Activate a Layer Set, go to the pop-out arrow in the upper right corner of the Layers panel, and drag down to Merge Group—or hit Command + E. This will REPLACE the Layer Group that combines all the Layers from the Group into one Layer.

But sometimes I want to get a merged version of a Group to work with and maintain the Group with its component layers intact.

To do this, select the original Layer Group and hit Command + Option + E. This will merge the Group into a NEW Layer above the existing Layer Group rather than replacing it.

Why would you want to do this? Perhaps you want to blur the entire Layer Group to make it appear as though it’s in the background, but still keep all the Layers editable just in case you want to adjust and re-blur later.

Mike Rankin takes you through the simple steps in the article, but I’ll tell you from experience that this is the sort of thing that is best left to designers who are obsessive about details like naming and organizing their layers, regardless of what program they’re working in. And as Mike points out, this is something that is best left as the “final” step—as you won’t know (or have a whole lot of control over) what remains editable after the conversion.

For the love of God, PLEASE NAME YOUR LAYERS. There’s nothing worse than opening a Photoshop file with 50 layers that are named Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 1 copy, Layer 4 copy, Layer 4 copy 2 (you get the idea). It makes it extremely difficult to work with later on; especially if that Photoshop file was created by someone else.

Name your layers in a short but descriptive manner. And don’t be afraid to group things into Layer folders. Photoshop even has a Note tool you can use (found under the Eyedropper tool). You’ll have a much easier time editing it later, and anyone else that has to work with the file will thank you.

First create an adjustment layer using the color adjustment of your choice. In the example above, I’ve chosen Color Balance. Next use the Blending Mode drop down menu at the top of the Layers panel to set the layer blending mode to Luminosity.

Now when you tweak the settings in your Adjustments panel, Photoshop will limit the changes to only the gray values in your image. As you can see in the image above, leaving the Blending Mode of the Adjustment Layer set to Normal introduces a lot of color shifting in the image. By changing it to Luminosity, Photoshop prevents it from taking place.

Those are some hefty numbers for a Photoshop document. Bert Monroy has made his previous 15,000 layer Photoshop file that took 11 months to create pale in comparison.

Bert’s latest digital painting, titled Times Square, is a 300×60 inch, 6.5 GB flattened Photoshop file features Adobe Photoshop founders John and Thomas Knoll standing in the main foreground, surrounded by digital imaging experts such as Russell Brown and Jeff Schewe.

Here are a few more stats of the image:

• The image size is 60 inches by 300 inches.
• The flattened file weighs in at 6.52 Gigabytes.
• It took four years to create.
• The painting is comprised of almost 3,000 individual Photoshop and Illustrator files.
• Taking a cumulative total of all the files, the overall image contains over 500,000 layers.

The Photoshop file on the site can be zoomed using Photoshop’s Zoomify tool, which allows you a close-up view of all the details in the image, and they are amazing!

When you have a lot of layers in your document and want to work on the objects on one single layer more easily, activate the Layers panel and hold theOption key down while you click the little eye icon of the layer you want to work on. All other layers in the document will be turned off. When you’re done, simply Option click the same eye icon of the active layer again to make the remaining layers visible.