Combining layers without "merge" choice

[DaveD]

I watched a video where a guy had several layers open and he says to combine the layers select the first (bottom) layer and the last (top) layer while pressing shift.
I tried this but nothing happened and I was thinking maybe that's a newer version option, eh?
Is there a way to combine several layers without clicking "merge down" constantly? Also the merge option wasn't even available when I tried this technique.

 

[Hoogle]

holding shift and selecting top and bottom layers should select all of them you can tehn press cntrl +shift + e and that will merge all your layers into 1 layer as a new layer keeping all your other layers in tact and this feature has been around since cs2 and probably before that.

 

[rainyseason]

Alternatively, you could select all of the layers you want to combine by shift clicking them (or ctrl clicking if they're not contiguous) and then press control + g to group them. This way is less permanent than merging because you can ungroup them later and edit them separately if you want.

 

[IamSam]

Rainy - This is fine unless your required to work on the merged layer.

What I always do is select the layers by shift clicking the top and bottom layers or command/control clicking if they're not contiguous, and then press command/control + J to duplicate them, then command/control + E to merge them them. You can re-select the original layers and then group them (and turn the group off) or just turn the original layers off. Either way you have a copy of the original layers to fall back on.

 

[DaveD]

None of these tips work for my version (7)
I click all these things and nothing works.

 

[IamSam]

This is a copy of the layer keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop 7........



They should work.