LayerShop adds two menu items to the File menu of Photoshop Elements, which allow you to perform open and save operations on the layers of a document. So instead of using separate documents for multiple images you can now process these images in one document as layers.
Supported
by Photoshop Elements 11 and higher, Photoshop CS3 and higher
Requirements: None
Added
in Version 1.0, enhanced in 2.0
The Open As Layers menu item opens multiple images as layers in a new document and names each layer after the corresponding file. On the appearing file dialog you can select multiple images by using the Ctrl and Shift keys or by drawing a rectangle around the files. Click the Open button to confirm your selection. Make sure that all image files that you want to open are located in the same folder.
If the selected image files do not have the same image dimensions, smaller images will be center aligned in the document. If one of the selected files is a raw file, the Camera Raw dialog will be shown (with default preference settings). If you select only one raw file, two additional exposure variations of the same raw file are opened as layers (with default preference settings), which is useful for HDR imaging. If more than one file was opened, the Auto-Align Layers dialog is automatically displayed after using this command.
You can influence the behavior of the Open As Layers feature on the LayerShop Preferences dialog.
Supported
by Photoshop Elements 11 and higher, Photoshop CS3 and higher
Requirements: Two or more images have to be open
Added in Version 2.0
The Place Documents as Layers menu item puts all open images as layers into a new document. This is is required for various features of LayerShop. It allows you to open multiple images in Photoshop (Elements), e.g. with drag & drop or from the "Edit In" sub menu in Lightroom, and then put them into one document for further processing.
It asks you if you want to close all open documents without saving. Click "Yes" if you do not need the other documents and they do not need to be saved. Otherwise click "No" and save the other documents later. Documents with multiple layers are flattened before they are added to the new document as a layer.
With default preference settings the Auto-Align Layers dialog is automatically displayed after using this command. You can change this on the Open As Layers sheet on the LayerShop Preferences dialog.
Supported
by Photoshop Elements 11 and higher, Photoshop CS3 and higher
Requirements: None
Added
in Version 1.0, enhanced in 2.0
The Save Layers to Files command saves each layer of a document as a separate image file. The name of each layer will be used as the file name for each saved file. The file extension in the layer name will be changed to the format that is selected for saving.
If a layer has transparent pixels around its borders, these pixels will be cropped away before the image is saved. So not all saved images may have the same image width and height.