Jacquelin Vanderwood

March 2005

Here's a Photoshop forum question I came across: I'm making a logo and I want to put all the pieces of the logo on one layer. I can't figure out how to do that. Can you show me how? People like myself who have worked in Photoshop now for 13 years take a lot of the Photoshop process for granted without thinking that there are so many of you out there just learning it and haven't a clue how to make things work.

Below we have a screenshot of the pieces of the logo we want to use. How do we get them all on the same layer?

Suppose in this instance that the zebra-looking diamond will be our background layer.

Let's flatten that layer by going up to the arrow and selecting Flatten Image.

Double-click the layer. It will automatically be renamed Layer 0. Hit the Enter key.

Next, click on the zebra picture and using the Move tool, drag and drop. Adjust the position.

Then we want to drag and drop the leaf into the picture. We discover the leaf is too large. Press Control+T to activate Transform and reduce the size by holding the Shift key down and pulling on a corner.

Now to duplicate the leaf, hold down the Alt key and drag. Watch your layers as they increase. When you are done, link all of the leaf layers and choose Merge Layers from the arrow in the layers palette.

At this point I use Liquefy to reshape the leaves.

Next I click on the text. I applied a pre-existing style and decided I didn't like the Drop Shadow so I unclicked the eye in on the Drop Shadow layer under Effects.

I then drag and drop the text onto the rest of the logo.

As you can see, the objects are all on their own separate layers.

So now here's where we have a dilemma, how to get all of the objects onto the logo on one layer. Click on the link for each layer. Click on the arrow and select Merge Linked.

So now all of the pieces of the logo are resident in the same layer.

 Copyright (c) 2005, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved