It depends. Did you close the file? If so you are hosed. If not, open the History palette and go back to before you inadvertently flattened the file.
Thank you Ed for replying, succinctly put. There is no history, so I am hosed! Fortunately the montage was saved and all that I must do now is to add to it.
regards
grimerz
How are you Saving by the way? Make sure you are saving in a format that supports Layers, like PSD or Tiff, and not one that doesn’t, like JPG.
Yes Ed, I am saving in the Pshop format, but I still do not know why my layers disappeared. I only have the ‘locked’ background layer now, with a firm looking ‘lock’ to the right of the background icon?
regards
grimerz
At some point you must have flattened the file.
Did you change Color Mode at any point? If so,you would have gotten a dialog giving you the choice of Flattening or not. It’s easy to miss. Or you might have hit Shift-Ctrl-E to Merge it all with the Background. Or maybe you had Layers unchecked in the Save dialog.
It’s a good idea to look at the Layers Palette before closing a file, just to be on the safe side.
Thank you again Ed. My mouse has a double-click button which I obviously pressed, but what the mouse-pointer was resting on at the time, who knows? It was something at the bottom of the Layers-Palette because from having all my layers labelled with picture-descriptions, I simply wound up with the ‘locked’ background layer,and no way back, at least not what I could think of. Very frustrating!
Also I very rarely use keyboard shortcuts.
regards
grimerz
Ed, when I hover my mouse over the ‘lock,’ icon of the background layer it reckons it is partially locked? Any significance please?
regards
grimerz
The core of your problem is not the locked background layer it is the fact that you inadvertently flattened all the layers of your collage into a single Background layer and saved the file in that state.
partially locked
That’s normal. You can paint in it but it remains lo9cked is aklk it means.
You should always have your History palette open. You could have gone back a step or two if you had not closed the file. Once it’s closed, History is gone.
Ed, you have been most generous with your time and I really appreciate it. The fact that I have been a prat does not help, and I will not ask any more of your time.
I will get on with the montage now and hope that I do not make a pigs-ear of it again. But don’t hold your breath!
Thank you also John Joslin.
take care and thank you again
grimerz
