I'm Trying To Copy a Selected Area but It's Not Letting Me...

287 views3 repliesLast post: 6/11/2007
Basically...i'm trying to draw something for a college assignment, and i drew a background, and then i started a new image and drew a character on it. I then wanted to copy that character and paste it on the background. I lasso'd the character and then went to paste it...but like two lines pasted...and i'm like what??

Now i think it's something to do about layers, but it's really confusing me, and it's something i've been working on all day, so i'm getting a bit stressed now.

Can anybody help me? I'd be ever so grateful?
#1
Luke,

I'm not sure what part of your image those two lines are, so I'll ignore the content description and just say that when you are copying content to paste elsewhere, the layer containing that content must be the currently active layer. If you are trying to copy an image built from multiple layers and yet you want all data across those layers, then you need to create a new layer that is a merge of your other layers and use it as the source for your copy command. I've seen in the forum that there is some way to do that...to create a new layer from the linked layers via some single shortcut command, yet I can't seem to find it at the moment.

Regards,

Daryl
#2
Or, instead of merging the layers make the selection and use Edit>Copy Merged.
#3
Aha! Ed, I tried that yesterday, expecting but not finding it to work for me. I've rarely used Copy Merged yet thought that should handle the task Luke was attempting. My problem was that I think I was selecting multiple layers, thinking Copy Merge would create a new layer that was an equivalent of the merge of those layers. On the PC I'm using here a work, which only has PS CS and doesn't support selection of multiple layers (linking only) yet does still offer Copy Merged, I realized that command was supposed to be performed relative to a selected area, in which case a Select All, followed by Copy Merged takes care of what I was attmpting. I prefer that approach over the one I originally suggested.

Regards,

Daryl
#4