PS 7 Layers and Blending question

[smyrin]

I have a small but annoying problem with some of my layers in a map I am working on. I want to merge two layers. Layer one consists of a town and and layer two consists of the plow fields with blending options enabled. When I merge the two layers, the visual effects of the blending options on the second layer change. I haven't figured out why this was happening.

Sometimes I am able to work around this by merging the layer with blending options with an empty layer but that trick is not working this time around. Anyone know what I am doing wrong or what is going on here?

Using Photoshop 7. Layer 1 is a png image. Layer 2 is a hand drawn plow field drawn with pencil tool.

[Coyotemax]

One of the things you could try is to make all the layers invisible except the two you want to merge, then tell it "Merge All Visible". sometimes that will overcome the issue you're describing.. I've had weird merging effects myself. The quick way to do that if you don't know already, hold Alt when you click on the little eye to make all the other layers invisible, then make the second one visible again (i think that's how you do it if i remember correctly)

[Ascension]

The issue is that PS merges things down but doesn't take into account the blending on the upper layer...it takes whatever pixels are on that layer and put them into the lower layer and acquires the new layer's blending. So if both layers have blending then you'll need to merge both layers to a separate empty layer and then finally merge them together. Put an empty layer under the upper layer, merge it down, put an empty layer under the lower layer, then merge it down, then finally merge the upper and lower layers.

[smyrin]

Thanks for the input but I still have not solved the problem. I tried merging the layer with the blending options with empty layers both above and below and I even moved into its own file and tried but same results.

[philipstephen]

i have found if i have only the layers visable that i want to merge, and then choose Merge Visable rather than Merge Down... the appearance of the new merged layer does not change as much.

phil

[Ascension]

Ok, try this. I had some funky merge-blending problems last year and it just came back to memory. Turn off where I circled the red.

[smyrin]

Well I tried merge visible instead technique a few of you offered and that did not work. I also checked the blending options as well. I do not have the "Blend Interrior Effects as Group" enabled anywhere since it has a default position of off (I checked them to be sure).

Strange problem. Do you think it has something to do with the Outer Glow effect since it has a default blending mode of screen?

In the end, I would like to merge down some layers to reduce my clutter but I guess can leave it as is.

[Ascension]

Hrm, well the last thing that I could suggest is to make duplicates of the layer in question and put only 1 layer style on each layer then merge them together and by getting rid of one layer style at a time you can find out which is the troubling one. Oh, also make sure to set the fill on all of the layers to zero except for the first, bottom, layer.

Here's another thing, if you have a blend mode of soft light or hard light, when you merge that to something it gets messed up frequently so you will then have to set the layer's blend mode to soft light or hard light in order to replicate the layer style blend mode.