Photoshop Tricks: Speedy Layer Copies

Moving and repositioning layers in your images is an essential part of working in Photoshop – and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a complicated process.

Here’s one of my favourite keyboard shortcuts: Hold Alt while dragging a layer with the Move tool to make a quick copy.

This is great if you want to make a quick recurring pattern. Make sure ‘Auto-Select Layer’ is checked in the Move tool options then simply Alt-drag a cut-out a few times to make a line.

Release Alt and use the Move tool to drag a box over the entire line, selecting every layer. Then Alt-drag the line up or down to quickly copy the layers and build up the pattern.

I’m sure someone reading this will be saying ‘Duh! Why not just define a pattern’. And yes, you can get similar results by making a pattern. But doing it manually gives you more control over the position of each element, so you can overlap layers, offset lines and fine-tune each element as much as you like!

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2012 at 12:32 pm and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.