Organising a many-layered image

[Nanako]

Hi everyone. i'm wondering if anyone can provide some advice on managing a lot of layers. (USing photoshop CS5)

Basically, what i have is an image of a character. kind of a perspective view, 2.5D if you will

Each part of the character fits in a certain place in the layer order. He faces to the right, so the left arm/leg must be at the bottom, then the torso/head in the middle, and the right hand side of him at the top. It's a little more detailed than that, but you have the general gist of it, the order of each part must be maintained.

Now aside from that, i actually have two sets of parts. One is the base character, naked. And one is clothing/armour for all those body parts. I'm planning to make several more outfits and right now it's getting kind of unmanageable.

Again, like the draw order quoted above, the outfit parts must also be in their correct place, each one exactly above the body part it goes on, and below the bodyparts that draw on top of it. So i end up with these two sets of layers interleaving, in a very messy way.



So, what i'd like to do, is figure out some way of sorting things a bit better. I'm not too familiar with the deeper workings of photoshop, but i've heard of smart objects, linking layers, and grouping layers with the little folder button. maybe these features would help, but i don't fully understand them, advice is appreciated.

What i'd like to be able to do, would be, at a minimum, to toggle the visibility of an entire set of layers at once, without affecting the other sets. If it's possible, it'd also be nice to be able to transform, and use filters/adjustments/selections on an entire set of layers simultaneously, too.

What's absolutely important is that everything maintains it's proper position in the draw order, and everything is non-destructive. no merging of layers.

Is what i'm asking possible?

 

[Zeealex]

if you organise your layer into sets of a certain number, say theres 18 layers, you can split them up into three groups of 6 one group called "bottom" which houses the layers that need to be at the bottom, one labelled "middle" for the middle layers etc etc.

to do this there is a little icon at the bottom of the layers tab that looks like a folder, Click it, and it will appear in the layers tab. double click it to change it's name

 

[Nanako]

hii. i'm afraid that won't do

as i said, i was simplifying things a lot with the front/middle/back metaphor. It's really more like leftlowerarm in front of left hand, left lowerarm_armor infront of left lowerarm, left upperarm on top of that, left upperarm armour on top of that.

The two sets, armor and body, are completely interleaved, alternating almost every other layer. i'd need to arrange it into 36 different sets, one for each bodypart, aaand that would defeat the purpose...


maybe grouping isn't the answer, what about the other features ?

 

[ibclare]

It would help if you explain in more detail what layers you want to toggle on and off. I am thinking you want to try the different outfits on so these are what you want to toggle.

If so, there is really no direct way to do the entire outfit with one click/toggle because as you have described, the body parts and their respective clothing are in strict order. To do what you want to do, you would have to make those 36 sets. Putting things into groups or smart objects will help you to organize your layer panel so that you can see what you have and you can apply your adjustments to these if you like. But you will only be able to group those things which are associated. So the items that must be stacked over the right arm can be grouped, but there's no way to group all the armor as it would be out of order in 2 of the 3 positions.

If you decide you would like to make some groups just to tidy up your layers panel, here is what you can do to organize them such as you have them at this point. Focus on the right arm for example. In one group you can put all the outfits, one on top of the other and the right arm at the bottom. Select each of the relevant layers, using the ctl key (if they aren't contiguous). Once selected, do ctl + g and this will group them and put them into a folder together. You can put an adjustment layer inside the folder, at the top of the layer group, but be sure to change the blend mode of the folder itself from pass-through to normal.

Smart objects aren't going to solve this problem. They would work similarly to the groupings, but there's no reason to go into that since they aren't applicable.

Unless ... I haven't understood what you're getting at. In which case, please explain, lol.

 

[jaysuess]

Select the groups/layers that make up, say, the first outfit and convert them to a smart object. This smart object is still editable but all of your groups and layers appear as only 1 layer in your master file. The same for outfit #2, etc. Or you could make separate smart objects out of just the pants, the top, etc. By double-clicking on any smart object, your original multi-layer work will appear in a separate window. Make any changes and save and you'll go back to the master file. I've used this technique many times and it definitely helps keep your file organized. Hope this helps. Cheers!

 

[ibclare]

Jay, I totally agree with how nicely smart objects work (for even more reasons than organization), but using them this still means that each smart object will have to incorporate separate arms and body due to the order of the layering, correct? I think that is what Nanako is trying to avoid. But maybe not.