Open, Edit and Save a Photoshop File – Classic Day 2

The Fundamentals

Opening a file, changing it, and saving it sounds like the least interesting thing you will ever do in Photoshop. It is also the part that decides whether you can come back to an edit next month and change your mind, or whether you are stuck with whatever you committed to at the time.

This lesson runs one image all the way through: open two files, combine them into a single document, remove a tree and replace a sky without touching the original pixels, then save the result three different ways — a layered PSD to keep, a JPEG for the web, and a PNG with a transparent background.

Four Ways to Open a File

Use whichever you find fastest: Ctrl/Cmd + O, File > Open, or a double-click on the empty grey background of the Photoshop window. In the open dialog you can select more than one file at once by holding Ctrl/Cmd while you click, which saves a trip when a project uses two images.

Tabs or Floating Windows

By default Photoshop opens documents as tabs across the top. Some people prefer floating windows, which make it much easier to drag content from one image to another.

To switch on the fly, use Window > Arrange — Consolidate All to Tabs groups them, and dragging a tab down by its title tears it off into its own window. To change it permanently, go to Preferences > Workspace and untick Open Documents as Tabs. Neither is more correct; it is a preference.

Combine Two Documents Into One

With both images open, pick up the Move tool (the four-way arrow at the top of the toolbar) and drag from one document onto the other. The content copies across as a new layer.

You can also drag the layer itself out of the Layers panel and onto the other document, which is more precise when a document already has several layers. If the Layers panel is not visible, it is under Window > Layers. Once the content has copied over, the source document can be closed — everything you need is now in one file.

Panning

Hold the spacebar and the cursor becomes a hand; click and drag to move around the image. Let go and you are back on whatever tool you were using. Press F to cycle to full screen first if the interface is in the way.

Zooming

Ctrl/Cmd + plus and Ctrl/Cmd + minus step in and out. The faster method is to hold spacebar + Ctrl/Cmd — the cursor becomes a magnifying glass and dragging left and right zooms smoothly to wherever you started the drag.

Remove an Object Without Touching the Original

The tree in the sample image comes out in about thirty seconds, and the whole point is that it comes out on a layer of its own.

1. Add a New Empty Layer Above the Background

   Click the background layer, then the plus icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. Double-click the layer name and call it something you will recognise later — “tree” works.

2. Pick Up the Spot Healing Brush

   Keyboard shortcut J. It is the tool for removing objects, and it works by sampling what surrounds the thing you paint over.

3. Set Content-Aware and Sample All Layers

   Both are in the options bar. Sample All Layers is the one that matters here — without it the brush has nothing to read from, because your new layer is empty.

4. Paint Over the Object

   Click and drag across the tree and let go. Photoshop fills it from the surrounding landscape. The first pass is rarely perfect; a second short stroke over anything left behind usually finishes it.

5. Toggle the Layer to Prove It Worked

   Click the eyeball next to the layer. The tree disappears and reappears. The original photograph underneath was never altered.

Replace the Sky

The sky in the original has almost no detail in it. Swapping it uses a blending mode to get the tone right and a layer mask to control where it lands.

1. Scale the New Sky to Fit

   Select the sky layer — check you are on the right one, this is the easiest mistake to make — and press Ctrl/Cmd + T. Drag a corner handle until it covers the frame and press Enter.

2. Change the Blending Mode to Multiply

   With the sky layer selected, change Normal to Darken or Multiply in the Layers panel. Both drop the light areas and keep the dark ones; Multiply is usually the more convincing of the two for clouds.

3. Select the Original Sky With the Magic Wand

   Hide the new sky, press W, and click the old sky. If it misses patches, raise the Tolerance to around 30 and try again, or hold Shift and click the missed areas to add them to the selection.

4. Turn the Selection Into a Layer Mask

   Make the new sky visible again and, with the selection still live, click the layer mask icon. The sky now shows only where the old sky was and stops at the horizon.

5. Ease Off With Opacity

   If the result reads too heavy, bring the layer’s Opacity down until the new sky sits naturally against the foreground.

What Non-Destructive Actually Bought You

Switch both layers off and the original photograph is back, untouched. Switch on just the tree removal and you have the landscape without the tree and the original sky. Switch on just the sky and the tree stays. Every combination is one click away, and none of it was baked into the background layer.

That is the whole argument for working this way, and it holds even after the file has been saved — provided you save it in the right format.

Always Save the Layered File First

File > Save As, and pick a format that keeps your layers.

PSD or TIFF

Both preserve layers and all your editing information. There is no meaningful quality difference for this purpose; PSD is the simpler default and the one to start with. Pick one and stay organised about where the files go.

Maximize Compatibility

Photoshop will ask whether to maximise compatibility with older versions. Say yes. The file is slightly larger and it opens in more places.

Reopen the PSD afterwards and every layer is still live — the sky, the tree removal, the masks. That is the file you keep. Layers get a lesson of their own in Classic Day 3.

Export a JPEG for Everything Else

The JPEG is the flattened copy you actually send out — social media, a client, a print, a portfolio. Web browsers read JPEGs; they do not read PSDs.

File > Save As, choose JPEG. The layers checkbox greys out, because JPEG does not support layers — that is expected, and it is fine, because the PSD is already safe. Choose a high quality setting when prompted.

Changed your mind later? Reopen the PSD, toggle a layer, and Save As a second JPEG with a new name. The layered file is what makes that a ten-second job instead of a re-edit.

Save a PNG When You Need Transparency

PNG is the format for anything that has to sit on top of something else — a logo, an icon, or in this case the tree cut away from its background.

1. Select the Tree With Color Range

   On the background layer, go to Select > Color Range. Click the tree with the eyedropper, then use the plus eyedropper to add more of it until the whole shape is picked up.

2. Copy the Selection to Its Own Layer

   Ctrl/Cmd + J lifts whatever is inside the selection onto a new layer. Hide the background to see what you actually got.

3. Trim Away Everything That Is Not the Tree

   Draw a marquee around the tree, hold Shift to add any bits you missed, then Select > Inverse and press Delete. Deselect with Ctrl/Cmd + D.

4. Send It to Its Own Document

   Right-click the layer, choose Duplicate Layer, and set the destination to a new document. You now have the tree on nothing at all.

5. Crop Tight and Save as PNG

   Ctrl/Cmd + click the layer thumbnail to load the tree as a selection, then Image > Crop to trim the empty space. Deselect, then File > Save As > PNG.

Open that PNG on top of any other image and it drops in cleanly — you can see straight through the gaps between the branches, because there is genuinely nothing there.

The Habit to Carry Into Day 3

Three formats, three jobs. PSD (or TIFF) is the one you keep, with every layer intact. JPEG is the flattened copy you send out. PNG is for anything that needs a transparent background. Save the layered file first, every time, and the other two are always one Save As away.

Tomorrow, Classic Day 3 goes properly into layers and masks — the two things doing the real work in everything above. If you want to see the same round trip in the current version of Photoshop, that is Day 2 of the 2025 Edition.