Now, when we select layers, as I mentioned before, it is just as important as we select pixels on screen, which ever layer we have selected as indicated by this yellow highlight here, that is the layer that will be affected. So if we wanted to run an effect just like the Blur we ran before on lettuce only, we wouldn't have to make a selection. All we would have to do is select the layer and then whatever effects we apply would only apply to the layer and as of Photoshop CS2, the last version of Photoshop, we have been able to select multiple layers at once, the way that we do that is to select one layer and then for each additional layer, use the Command key on the Mac or the Ctrl key on the PC to select disjointed layers. You could also use the Command or Ctrl key to deselect layers in the same way, now if we want to select a roll of layers.
Let's see for example, we want to select everything from tomato to meat, everything inside the hamburger. We can select the tomato layer and then hold Shift and click on Meat and it will select not only the top thing and the bottom thing but everything in between as well. The good news here folks, is that these same shortcuts using Command or Ctrl and the Shift key are available in your operating system as well. So if you're going to open up a series of images, may be four or five pictures at once, which you can totally do, this is the way to do that in the Open file dialog box, Ctrl, Command or Shift+Click those different multiple files and once they are all selected, let me turn on the visibility of the melted cheese and tomato here, we can move them as if they were one group here.
Oops! Look at this couldn't completely your request because your linked layers are locked. See this little meat guy, this here is the offender, this is the reason why we can't move all those layers because we still have this lock on meat. So we can select the meat layer, turn off all locks, now we can Shift+Click tomato, select all those pieces again and now when we move, there are no restrictions, we can move this whole group around as if it were one object.
We could also free transform this as we'll talk about later. Rotate them, scale them down all as one piece but at the same time they remain individual pieces, so we can temporarily use them together and then if we want to use one at a time, we can go back to using them one at a time.
Now you might have certain layers in your Photoshop file that you always want to be together. So let's say we wanted cheese and lettuce to be together all the time. As we don't want to have to go through and select lettuce and melted cheese every time we want to move them both together, what we can do is just hit this Link icon with one of them selected or both of them selected and then we can go in and with only one layer selected, let's say for example, lettuce. We move lettuce and guess who comes along for the ride? That's right, Mr. Melted Cheese himself. To break the link, simply hit the Link icon here again, looks like a chain and found in the Layers palette and the link goes away.
You could link as many layers you want, so you could link all sorts of layers. You could link all these three layers that don't even touch each other, hit the Link button and now they are all linked. You move one and you will move them all, pretty cool trick.
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