Quote Originally Posted by Coyotemax View Post
oooh flatten is the bane of my existence

according to your profile you're using photoshop - so i have a suggestion (that Ascension pointed out to me)

Instead of using Flatten, create a new layer on top of everything, then do Sht-Ctrl-Alt-E - that creates a flattened composite on the layer you just made, but doesn't flatten the file itself. Then you can run your effects on that, if they require a fully composited image...
And for the Gimp users - I'll point out the equivalent is Layer → New From Visible.

-Rob A>