtered layer. By letting the unchanged background show through, this essentially lessons the effect of the filter. But wait there’s more! Not only can I lesson the opacity of the whole filtered layer, I can apply a layer mask. This will allow me to lower the opacity, or entirely mask out, specific areas of my filtered layer. The brilliant part of this is that you can go back, minutes, days, or weeks later, and change the layer mask again. See a problem later, go back and fix it… later. You’ve both modified the file, and saved the original.

The best part of this is that you can do this over and over. You can make numerous layers, each with their own small edits to the original, and each can be masked to show only what you want. Better yet, each can still be edited later. I’ll leave you with a final example. This is the original image with the filter shown above with a layer mask. I then duplicated the background layer a second time, and applied a different filter. This was in turn masked partially. If done properly, these effects can be seamlessly blended.

The original question was “are you working in layers in PhotoShop?” Hopefully now, the answer is yes.