P: Multiple and reorder/sort effects/styles

This would make my life SO much easier. Particularly moving other effects on top of a stroke and multiple drop shadows. I've actually had to use over 10 duplicates of a shape layer in the past to get a desired style before. Every UI design I do ends up having duplicate layers for something because of this.

I would love the ability to stack/rearrange layer styles. As others have mentioned, I run into situations all the time where I would like to use a drop shadow more than once, in different directions, and I end up having to duplicate the layer just to achieve the desired effect.

People on dribbble have expressed desire for this feature as well: http://dribbble.com/shots/301992-Stac...

It could be as simple as right clicking "Drop shadow" in the layer styles window, having an option that says "duplicate style", and then showing an item in list of styles called "Drop shadow 2". Or there could be a + button somewhere in the window that lets you add more of any type of style to this particular layer.

It'd be great if you could re-order layer styles.

For instance say I had a square with a 10px stroke and drop shadow applied to it and I wanted the drop shadow to be over the stoke effect. We should be able to move styles up or down.

Make sense?

In Photoshop, it would be a great help to be able to re-order the layer styles... It's inconvenient to create new layers just because inner glows block out edge patterns, for example.

This is a feature request to revamp the way layer effects are stacked.


Currently, layer effects can only be stacked in a specific order, and there can only be one instance of each effect. To get around this, we designers have to create duplicates of layers--sometimes dozens of duplicates--in order to apply the layer effects in the order and quantity that we desire. Illustrator does effect stacking the way it should be done. We need the same thing in Photoshop.


I'm a UI Designer. I and others like me use layer effects extensively to create awesome visual elements in our interface designs. But managing hundreds of layers becomes massively time consuming, especially when a change to one layer means we have to change all the copies of that layer. If we could stack effects instead of layers, we could drastically reduce the amount of busywork we have to do.


It would also be great if we could change the default values of layer effects (global lighting, anyone?), but that's another topic.


There is no reason this couldn't be backward-compatible; If "maximize compatibility" is turned on, Photoshop could simply do the same thing that we do today (duplicating layers), but it would do so invisibly and we would only work with a single "master" layer (which to the user is indistinguishable from a regular layer). Then, in older versions of Photoshop, all those effect layers would still be visible and editable.

It would be easier than you might think: all Photoshop needs to do is create layers behind the scenes that stack effects in the order and quantity that we want them. Users of older Photoshop versions would open the file and see a bunch of layers with similar names, but to users of the new Photoshop it would just look like one layer. This would require absolutely no changes to the way Photoshop stores information, it would simply be a UI change.

It would be great if layer style effects could be duplicated and rearranged. It would give everybody huge flexibility. Pleeeeease))

Idea: I want freedom from the confines of the style options dialogue box!

Right now, when you double click a random layer, you get to change styles like 'Drop Shadow', 'Outer Glow', etc...

You should allow us to drag and drop these styles in different order. And changing the order of these style 'layers' acts like changing the order of your projects 'layers'. Your Drop Shadow can visually be underneath or above the Outer Glow. Also, allow us to duplicate these 'layers', like the Drop Shadow, to make more changes that are visually interesting. Or add as many Strokes as you want. Or delete layers...

I'd like this, too. I imagine it'd open up quite a few code and UI challenges. Plus, there'd be lots of Layer Style orders that wouldn't make sense or look good... but I'd still like a way to have multiples.

More powerful layer styles would mean using less layers and faster editing.

Allowing layer effects to be rearranged and having multiple instances can reduce complexity and layer duplication.