As any Adobe Photoshop user will tell you, the ability to apply layer styles like outer glow, colour overlay or drop shadow to any particular Photoshop layer is a fantastic and indispensible tool when it comes to making elements “pop” in any particular design. However, did you know that you can actually convert or rather upgrade these layer styles into their own, editable layers?
To achieve this is actually pretty simple. Select the layer with the layer styles applied that you want to convert and initiate the following main menu selection:
Layer > Layer Style > Create Layers
As you can see, your carefully applied layer styles will now all be contained in their very own layer – which is of course pretty nifty when you think of all the new design possibilities now unlocked…
An example:
Map with two layer styles applied
After converting, you now have two new layers to work with