Lessons

Lesson Info

Group Layers

So grouping is one of those things where it's sort of similar to other programs so like another software you might be used to you have a serious of separate obvious and you group them together and they act is one and that's kind of what this is like but it's also kind of like a folder so on and when you first see it a lot of people look and say, well why? And they just call it a folder because the icon looks like a folder but it's because it really is a folder that changes the functionality of its contents. So you may remember that in the black last session we did the thing about repeat transformation and end up with the whole siri's of boxes going across the top of the page and I said now some people this point would look at their layers palin say there's all these layers I should merge them I don't want to do that that's where grouping comes in so here we see the screen there we go you can see here's a perfect example I've got all these layers and if I could this's the rare time you'...

ll see take note of this hit the record button because dave's going to merge layers very quickly undo it but to show you the difference if I went in here and I chose merge layers then yes indeed I would have one layer which would reduce the clutter. But now the problem is if someone says, uh, there's one box to manning and I to redistribute them, there would be a ton of effort to try and change things very quickly undo the merging, and instead I'm going to use a command called new group from layers, and I could call it something if I wish that and now you see in my layers panel it's, nice and clean because I just have this one thing instead of all the other ones, but inside of it, if I hit this little dude, add that that's probably the official name of it, I'm sure it'll be the doo dad that twirls down, I can see the contents of my group, and you could see how they're also the indented that's visually to help us recognize that this group or folder it contains all these individual layers, so the advantages of this are many. If I now want to move these boxes in the past, I would have had to click on all of those layers to select them now, because they're in a group, I'm in effect moving the group, so therefore whatever's in the group moves with it, so just a simple thing like moving everything is that much easier in the past, if I wanted to have, say, a drop shadow on each one of these boxes, I would have had to add a drop shot of the first one and then duplicated to all the others, which would have worked. Let me go back here and show you the old way, because this still works, but just to compare the difference, if I add a drop shadow too, the first one there it is there and click ok, and I'm going to right click and choose copy layer style. Then I select all the rest of these layers and choose pace layer style and again that works. But the problem with it is now each one of those drop shadows is independent, so if I decided now I want to move them all, I'd have to do that all over again. So that's why that method isn't so good instead, let's, go back at our group from layers and you'll see couldn't be simpler than this. You add a drop shadow and all the boxes have a drop shadow. The benefit of this is this one drop shadow is a group layer style, meaning whatever's in the group automatically will have that drop shot will apply to it. Also, it means I can edit it, and all of the boxes will edit. So compared to the alternative again of having to manually do that, this works very well and of course this is just the start and I'm doing it with this file with a bunch of boxes in it, but it would apply to anything if these were photographic layers or whatever, as we will see the other thing that's interesting to notice if you remind yourself this is a group layer style, meaning anything in this group has it automatically as a drop shadow. So that means if I had a new layer into this group and for example, make another rectangle and fill it instantly, it has a drop shadow because whatever's inside that group is automatically going tohave that layer style apply to it. So when you're playing around with with a variety of layers to try and get to someone result that's a really nice ability to be able to say I want to, you know, have all these options to keep adding more things we'll have to remember all we gotta add that drop shadow again, that means anything in there we'll have it, I can turn it on and off for the entire group I can edit, I can add more to it do whatever I want so that right away is one of the first advantages of having things in a group is you khun keep the individual editing ability but then add global abilities at the same time. Now this ability to add a ah layer style to a group is relatively recent, I want to say was probably photo shop cs six, so if you have an earlier version, you may not be able to do without pre sure it was cia six that that came out so that that's slightly more recent, but it is again one of them the main reasons for considering that once you have a group and this again is a fairly recent addition in the past you could duplicate a layer, but on ly a layer and using a keyboard shortcut that is now the typical keyboard shortcut for duplicating info shoppers. Commander control j aiken, duplicate a group and now very quickly move it's and I'm getting two groups each of it still have its own contents. So and that's great for something like this. But what if I was working on a project where and we'll just do something that's really matter what it is? But it's when I show you real quick that I've got something going on here, ok, so let's, just make some copies here. This is how I would you know, if I'm trying to create separate layers and was going to do with this way because it's quicker than starting over again okay, so there we all we've got are for little month type players this is a perfect example where I definitely don't want to merge because in that first example of merging the boxes, at least they were still boxes, but if I emerged these type players, it automatically also rast arise me and I can't edit them anymore and that to me is a horribly bad thing I don't want to ever lose the ability to edit my type I'm gonna take these four layers and just because it bothers me to see things not looking all nicely lined up, I'm gonna align them better this and then by their left hand edge there we go now I want to put those inside a group is well or created group from these the keyboard shortcut is actually couldn't be easier it's commander control g for group so you either have the option of going to the pop up menu in choosing new group from layers or just use the keyboard shortcut command or control g so just like the first case now they all move together if I said I really like that same drop shadow aiken option role drag it under there now the type blair's I'll have a drop shadow but this is kind of understanding this is actually very clever of adobe to do this with the boxes if I want it edit that one box I basically have to go we'll find it so I'd have to look inside the group and say where is that box okay there it is click on that layer to be able to edit it with type it's really smart so I take my type tool and just click here it just knows that's the letter I'm working on so I don't have to go digging inside the group to say which one was that it just automatically senses these air separate type players and as soon as I click on you'll see it twirled open the group and says there's the type player working on so that's a really nice advance because it's again giving me the best of both worlds is treating it as if it's one set of objects that I can move around and edit and add layer styles things like that but it preserves the edit ability of everything inside of it all right so where this also starts to become interesting is it changes the rules of things like adjustment layers we're talking about adjustment airs at length so right now if I take a black and white adjusting layer because I haven't the very top everything's black and white including my background and my logo and I don't want that that would not give me any help for what I want to do here so that wouldn't be the best choice so let's just delete that so let's say that really all I wanted was these three pieces of the photograph I want those to be black and white but nothing else, so instead of you couldn't even really do with this guy's going to say instead of changing the order of layers in this case even that wouldn't help, so I take these three layers do that commanded control g thing to say put that group together and now all I do is inside here is where I put the black and white adjustment layer and at first it still doesn't quite look like it's doing the trick and there's a little extra trick to this I'll show at the end, so for now I'm just going to say yeah that's fine, but you'll notice how even though it's within the group it's still affecting the background layer because one of the little tricks with groups is we haven't really talked a huge amount about blend mode, so we kind of touched on a little bit. We have seen blend moz like normal and multiply and overlay when you have a group there's a unique blend mode that appears called passed through and that means there's a hole in the bottom of our folder and it's letting the adjustment layer sneak through and effect whatever's below it so even though I put the adjustment layer in this group it's still affecting the background layer because by default the group has this blend mold call passed through if it was me I would do it the op that I would default to not doing that but that's just the way it is so if I zoom back out again you can see they're all had to do and I'm all I have done is I've got the group as my where I've got my cursor and see how it's highlighted there and it's saying passed through if I change it to normal see the difference now the adjustment air says well I just put the bottom back on the folder so now it'll onley affect whatever is in the folder not the background so this is a nice way because the nature of adjusting layers and they want to affect every single layer below by putting it inside a group and then changing the blend mode away from passed through to normal that means on ly elements inside this group will be affected by that adjustment there before people realize this option I see sometimes people putting the same adjustment there several times trying to get to the result they want which also kind of works but here again this has the advantage where now I just have one adjustment layer so if I want to make any tweet to it is going to automatically affect every layer inside that group but not the background and not the logo because the logo's above the group so one of the things we always have to be conscious of in photo shop is thie stacking order as we call it in the layers panel is so important if this logo was inside the group it would be black and white if this you know that this background layer was in there so I have to deliberately keep the background separate make sure I have the group and the adjusting layer in there and have it set too normal and put the logo on top now just as an aside since we talked about this in the last session you will notice that if you look at this logo you'll see that I have created this in a way that it it is a little smarter so I have the ability and it has a blend mode applied to it so the texture is kind of showing through any time you open a doctor you have to work worked on the well this goes back to our original discussion of the benefit of doing this stuff is you can reverse engineer I mean I created this so long ago like that I can't remember how I did it I want to look at and go oh yeah that has multiply and this is within a group and that's how you start to both reestablished how you create it but also help establish what level of editing ability I have and here I got a lot because I can change my mind of an awful lot of things here, you could still have layer cops involved in the conversation here by having more than one different style of adjustment layer within this group says lots of different possibilities there as well. So this is one of things that groups a group will do is it changes the impact of how an adjustment air works normally said adjustment is going to affect everything below it, including and this is the one part that's kind of a tricky part is I mentioned by default the group is going to say, passed through, I'm not sure why that happens because I would have thought personally, the whole reason to put something in a group is to restrict it to the group, but by default, the blend mode doesn't restrict it just says, just keep going right through, so I prefer to have it set too normal. Personally, I could maybe think of an occasion where I wouldn't want that to happen, but not that much to me. This would be the one I'd use much more often groups are just another photoshopped function is just another layer function, so once they're in there, they will stay there until you decide otherwise. Now, if per chance you were to how many times you say he was a per chance on or that came from, if per chance you were to alter your perception now, if you decided ok, now that I've done this, having a group isn't really going to help me. After all, I want to just get it back to a regular old layers again when you do this, this is the best way to do it is to hit delete, but then when you don't actually sorry, let me rephrase that don't hit the delete key because that will delete the layer and its contents. He used the pull down menu that says delete and then you see, it gives you the option do I wanted to leave everything the group and its contents, or on lee the group? So this is how if you ever decide this is not helping me, I no longer want a group, but I still want the layers or the contents from that group. This button will say put it back the way it wass in this case, the downside is I've lost now that adjustment there it's going affect the background as well, because there's no longer a group to stop that from happening so in this case it wouldn't make sense do that but that's how sometimes I know is people get to a certain point go ad only this group isn't helping after all but I want to start all over again so deleting just the group just be aware that again if I just hit the delete key that everything's gone so that's why it's sort of pause and rephrase that way I was saying it because don't actually press delete used the pull down menu that says delete group on the typical way that dialog boxes work just be careful because something is usually highlighted and glowing going click me click me like this one is well this will be the same was pressing the leaky because that would get rid of everything to me the main purpose of using this pull down menu item is to say now on lee the group please so any time you we'll see a dialog box there's a little glowing button thing that's the one it's prompting you or if you would enter that's the one that will be used in this case I don't really want that in this particular case that wouldn't help me so much okay, so that's one thing that changes with groups the other thing is which is kind of interesting so I'm playing around with on idea for a logo so if I take all of these layers, so these are all the layers that make up this logo. They're all separate shapes that I rotated around and filled with different colors. If I take all of these layers and change the blend mode to multiply, you'll see how every layer is multiplying on top of each other and the background layer and that's because that's, just the way it works when you change the blend, motive says, look as far down as you can and use that as the thing that you're multiplying on. So everything's multiplying on like this top shape is multiplying on them, one underneath it and the background later for a little closer, you can see what I mean. You can kind of see the background blending through and where there's that overlap, and the text is also just blending right onto the background, which might be ok, but just to open up some other possibilities, the other option would be to take all of these layers that make up our logo and I again want it. I don't want to merge them together, because then they would operate as one object. I want to have the ability to sin case to change everything I press commander control g to put them in a group, and I changed the blend mode of the group to multiply. And can you see the difference of what's happening now? This whole thing is multiplying on the background but not on each other see that their friends there's no little overlapping multiply between each shape it's just saying, take all those shapes, treat them as if they're one and multiply that way, but now it still gives me the ability to edit all these individual pieces, and this is one of these things where there's no right or wrong answer about which way to do it it complete depends on what you're trying to achieve. You may want that multiply each piece on top of each cell itself and the background so therefore don't put them in a group but it's very visual, so if you're unsure, try both ways and see which one you like and it depends on the circumstance here the event should be I could do multiply and then also say, but it might look good if I add something else like inner shadow or something who maybe not maybe a drop shadow and maybe not be just a really subtle one. So because now we can combine the two where the everything in this group when I hit multiplies saying it's the best way describe it almost hate to say this because it's not what's happening it's almost like it's, merging the shapes together and then using multiply but it isn't because they're all still separate but that's when they're in a group effectively that's what's happening so it's again like the best of both worlds I'd like them to act like they're emerge without merging them and that's what the group does but this is a great example to me of how I had no preconceived notion going in which way I wanted to look and I have to just try both and go I think I like version a versus versus version be at least I have that opportunity to do it either way whichever way I perceived to be the one that's going to help me the most groups are like any other layer function photo shop they stay in here until you change your mind so it's another example of preserving everything but also removing clutter if you come compare all of these layers sitting there out in the open versus collapsed down having a group that just you can see there know their stuff in there as a layer style applied to it for many situations that just is easier and particularly if nothing else for those people that and I know there are still people out there that say oh it's it's getting too complicated looking let me merge some layers together e I mean it just makes me worry that that at that moment in time that make might make perfect sense to do that but then three days later, you go to click on that one there and go oh, wait, I emerged those three and can't do it now, so I too I like this is really weird because it by my desk is incredibly messy and cluttered, but boy, my layers panel it's so nice and organized and I do that because I don't want clutter. I want to be able to see what's happening here very easily. Now the on ly kind of tricky part to this is when I'm working with layers sometimes I just want to say I want to you I want to work on that later right there. I just want to get that one right there. Well, when it's not in a group I khun pull down the commanding control key and hit with the move tool and it automatically highlights that layer it doesn't do that when it's in a group so that's the one drawback is it doesn't auto select layers the same way. When you're just have layers all by themselves, they show you over here that's uh get rid of this, uh group. Ok, so, for example, all these boxes I want to work on this one I just commander control click with the move to when you see that layer was automatically highlighted and that's one of the benefits when you have the regular layers not in a group you can just without trying to figure out which one is which you just there is an option here, by the way called auto select layer or group I don't use a like that turned on because it's sometimes it almost gets in the way because you're trying to click on one layer and if you missed by one pixel it clicks on the wrong one or something. So personally I use it just by having the move to a hole down commander control and say that's where I want or that's layer I wanted automatically select sit unfortunately, when things are in a group, it just doesn't do that the same way it's when you click on it it's like I'm because in a group I'm almost assuming you want me to select the entire group so that I like to make sure everyone knows there are occasionally downsides to things in the case of groups I wish there was a way to just do that now what you could do is, um anytime you're working with a bunch of layers in this case that command auto select clicking thing is not working, but there's always usually a plan b or plan c and this is will highlight the fact that I probably should have done a better job of naming my layers perhaps because if I right click or mike he's on my mac going to control, click on right here it shows me here's what's underneath your mouse at the moment there's a layer within a group called layer one copy seven which I'm guessing is the correct one there's also something called dmc zero, which I'm guessing is that texture in the background and layer zero is probably just blank layer. So even though this is an odd name, see how it's kind of indented underneath group one so I'm going to take a pretty educated guess and say that's the right one so any time you're working and this is not just in groups, by the way, but any time you have a bunch of layers on top of each other and trying to make sure you're on the right one, sometimes the easiest way is just to right click and I'll show you a list whatever layer is below the position of your mouse or pan in this case, you answer that question now everyone works differently. Some people absolutely love this auto select function because they just have to click without home down and keys. The only reason I don't like that is sometimes I find, depending on the circumstances, for example in some versions of photo shop if you're opacity was less than fifty percent, it wouldn't select the layer properly or you'd click on a layer in the layers pound then you'd click somewhere else. And so anyway, that's that's a personal choice for some situations it might be just as quick to choose have auto select turn on in the options bar personally, I much prefer this option of seeing the list of names so that I know that's the correct one that I want to work on again this is not just a group function, this is just layers in general, if I showed you any document that had a bunch of layers and even without groups it would work the same way and in an ideal world, you know, you do all this work and then go back and name all these layers although I have no idea what you mean them because they're all just different various with same shape, so it probably works out ok because it's telling you with that group and then layer thing so that's a nice way to do that very easily and just so we see one of the many things we can do now and again, this is before this wasn't possible sometimes like in this case, I kind of like the look of what I'm seeing, but I wish it was a little more intensified and whenever you choose a blend mode like multiply as an example is going to say well based on the colors you have in your layers, in the background, this is what you get. You can't say multiply it more because that's just it. So what I could do, though, is duplicate the entire group and now it's like again multiplying the multiply. So sometimes, even though it looks more complicated to do that, it's going to give you the results you want. And as we mentioned, I think yesterday, um, if that's a little too much, then you always have the option of using the opacity to kind of dial it down a bit and say, I don't want like, one hundred percent multiple on top of hundreds at multiple I want to be a little bit less, or it might even be multiply and some other blend mode even that's always a possibility. So on the surface level, this starts to look more complicated, but it ultimately comes down to I want to create something that looks the way that I want, and if I have to do that by having two groups, frankly, I'd much rather have two groups than fourteen layers out there, having to deal with the complexity of that so sometimes working with groups one of his advantages, just simply that where you can kind of pile on a little bit without making it look unbelievably complicated. The on ly thing there's always little challenges here now the only challenge is if I want to edit this type it's a little trickier because which one am I actually editing so I have to go back and do it twice because there's two separate type players I'd have to edit one and then go find the other one so it might just add that little bit of complexity but the good news is the layers again that group option is just twirl it down and show show me the rest of what's in there so I and see what's happening all right that's ah uh here so here's one that I've already created some groups and it's a combination I sorry I should say some layers just a stock photo and I put some type players and a shape layer on top of it and I want to make it easier for me to work with it so once again select all the layers hit commander control g for group and then here's another example of how thinking groups is sometimes easier than individual they actually take a step back here. So I've done all this and now I decide I think I want all this type and the shape to be green instead of black so if I wasn't thinking groups I would go choose the color green and go phil, phil, phil, phil phil which would work. But then, if someone said that's, the wrong shade of green, ok, do that all over again. So this is again where the combination of groups and the way that layer styles were could solve that problem quite easily. So I take all these layers, put them in a group, and then one of the options for thie layer styles. We did a drop shot before I can do color overlay, and all I do is pick the shade of green that I want and you'll see everything in that group is automatically that color and the advance of doing it this way is then say, I'm doing this for a client and they look at and they say, yeah, it's almost perfect, but could you use the same green? Is this leaf over here? And I said, yes, I could, because you just go back here, take the color picker and then just pick from that shade of green. It will automatically change everything in that group and again, same ideas if they say, oh, and we also need to add one more type player. I just go inside that group, and it'll automatically be green because anything inside that group is affected by the layer style, so group is not, I would say in every day thing, but for any situation, we have a number of layers. I do this all the time when I have a bunch of type players because I want to preserve the individual edit ability, but I also want my life easier by doing things like, oh, now you want to drop shadow? Okay, well, I'll just add a drop shadow now every layer automatically has a drop shadow, and if I want to edit, I just added either one of these and anything inside that group and again, just to give you one more example of someone says, oh, but we also need one more thing, and that is a little box along here, and we'll just pick the same green again actually to do that, sorry doesn't matter. This will be an emissions apple, so you can see on my foreign colors orange but doesn't matter because soon as I hit fill, it looks green because the colored overlay is going to change no matter what the color is in there. This colored overlay is what makes it green, so I don't have to worry about what color was. I was just a habit of going to change it because I always think about that, but that's. Another benefit of groups is it's just it's like a group function you put anything inside this group it automatically is going to be over laid with green and have a drop shadow I'll take that silence says yes so here's another example of say you're working on something where eventually I'm gonna put photos in here but I want to kind of create a little almost like template where for that whatever lay out I'm doing I'm gonna each person's gonna have a stroke around the outside their photo fit in here and I'll just edit their name so I need a bunch of these so step number one I've got everything laid out with a photo place holder and the stroke in the name and a circle for what he didn't know why there's a circle there but it is so I take all of those group them together now here's a little tricky part in the last session we talked about that repeat transform thing and I took a siri's of boxes and evenly spread out doing that transform thing. Unfortunately, that doesn't work with the group quite the same way in other words, I can't just use the shortcut command option t because when I go to move it it just moves the group it doesn't copy it so that doesn't work however thankfully there is an alternative that works pretty well and that is you duplicate the whole thing and then you use transformed to move it hit enter and then when I just go duplicate command shifty duplicate command shifty it's goingto repeat that little transformation there now I have all these groups and if this was the finished product for whatever reason then I just had to take my type to look I don't have to look inside the group I just know that this name is whatever it's supposed to be and I added that one and whatever so one of the nice things about working with groups again as you don't have to necessarily always be digging down inside the group a lot, especially with type players it does that automatically so you don't have to be worried about that, but as a simple way to get to a result where I've now khun start filling in the pieces and adding photos instead of copying individual layers every time and moving them using groups is a really nice way to say I want to take almost like sets of information and effect and say move this whole thing with the whole thing and still have all the individual editing that I want now if I wanted not that it would make sense in this case but I've wanted everything in this group again have a drop shot have done that first and then duplicate each one so they each subsequent group would have that same information now if you really wanted to go to town let's get rid of that unnecessary layer and really are hyper organizing you could even use to make a new group from groups and have nested groups I don't know why you'd ever want to do that but for people who really like to put folders within folders I mean I should say there are occasions but that just to me adds a little more complexity but it is possible just so people know because someone out there is going to say can your nest groups inside groups? The answer is yes, you can I don't know why but you could ok ok here's an interesting little twist on groups that I love I think this is fantastic see what I've got here okay, so I'm working on an idea and I want to create an effect here so I have this photo of a dancer and I would like to make kind of a reflection of the dancer um and play around a bit with the way it's gonna work. So how can I easily do that? Well, I want to give myself some options so I'm going to duplicate the entire thing now just to save time I've taken advantage something called a channel which really just means previously I made a selection and said of me doing that over again because that's not the important part of this tutorial is I say this is a thing called a channel so I can just easily load the selection again like that. So now on here I would add a layer mask now let's do free transform right click and shoes flip horizontal! So now I have my second dancer there. Now at this point let's revisit what's happened I took the entire photograph and duplicated it and then added layer mass or really the on ly part that's visible on this layer is the dancer and I did it that way because I wanted the option of what if, as I was playing this, I noticed I needed to tweak the mask a bit. I still want to have a layer mask here because the other alternate would be just duped look at the pixels onto their own layer but that's worth mentioning that a lot of people do that and that's fine. The on ly problem with that is if you make a selection and you go duplicate that means you do believe on ly those pixels see if your selections off by a little bit from now on that part of the layer is missing because you've duplicated just the pictures you had selected that's why I always default to using a mask because if I do notice oops I missed a bit or I've got a bit too much I continue edit it but the whole reason for showing you this is now I'm faced with one little challenges but I want this reflection to kind of fade out as if its mast well, the problem is I already have a mask so how can I mask a layer that already has a mask that makes sense? I want I want to fade this out well I can't normally you would do that by adding a mask for example with the grady int but I can't do that because already a mask and one layer cannot have two masks just not possible. So this is probably the most unusual use of a group but it works really well because this throws people often I do this because I put one layer into a group most willing why would you put one layer in a group that for multiple groups well here's the reason why if I choose new group from layer if there was only one one of the advantages is a group can have a layer mask so now when I grew up I have a group with a mask whatever is inside that group will be mast is that too many words massed in the same sentence destroy what it means looks like so I take my great aunt tool I go from say white to black this there we go so now you see what's happened is like too mask this mask is making sure that the dancer is cut out from the background so I only see him then on the group mask I'm creating this gradual fade that looks the way that I want now by doing it that way it's very easy for me to edit either one if I noticed at the last minute oops I cut off part of his toe I work on this mask if I feel like that great thing is too much I congee just move him around and then unlinked this and actually move the grady int and decide where I want himto kind of fade like that not an everyday situation but for times where you suddenly feel like there's a roadblock where I know I need to have a mask on this layer but I do further masking this is a nice solution to be able to do it and it could you continue doing that like another group of that just keep going and out again that's a great worker it really is now the only dangerous. I did hear a rumor once that some guy put like five groups inside each other in his brain exploded because it was just like too much like I don't glide but yeah, I mean that's that's exactly ideas that that and this is this is my recurring point I think I'm really trying to make here is that there's a lot of people a certain point they're like oh I guess I have to merge now in order to do that next thing and my feeling is you hardly ever do any more because by combining and it might be a combination of a mask with a group of the mask and thing we'll talk about next call the clipping mask you know all these things they're not independent functions there if you start thinking well, wait a minute I could if I'm asked the group that will automatically mask everything inside it and it's not I mean even here not that this would make a huge amount of sense but for the sake of argument if I added a layer mask here and let's just on this this is on me on the fly doing things I shouldn't do on the fly but I want to show you something let's do uh having uses for it okay, so here we go what will happen? I don't really know copy that and go back to here on the mask paste this photo and see what that looks like. Maybe so imagine if I said there they want some effect and but it's got I still wanted to preserve the edit ability of all these layers some people in their mind they're thinking we'll have to merge all those layers together to be able to add this text cherie layer mask but you don't because it's just on here, I could still could do things like invert the mass maybe that looks a little better or this is a member of cham you mentioned before about at a certain point, is there something where you have to do something a little more destructive? This would be an example where if I wanted dark in this mask a little bit, I have to use levels directly on the mask this you see how now it's making the mass darker, which in turn is affecting it. But once I click ok that's kind of my new layer mask so that's the one part where potentially you have to think about that a little bit, but again, at worst, in this case, I could just say, you know what? I don't like that delete the mask off the group and kind of redo it, but this is the different mind set it takes because law especially I find especially people been using foolish up a long time. Some of these things either didn't exist before or were not obvious, so their habit was, oh, well, I'll have to merge or I'll have to do you know, some effect to let me get to this point, whereas now days and in today's photoshopped, that really doesn't have to happen that often, so any time you're thinking well, I better have to merge or I'll have to rast arise or I'll have to flatten the chances are you really don't have do there's ways you can get to it. In fact, I think this is way better than the alternative because think about this possibility. I've now got everything I need to possibly at it. I have all the type in here so I could edit spelling, thought, size, et cetera. They're all in a group, so I very quickly have the option to change the color. I've also added a drop shadow that I you have the ability at it if I want. And on top of all that, I've decided the last second that this would look really cool that had a textural look to it. So I added the mask and pace it a photo on there, so every single level of this I can say, ok, never mind the mask and maybe it shouldn't be green should be blue every single level of this I can edit without ever feeling like wow. Gosh, now I have to start all over again, the only time to start all over again, as if you do things like those bad things merge, rast arise race to lead all that kind of stuff. But it is a different way of thinking, you know, I've shown these kind of things many times the people who have been doing for the shop for years now, just like I just never would have thought of that and that's because that whole discussion before about creatures of habit, you do it this way because you just have and it doesn't occur that wait a minute, what if I and the other factor is here's? I don't blame anyone for this because this is new groups used to be simply organizational put things in a group to make the layers panel look more cluttered you didn't use to be able to add layer styles to the whole group, but some also some of these things didn't exist, so people wouldn't think of using groups because the on ly reason for using it was strictly make my layers panel pretty, you know, less cluttered now, it's a functional thing we could say, oh, I could also add a color I can add a mask I can do all these things. And as jim said, you could have taken a step further, saying output that group inside a group and mass that as well and just so much fun, all of these different possibilities.