Layer Effect Going Blurry?

[Gareth_Williams]

Hi everybody, I’m having some weird problems with layer effects. If I cut out a circle, put a layer effect on it and thten flatten it down into the corner of a square layer, then apply an effect with a stroke to the square layer, the bottom edge goes blurry. If I don’t flatten down the circle into the square layer, the effect works as usual. As you can see with the yellow stroke. I haven’t tried this without putting the effect on the circle layer before merging the layers. I don’t see why that should make any difference! I just can’t work out what’s going on here! It’s only doing it at the bottom as well! I would be grateful for any help. Thanks.

[c.pfaffenbichler · Accepted solution]

Could you please post screenshots taken at View > 100% with the pertinent Panels (Toolbar, Layers, Options Bar, …) visible? 

Apparently the small image has an effect (Glow, Drop Shadow?) that causes this. 

Have you tried Clipping Masking the small image to the large one and applying the Layer Style to the large one. 

[Gareth_Williams]

Thanks c.pfaffenbichler, I figured it out shortly after posting this. The drop shadow from the circle image goes over the edge of the square image at the bottom. Therefor, the whole layer has pixels from the drop shadow below the square. I fixed this by selecting the square before merging the layers, after merging I deleted the inverse of the selection, the rest of the layer out side the square. This solved the problem. Thanks again! 🙂