How do you promote a slice to a layer

D
Posted By
drums
Feb 6, 2007
Views
601
Replies
7
Status
Closed
Using PS 7.0
I was given a flat PSD. I created slices and would like those slices to be layers. How do you go about promoting a slice to a layer? If I choose "New layer based on slice" from the layer menu it removes all the layers and creates one that covers the whole image wiping out the layers I created. It seems that I should have created the layers using this option instead of using the layer tool? But when I do that I can’t resize the layer…
Thanks!

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C
chrisjbirchall
Feb 6, 2007
* Jump to Image Ready.

* Select>Create Selection from slice

* Ctrl+J
D
drums
Feb 7, 2007
That options is greyed out so I selected all and did it but it takes all as one which is what Photoshop does.

I took a flat image and created slices. I want those slices to be layers so I can switch stuff in and out.
Thanks!
C
chrisjbirchall
Feb 7, 2007
That options is greyed out

You need to make the slice active first using the "Slice Select" tool.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Feb 7, 2007
Hi Drums,

I’ve been playing around with this a little tonight, thinking how it seems as though there should be a command of "Promote Slices to Layers", yet there isn’t. So, could one make an action to perform the same function? Well, I couldn’t determine a way since there’s no "Select Next Slice" command, which would be needed as would a way to terminate the action upon "Last Slice Selected". I’ll bet there is a way to do something like that with scripting, but I’m not script-savvy.

So, for an expedited manual way to do this, I created a simple action that first does a "Create Selection from Slices", followed by "Create Layer via Cut", and finally a "Select Layer – Background". Initially I had a Select Slice command, but that was obviously wrong since it caused the action to always select the same slice. And, the reselection of the Background layer had to be done so that the newly created layer would not be the active layer for the next execution of the action. This does limit the action however to only being applicable to slicing & layering the bacgkround into multiple layers.

In any case, once that action was made, I was able to quickly click on each slice with the Slice Select tool, invoke the action for each slice, and easily build a set of layers.

Hope that helps,

Daryl
D
drums
Feb 8, 2007
Chris,
I did not see an option for "slice select" tool in Illustrator 7 only a slice tool and clicking individual slices did nothing…
Thanks though.

Daryl,
I do not know scripting…

I did things differently so that I didn’t have to try to use the slices as layers by having the client give me that piece separatley.

Thanks for all your help though!
C
chrisjbirchall
Feb 9, 2007
did not see an option for "slice select" tool in Illustrator 7

My suggestion in post #1 was to use ImageReady not Illustrator.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Feb 9, 2007
Drums,

I don’t know anything about scripting either. Building an action does not require scripting, as an action is simply a recorded series of commands that you can play back as needed to repeat the process and save time. I failed to mention that the action I created was done in ImageReady, but perhaps that is obvious from the fact I used the ImageReady-only command of ‘Create Selection from Slices’.

If you think you might encounter this "problem" again in the future, you may still find it worthwhile to build an action. Here are the steps to do so, assuming you have a single-layer image you’re working from.

1. Open the image in ImageReady or Photoshop
2. Define your slices
3. If in Photoshop, jump to ImageReady
4. Choose the Slice Select tool
5. Select the first slice in your image
6. In the Actions palette, choose New Action
7. In the resulting dialog, name the action, assign the action to a Function key, and select Record
8. Perform: Select > Create Selection from Slices
9. Perform: Layer > New > Layer via Cut
10. In the Layers palette, reselect your original image layer 11. Stop the recording of the Action.

Now, for all remaining slices, click on each slice with the Slice Select tool and execute your action via the function key or playback button. If you repeat this down to the last slice, you’ll have promoted all slices to their own layer and the original layer will now be empty of content and can be deleted.

Daryl

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Easy-to-use drag-n-drop Photoshop scene creator with more than 2800 items.

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