7 Editing Styles
Define, or edit styles, and single layer effects
To find a broader overview of Styles, please see the main Styles page. Only editing of styles will be discussed here. The extra page is needed because of the large size of the Layer Style dialog.
If you have applied a number of layer effects to a layer, and would like to save them as a style, you can do so by double-clicking the layer effects italic f that appears on the layer to which the effects are applied to open the Layer Style dialog. Once it is open, click on the New Style button to add the current combination of effects along with all of their settings as a new style in the current styles palette.
Please note that your new, custom styles will be lost if you load a new styles set in the Styles palette. Custom styles are also lost if you delete your preferences file. To save custom styles permanently, you need to save them to a custom set. Do this by choosing Edit > Preset Manager. In the dialog that opens, choose Styles from the Preset Type menu. Then click and Shift-click to choose all of the styles that you want to include in your custom set. Click the Save Set button and give the set a descriptive name. After you have closed and reopened Photoshop, the new set will appear in the Styles palette menu.
You can edit settings for styles that have already been applied, by opening the Layer Styles dialog and clicking on the particular styles name panel on the left side of the dialog. You'll then see all of the current options and settings for that particular effect.
For an in depth look at each of the layer effects, as well as the advanced blend modes, including knockout, please see the Reference: Effects section of this site.
As you can see, you can add, or subtract effects from the style, and preview how it will look, on the right, as well as choose various blending modes.
Please note that this page has been updated from a Photoshop 6 version. I have continued to use the screen capture illustrations made using that version. So if you notice cosmetic discrepancies in the illustrations, that's why.
The illustration below shows what you would get if you clicked on the individual effect, Bevel and Emboss, in the Layers palette. Here you can edit all the variables available for that effect while previewing the changed settings in the box on the right side of the dialog box.
The dialog box that appears when you click on individual effects will be specific to that effect. As you can see, below, the features in the Gradient Overlay edit box are completely different from those in the Bevel and Emboss box shown above.
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