Flattening a picture in Photoshop looks like an odd idea. In spite of everything, it’s already a flat picture in your display screen, proper?
However keep in mind, when engaged on photos in Photoshop, you’re including layers on high of each other as you’re employed. Thus, it’s changing into a stack of layers and never only one flat picture as you see on the display screen.
Hey there, I’m Cara! I exploit Photoshop to create designs and pictures for shoppers and my very own eCommerce retailer. It’s vital in some conditions to flatten photos. It’s tremendous straightforward to do, however you want to know each why and learn how to flatten a picture in Photoshop. Let me present you!
Desk of Contents
Why Flatten Pictures?
It’s simpler to know the why behind flattening photos while you perceive what’s occurring. Flattening a picture will compress all of the layers in your picture and depart you with one background layer.
That is useful in a few circumstances. First, when you’re sending the picture to the printer, it’s higher to flatten the file. This reduces the file dimension and makes the picture sooner to print. In any other case, the printer has to cope with every separate layer when printing.
Second, when you’re planning to publish photos on-line, it’s greatest to publish a flattened file. Whereas individuals can nonetheless pirate your picture, with out the picture layers they will’t as simply make small modifications to your work and resell it.
In fact, there comes the plain draw back of flattening photos. You may’t entry the person layers to make modifications later both. Because of this, I like to recommend saving your PSD file first with the layers intact earlier than making and saving a flattened model.
BTW, many file codecs, equivalent to JPG or PNG, don’t assist picture layers. Pictures are mechanically transformed into flattened recordsdata while you save them as one in all these file codecs.
Okay, now that we’re all on the identical web page, let’s take a look at learn how to flatten a picture in Photoshop.
Technique 1: Flatten Picture Command
There are a few alternative ways to flatten recordsdata in Photoshop. Let’s use the Flatten Picture command.
Go to Layer within the menu bar. Scroll all the way down to the underside and select Flatten Picture.
You’ll get the next warning:
Which means any layers with the visibility turned off will probably be discarded fully. Solely the seen layers will affect the ultimate picture.
For instance, on this picture, the layer Coloration Fill 1 shouldn’t be seen. The absence of the attention icon on the left facet of the layer signifies this. Coloration Fill 1 will probably be discarded once I flatten this file.
Right here’s what we see once we flatten the picture. All of the layers disappear and I’m left with a single Background layer.
Technique 2: Merge Layers
If something about merging layers, you is perhaps questioning how flattening is totally different. For one, the flatten picture command mechanically merges all of the layers in a picture. If you merge layers, you may choose and select the layers you wish to merge.
There’s one different key distinction that’s helpful for saving recordsdata. Flattening a picture doesn’t protect transparency, however merging layers does.
To merge layers, choose all of the layers by clicking on the primary layer, holding the Shift key, and clicking on the final layer.
Now right-click on the layers. Choose Merge Layers from the menu that seems. Discover that the Flatten Picture command is accessible right here as effectively. Each instructions can be found in each places.
On this case, if I needed to protect the transparency across the fringe of my picture, I can flip off the fill layer and merge layers. Right here’s what I get.
Straightforward peasy. Now it can save you your photos with out all the surplus knowledge and significantly scale back the file dimension.
Desirous to be taught extra about what you are able to do in Photoshop? Try our tutorial for saving as a PNG right here!
