Figure 5-63.Working with Layer Comps
As you increase the complexity of your layered documents,
you’ll find yourself experimenting with different compo-
sitional arrangements. What if you moved this layer over
here? What if that layer were hidden? What if you gave the
third layer a drop shadow? Sometimes the answer is obvi-
ous the moment you give it a try. Other times, the answer
eludes you until several steps or even sessions later.
Photoshop’s Layer Comps panel lets you save the current
state of a document before you venture down an unclear
road. As long as you don’t delete or merge any of the lay-
ers in the saved layer comp, you can restore the saved state
in its entirety later. Layer comp states are saved as part of
the PSD file on disk, just like layers, channels, paths, and
other specialized data.
To learn which layer attributes the Layer Comps panel can
track, see the upcoming sidebar “What Layer Comps Can
and Can’t Save” (page 171). To learn how to use layer comps,
immerse yourself in the following steps.
- Open a layered composition. Open the next
episode of our gripping drama, The capture.
psd, included in the Lesson 05 folder inside
Lesson Files-PsCS5 1on1. (If you get a text warning,
click the Update button.) As in the preceding exercise,
we see the Badlands photo and nothing more. But this
time, you won’t have to build the layers manually. I
performed nearly all the work ahead of time and saved
my progress using layer comps. - Open the Layer Comps panel. Choose Window→Layer
Comps to display the Layer Comps panel. By default,
it appears at the bottom of the column of icons to the
left of the main panels. You can leave it there if you
like, with the panel hanging open like a flyout menu
(see Figure 5-63), but in my humble opinion, layer
comps are too important to be given such short shrift.
Which is why I recommend that you drag the icon
or Layer Comps tab into the main docking pane on the
right side of the screen. Figure 5-63 shows me drag-
ging Layer Comps into the panel group that includes
Layers, Channels, and Paths, but you can put the panel
wherever you want.
Working with Layer Comps 169