How to preserve access to retouched layers after saving your work?

[BH888]

Photoshop newbie here:

Have been practicing specific retouching tasks; - by following one of Scott Kelby’s books. Only recently have I begun putting the separate tasks together into a workflow for a complete retouch of a portrait image.

Yesterday, I partially completed retouching an image in PS and saved it (Cntrl + S).  When I reopened the image today to continue the retouching, all the separate layers of the image had disappeared and had been incorporated into one, single Background Layer.

What is the appropriate way to save your work and, yet, preserve access to the layers created during the initial stages of a retouch??

[Sahil.Chawla]

Hi there,

To preserve the layers in Photoshop, you need to save the document as a psd (Photoshop Document).
You can open the file later and continue where you left off.

You can have a look at this article for more information: File formats in Adobe Photoshop

Regards,
Sahil

[BH888]

When I saved (& re-saved) the image file in question with Cntrl + S, I don't believe I designated a file format.  It turns out that the image was saved as a tiff file.  Shouldn't the layers have been preserved within a tiff file?

Naive question, but do I designate the file format (as PSD) the very first time I save the file (i.e., "save as")?   Then, anytime thereafter, I can simply use Cntrl +S to continue saving the file as a PSD file?   Yes?

[BH888]

Although I am not really certain, I may have created a stamped visible layer before saving.  But maybe not.

Should it matter?