re MERGE VISABLE STAMP -

[darrent17412506]

in my normal workflow of beauty retouching, i have several steps, dodge/burn, freq separation, heal/stamp...all on blank layers...once i create a merge visable stamp, can i go back to those blank layers if i need to do more work on them or are they essentially "merged" and no longer available to work on?

i normally make the visable stamp at the end to do liquify, etc...

but what if i forgot something...do i need to add a blank mask ABOVE the stamp to continue my retouching?

[Michael J. Hoffman]

Hi Darren,

I have moved this post from the non-technical Lounge forum into the Photoshop forum.

When end you create your Merge Visible stamped layer, are you creating it at the top of the Layer stack, keeping the other layers intact? If so, you can mask the stamped layer to reveal the underlying layers. However, if you’ve warped the layer using Liquify, the underlying layers may not line up exactly.

One possible idea would be: instead of creating a new layer and merging, you can collect the original layers into an embedded Smart Object. As a Smart Object, the original layers are embedded and preserved. You can Liquify or run other filters, but can still double click the Smart Object to open and edit the unaltered original data.

See here for more information about Smart Objects:

Work with Smart Objects in Photoshop

Mike

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Liquify has for a long time not worked as a Smart Filter by default but for a couple versions now it does, so employing »Merge Visible« here is imprudent and Michael J. Hoffman’s advice regarding the inclusion of Smart Objects in your workflow is good indeed.

[wes1]

You can make changes in the layers but you, then, have to make a new merge visible to include the update layers. Short cut on MAC Cmd Opt Shift E.