Michelle Peeters

Save a Photoshop file with layers

Thursday 13 December 2018, 12:30 by | 10,404 views | 3 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Suppose you've already made lots of edits to your photo and want to continue working on it later. How do you safely save your file in Photoshop without losing all the layers containing your edits?

Via File, Save, you can save your work in different file types. Choose Photoshop as the type. A Photoshop file can be recognised by the '.psd' extension after the file name.

Photoshop save as psd


The Photoshop format (PSD) is the standard file format and the only format that, apart from the Large Document Format (PSB), supports all Photoshop features (TIFF is a close second).

Thanks to the extensive integration between Adobe products, you can import PSD files directly into other Adobe applications, such as Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere and After Effects, while retaining many Photoshop features.

When you save a PSD, you have the option to maximise the file's compatibility. This saves a version of the image with the different layers merged into the file.

This version can be opened in other programmes, including older versions of Photoshop.

The document's appearance is also preserved, in case the behaviour of some features changes in future versions of Photoshop. If you include the composite, the image also loads and can be used much faster in applications other than Photoshop.

You can also save high dynamic range (HDR) images with 16 or 32 bits per channel as a PSD file.

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Dit artikel is voor het laatst bijgewerkt op 13 december 2018.
De eerste publicatiedatum is zaterdag 15 september 2018, 13:31.
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Michelle Peeters

About the author

Michelle Peeters is fotografe en oprichter van DeuxBleus Fotografie. Michelle herkent het bijzondere in het gewone en het gewone in het bijzondere. Ze heeft zich nooit willen specialiseren en is daardoor van alle markten thuis.

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3 comments

  1. guest wrote on Saturday 15 September 2018 at 18:09  | reply

    Is this little triviality really worth an article? Every Photoshop user has known this for ages.

    Translated from Dutch.
  2. Michelle Peeters
    Profile Michelle Peeters wrote on Saturday 15 September 2018 at 19:10  | reply

    @Leo: you might still be surprised about that, we get quite a lot of questions about basic Photoshop operations.

    Translated from Dutch.
  3. PvRFotografie
    Profile PvRFotografie wrote on Tuesday 18 September 2018 at 11:17  | reply

    You already touch on it a bit: TIFF can do it too, but produces considerably larger files. That's why I save everything with layers as PSD. Without layers, I also regularly save an existing one as a TIFF. This as a good alternative to JPG.

    Translated from Dutch.

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Elja Trum

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