P: Multiple and reorder/sort effects/styles

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I would love to be able to have 2 different drop shadows, inner shadows, gradients etc in a single layer. Very often I have to dupe the layer, put 0 fill and apply extra styles that way. It's inconvenient and messy, especially when trying to apply the same effect onto other layers.

Also, it would be great if I were able to sort the effects. Meaning, I could put drop shadow above or below inner shadow, stroke above the inner shadow and bevel, etc.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Exactly! Now, let's get promote this feature to the world! 🙂

[John F Newman]

I like being able to stack multiple strokes and fills into a single Illustrator object.

Being able to do something similar in a PSD layer would be a great help.

[powal1234]

@Adobe: what do you think?

Any news regarding this request?

[Anri Orlow]

Guys, I described this concept here
http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

There's a lot more, but it's maybe most important.
And I will be greateful if you'll support my list

[PECourtejoie]

Since layer groups can now have styles, it gives an workaround to change their order.

[powal1234]

Keeping the initial request legit.

I wonder where the technical difficulties with this request are. Obviously Adobe would have already added support if it was easy.

Supposedly some old spaghetti code relict, no dev wants to touch 😉 I mean (besides this fabulous group feature), there were no big visible changes in effects system itself for a long time.

@Adobe: what do you say?

Cheers

[PECourtejoie]

I think that the issue would be compatibility with the other applications, and legacy applications...

[powal1234]

That would have been my next shot but considering Adobe's uncompromising policy on InDesign updates I hope it's not about compatibility. I mean It Should be downwards compatible, right?

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Plus the problem of getting consistent compositing among all the possible effects (they have a certain order for a reason).

[powal1234]

@Chris Cox: Thank you for caring. I love Adobe taking care of their customers.

Well, this is exactly what we want to have control over.
What about adding some pattern overlay on top of color overlay? Or what about adding some color overlay on top of inner stroke? The list of combinations seems endless :-)
Name some side-effects.. Presently I cannot think about any harmful combination.
We'd so much love if the feature was at least taken under consideration!

Cheers

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

side effects: ugly artifacts, things not drawing correctly, gaps in drawing where you don't expect them, etc.
Again, the effects are in a particular order for a reason. It would take quite a bit of work to make them reorderable.

We've heard the request, but it's more work than you might imagine.

[powal1234]

Humm, I understand. Would love to see it in future though.
Would be big help for lots of screendesigners out there, I think.

For the moment this doesn't matter so much due to simple workaround possibilities :-)

Thanks

[sob508508]

We could also be making better use of this clever piece of software http://csshat.com that will convert the PS effects layers to CSS code. It's too new for me to say that it is a frequent part of my PSD to HTML workflow yet, but I can def see the potential.

[JohnMazz]

@Chris Cox: "We've heard the request, but it's more work than you might imagine."

Isn't that the job of your developers? You're not going to implement something because it's too much work?

This is something that should have been possible years ago.

The fact that I can't put a Pattern Overlay on top of a Color Overlay, or a Drop Shadow on top of an Outer Glow is ridiculous.

[powal1234]

Johnmazz, take a breath and have a look at what Chris achieved and what he seems to really be passionate about.

Chosing features in software development can be a frustrating tradeoff. Well this specific feature obviously is something easy to workaround what should lower implementation priority.

Considering priority vs. complexity such features take their time to get into development. Have you tried the new RAW filter, non-destructive liquify or the new nondestructive blur?
Well I guess Chris had his fingers in developing these and for sure choice was right investing into new innovative features instead of digging into complexity which can be easily worked around by anybody.

:-) Nevertheless, let's sound the feedback voice as loud as possible so we can serve ideas to make things better.

Cheers

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

@POWALOWSKI A workaround isn't always that "easy". I guess it depends on what you are using PS for, but in a complex UI design for example, with lots of buttons, tabs etc - creating workarounds for every single element gets pretty tedious. And maybe later you want to change something...

In such cases, this feature would be a huge time saver!

[powal1234]

@björn absolutely agree on this one. That stuff can really go fiddly and annoying on bigger projects. Using group-effects slows performance, so working around (as expected) can be frustrating in some cases. Smart Objects is also not always sophisticating (especially concerning scalability and shape features) .

Hope to see movements on this specific feature as soon as possible.
@Adobe?

These days designing flat makes things easier for me though. 😉

[Garconis]

Being able to put Pattern Overlay on top of Color Overlay would be great. Or Gradient over Color, etc. I hate having to re-paint my layer just to give a certain effect, when just adding a color overlay would've worked...if only it didn't cover my pattern overlay effect. Let's get this option in the works...

[powal1234]

Ever thought about using groups as layer-style effect containers?With that you can easily workaround the issue without having to duplicate layers.
Be cautious - too many group (especially nested) styles seem to be very resource heavy and at some point can slow down your work. Keep that in mind to prevent frustration 😉

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Also, changing blend modes could help if you want to keep it as a single layer.

[Garconis]

I am aware of both. I am also aware that both have restrictions. I sometimes like to create a layer that has a gradient and then a color overlay to give that gradient a quickly editable color/hue. Then I sometimes will add a semi-transparent pattern overtop both.

However, that currently isn't possible without either re-editing both the Gradient and Color Overlay blend modes, or creating a new layer and applying the Pattern Overlay to the new layer with a 0% fill. What I'd really like to do is just drag the Pattern Overlay effect above the Color and Gradient Overlays.

That is just one example of when I'd like to create an effect with just 1 layer, but have to resort to creating multiple.

[zarrdave]

In the "Layer style" dialogue box in Photoshop, along the left of the pop-up box are "styles" which can be applied to that layer. e.g. strokes, gradients, bevels, pattern, glows etc.

The styles have a specific and fixed layer order. "Bevel & Emboss" at the top through to "Drop shadow" at the bottom.

They cannot currently be re-arranged, but sometimes different effects could be achieved if the priority order could be changed. For example, "outer glow" underneath/ behind "drop shadow" or "inner glow" above "inner shadow" or "color overlay" behind "gradient overlay".

I would like to see a way to CONTROL THE ORDER that styles are applied, either on a layer basis, document wide or both.

Note to admin: Please don't merge this with the topic "Photoshop: Allow renaming of Layers in Layer Styles dialog ". My suggestion is not regarding re-naming a layer style, but re-ordering.

[zarrdave]

Seems like this needs to be a JDI, Adobe. No more excuses please, JDI (Just Do It).

[J453]

I appreciate the enthusiasm. To give some additional insight, this is not a simple/small change and would greatly impact file compatibility - so we'd need to proceed carefully implementing such a feature.

[zarrdave]

Appreciate that, Jeffrey. Just hoping the first step/s can finally be started though, otherwise they'll never get done.