Help with merge

[CjH]

Hi I am working on the film strip and have my pics in the strip and have merged them together. I have did other things to my pic after the merge and now have decied to change the pics in the film strip. How do I seperate the merge so I can change them. Thanks for your help I love these tutroials and the forum. This website is a really big help.

[Diana]

Hi CjH and welcome to Elements Village.

This may work for you if you haven't saved the file after your changes.

From the menu, click Window > Undo History. This will open the Undo History palette. If you haven't saved your file, and haven't performed too many steps since your merge, you can go back to the last step before the merge in the history. But this will undo everything you did from the merge on. However, when you save your file, the history is reset so all the steps disappear.

If you aren't able to undo, or don't want to undo all the subsequent work on the image, the only other solution I can think of is to select the photo and delete it.

Zoom way in on the photo. Use the Polygonal Lasso tool to select around the edges of the photo (just the photo, don't select any part of the filmstrip). When you get the marching ants around the whole photo, then press delete. This should leave a hole in your layer. Then you should be able to add another photo, move it beneath the layer with the hole, and position the photo to fill the hole.

Diana

[CjH]

Thanks I give it a try. I might have to start over.

[CjH]

Well it didn't work because I had saved it. But Thanks for your help and your Welcome.. i did learn something and I will probably be back asking other dumb questions. I try to read new questions in the forum every day. Thanks again Diana

[cats4jan]

Why did you merge? Did you want to be able to move the layers as a whole?

If so, you can use link -

select your layers - and click on the link icon at the top of the layers palette - it looks like chain links.

When you want to unlink a layer, click on your layer and click on the link icon again - it will unlink your layers and you can treat them as individual layers again.

Merge is a drastic step that should be avoided whenever possible - because the secret of PSE is the layers.

If you need a jpg - you can save your project as both a psd and a jpg - keeping editing options with that psd file.

[CjH]

Thanks I hadn't found the little chain. Yes I was moving several photos in a film strip. I wanted to change one of the photos. I remember seeing a tutorial about unlocking a merge now. Thanks again for the tip don't merge if you don't need to.

[Diana]

If you wish to curve the filled filmstrip using the Shear Filter, you must merge the photos with the filmstrip before applying the filter.

However, you can create a merged layer and still keep your original layers intact and unmerged.....Ctrl-click on each layer you want to merge to select them (such as the filmstrip and all the photos in the frames), then press Shift+Ctrl+Alt+E to create a new merged layer at the top which is a combination of the filmstrip+photos. Then you can apply Filter > Distort > Shear to the new merged layer.

If later you should decide you want to replace the photos, just delete the merged layer.

Diana

[CjH]

cool, I want to give it a try. There was someone that had a tutitorial on curving the filmstrip. Was that you Diana?
Carol

[CjH]

I tried to curve the filled filmstrip using shear filter. I got it to curve but lost the other things I had on the page. Oops I think I got it just drag the strip under the other layers. thank you so much