photoshop question

I want to get the door, the grassy space under the door and the two ivy walls to be separate layers (which they should be) so I can work with them individually.
As it is now, it has the entire picture as one layer. I know it probably is something I clicked somewhere that combines the layers but I can't find where it would be.

Before this attempt, I tried the same thing with a different brick wall and it gave me the door, the right side and the floor as one layer and the left side as its own layer.

 

Use the marquee or polyagonal lasso tool to mark out the area you want to work on. Once you have it simply copy and paste and it will make a new layer for you. Do this with every area you want to work on. If you want to work on the main area then marquee the entire picture and copy and paste to make a new layer. Once you are done there you can use the marquee tool to cut out areas you dont want and then work on them.

 

Once you are done there you can us

 

Jamms is one the right lines but there's a slightly faster and more efficient method: select the door with the Rectangular Marque tool, then Control-Shift-J (cuts selection to new layer, Control-J copies to new layer). Then select the grass portion using the polygon tool and again Control-Shift-J and you're done.

 

futureprez, there isn't a single keypress that flattens an image or merges all visible layers. There are keyboard shortcuts that'll do this but it's unlikely you hit that combo by accident!

Merge Layers is just Control-E though, have to be careful not to hit that unintentionally (like for example when you're toggling the rulers on and off). If you're working with layers that have no Layer Mask or Vector Mask and you hit Ctrl-E without realising it you won't get a prompt asking you if you're sure, it'll just merge the current layer with the one below immediately, then again if you hit the same combo another time and so on.

You're having trouble keeping track of layers so if you don't already do this keep the Layers palette open permanently and continually refer to it. It's important to pay close attention to which layer is selected when you're creating a new element or pasting something (pasting should by default go into a new layer or empty layer but I'm not sure which version of PS you're using).

It's also a good idea to keep the History palette open all the time if you have enough screen real estate as you can use this to go back multiple steps. Say if you spotted that you'd accidentally merged some layers you didn't intend to, you can go back to the step immediately preceding the merge in one click.

Remember to save early and often. Your doc is called Untitled-1 which leads me to think you didn't save but if you did this is a dangerous filename to use and I'd recommend you never save a document with this name.

 

just wait till you have maps, channels, masks and layers to keep track of all at once. I swear sometimes I spend more time figuring out what mask is overlaying a channel improperly than all the rest of the time invested in the whole piece.