Photoshop Ninja

It is not currently possible to apply effects like drop shadow and outer glow to a group of individual layers, for instance a shape that is made up of a number of a number of layers. Many people would merge their layers, then apply the layer effect. Well, you know we like to keep maximum edibility in our files, so we can employ this little trick to get round this!

Firstly, make a selection around the boundaries of all the layers you want to apply the effect to. There are a number of ways to do this, but I find the quickest way is to Apple click on the first layer in the layers palette to select its visible content, then Shift+Apple Click on the other layers to add to this selection.

Once you have completed this, create a new layer and fill it with colour - it doesn’t matter what colour you use. Now double check that this shape matches up with the outer edge of your group of layers you want to apply the layer effect to. It may be useful to lower the opacity of this new layer to check.

Next we use the Fill Slider on the Layers Palette to hide our filled shape, slide this down to 0. Many people confuse this with the Opacity slider, as it seems to do much the same. However, as it says on the tin, this controls the fill opacity - leaving the opacity of layer effects intact. Finally, just apply your desired layer effect to this new layer and there you go - for instance an outer glow… Magic! Also perfect for editable layer effects on flattened images!!

For more precise control you could use a vector shape layer, but drawing the path would take much longer to create compared to the quick method above. It very much depends on the shape of the object you are applying the effect to.

I’m all for using the layer blending options for funky creative images, but in certain situations you have to be carefull which you use to avoid unpredictable shifts in colour.
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