Adobe Photoshop CC For Dummies
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The Styles panel in Photoshop CC is hidden by default. Choose Window→Styles to make it visible. This panel, which you see with its menu open in this figure, is where you find and store layer styles and is the easiest way to apply a layer style to your active layer.

When you first open the Styles panel, you see four sets: Basics, Natural, Fur, and Fabric. The 20 styles in those sets are great — if you happen to need a wood or rabbit fur or tweed texture. If you want some useful styles, open the panel menu and select Legacy Styles and More. Then you can select a set of styles by clicking the Legacy Files and More disclosure arrow. Shown in the following figure are All Legacy Default Styles, and there’s a bunch of them. Click the Styles Panel menu button to display Style Panel options.

Photoshop styles panel

To apply a layer style via the Styles panel, make the target layer active by clicking it in the Layers panel; then click the style that you want to apply. It’s truly that simple!

You cannot apply a style to a background layer.

To remove a layer style from the active layer, press Ctrl/Cmd + Z or choose Edit and then Undo. You can click the middle button to save a custom layer style, and you can drag a layer style to the Trash icon on the right to delete it from the panel.

What you find in the styles panel menu

Take a look at the Styles panel menu shown in the figure, starting from the top and making your way down to the bottom. The first command simply adds the style applied to the active layer to the panel.

In the second section of the menu, you can choose from five different ways to view the content of the Styles panel. The Text Only, Small List, and Large List options might come in handy after you create a bunch of custom styles with names you recognize, but until you become familiar with the styles in the panel, their names are pretty much meaningless.

The default Large Thumbnail option gives you a better view of the effects in the style, but you see fewer styles at a time in the panel than you can with the default Small Thumbnail view.

At the bottom of the styles panel are three icons. They are:

  • Folder: Opens the Group Name dialog box. Enter a name and the group appears at the bottom of the Styles panel. Open the group and you can drag and drop a style folder into the group, or drag individual styles into the group. This moves, but does not copy, folders and styles into the new group from their original location.
  • New Style: Opens the New Style dialog box. This command gives you the option of saving the currently selected style as a new preset. This option is handy if you’ve modified a style in the Layers panel after applying it. Enter a name for the new style and click OK, or cancel if you change your mind. The new style is added to the bottom of the Styles panel.
  • Delete: Opens a dialog to delete the selected style(s). Click OK to delete or Cancel if you decide to keep the style. If you delete styles that you have not exported the styles are gone forever more.

'Housekeeping' commands

Five commands in the Styles panel menu are “housekeeping" commands because you use them to control the content of the panel:
  • Rename Style: The Rename Style command opens the Rename Style dialog box. Enter a new name for the preset and Click OK.
  • Delete Style: Opens the Delete Style dialog box. Click OK to deleete or Cancel if you have second thoughts. Deleting a style in undoable, so proceed with caution.
  • Append Default Styles: Opens a dialog the enables you to append style defaults to the list of style presets. Click OK to append the presets or Cancel.
  • Import Styles: Opens the Styles dialog box, which shows a list of your exported styles. Select the desired style set(s) and click Open. Imported styles can be found at the bottom of the Styles panel.
  • Export Selected Styles: The Export Selected Styles command lets you save the styles you current have selected in the panel as a new set of styles. This command opens the Save dialog box. Enter a new for the selected styles and click Save. The new set is saved in the Styles folder. After exporting a style set, if for any reason you remove a style set from the panel you can import it.

Other parts of the styles panel menu

The last two commands on the Styles panel menu are used to control the visibility of the panel (Close) and the visibility of the panel and those panels nested with it (Close Tab Group), which depends on how you’ve arranged Photoshop’s panels in your workspace.

About This Article

This article is from the book:

About the book author:

Peter Bauer is an award-winning photographer and contributing writer for Photoshop User and Layers magazines. He is best known as the Help Desk Director for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP), but he has also authored or coauthored a dozen books on Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, computer graphics, and photography.

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