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I’ve recently installed the latest Adobe Photoshop CS4 beta and I’m really happy with it – however bloated, the application itself looks a bit more lightweight and usable than previous versions, plus the integration with the rest of the Adobe apps is pretty remarkable.

There is (about) a ton of ways to do things with Photoshop and I know that some of my methods are not the best or the most efficient. But one thing that always bugged me was this:

How can I create a new file easily, containing only a layer I select?

This is something I stumble upon all the time when slicing .psds, yet I never seem to find a proper way to handle it.

Until last week! I then discovered the (hidden) joys of Duplicate Layer.

Say you’ve got a layer (or a group of layers) that you want to transfer to a separate file. Right-click, and you’ll see the relevant Duplicate… command:

Now choose a name for the duplicate layer (or just leave it as it is) and select a target for it from the list of opened documents below. Scroll down and you’ll see a New option:

That’s what you want. Select OK and a new file will be opened automatically, containing your favourite layer.

And tada!

It’s not something new, this way, but I just discovered it (as tons of other things) and I just thought to share.

Do you have a better way to do this?

Please do, and share.